All Over Again---Simpson Park Homeless Clean Out

 When the news hit, that Albany is cleanng out the homeless camps at Simpson Park, it brought back the memories, some not so great.

It was a long time ago, over 20 years ago in fact, but I can't recall just when, that a city councilman from Albany requested that little old me, who lived in Corvallis then, clean out the multitude of cats left behind when Albany got the rights from Millersburg for the area known as Simpson Park.   There were homeless camps back in there, lots of them and lots of trash too.

The Park runs along the river behnd the railroad trucks between Albany and Millersburg.   I don't know who really owns it.  Albany now I guess, but enforcement issues fall to Linn County.

I had no money then and wasn't a nonprofit, although I got cats fixed under a Hillsboro based nonprofit.  They did not pay for anything else however, just spays and neuters.   How could someone without money living in a tiny teensy shack basically and driving a run down old car, accomplish this?   

I suppose I agreed to it simply out of low self esteem and because it made me feel wanted, useful, to have such a request of little old me made by a city councilman in another city.  Me?  I thought.  

So I did it.  It was really hard on me.   The costs, the physicality of hauling cats and kittens out over trains sitting on tracks.  It was hot too.   And I had no help.

I finally recruited booted out homeless folk to help, who risked arrest going back into their former home, to help and show me where the cats were at.  Nobody else was going to help. 

I don't even recall how many I got out of there.  Lots.  Or the year.

I called it Camp Boondoggle.  I had one homeless man take a photo of me in the midst of the trash, for fun, but I can't find the photos.  Been trying all morning to retrieve those off CD's that are themselves over 20 years old.  No phone.  No digital camera back then.  I don't think I even had a computer.

I'm not surprised at all homeless campers are back in there.  Probably there are homeless now cats there too.   

Ah well.   Here's the current story on the clean out.

I think the same news station did the story on it way back then, and even a story about the cats.

I remember a local nonprofit lady came when she heard the news was coming and threw one of her nonprofits shirts at me, ordered I put it on, which I didn't, and tried to scam donations towards her, when she hadn't lifted a finger to help.  Par for the course.

The news lady ended up adopting one of the kittens.