How Times Have Changed

Following an aborted hitch-hiking trip to Alaska that ended with a night in jail in Eureka, I found myself in Livingston waiting for a ride to Cooke City where I had work.

It was hours before dawn and there was no traffic.

I curled up next to my backpack and closed my eyes.

The sound of tires crunching gravel woke me with a start. A Livingston police cruiser had stopped just feet away, and a cop, holding the passenger door open, said get in.

He drove me a few miles south of town, told me to get out, and drove away.

In 1970, that was how Livingston dealt with transients.

I wasn’t offended. It was a ride.

My how times have changed.

Livingston now has a shelter offering a warm bed and meals to transients, the unhoused, urban campers, and the homeless.

Over the hill in Bozeman, where urban camping is all the rage, transients used to be given bus tickets to either Butte or Billings.

Now they’re simply asked to move to a new location every two weeks which they seldom do. The Forest Service has a similar time limit for campers, but few of the housing-challenged want to live in the woods. Squatting on city streets in beat-up RVs and trailers is apparently where it’s at.

I never thought there would be much of a homeless problem in Montana. Why, after all, would folks who could be homeless anywhere choose such a cold place?

Welcoming them with free food and shelter probably helps. Tolerating their free-loading behavior has to be a big draw.

I’ve spent more than a few nights camped where I shouldn’t have, but I did it discreetly and always left at first light. I certainly didn’t feel entitled to camp wherever I wanted.

Apparently, having a homeless problem is a sign of prosperity. In booming Gallatin County the number of folks living on the street has begun to rival the number of real estate agents there. In remote Phillips County, on the other hand, our single homeless issue involved an elderly woman living in Malta’s lone public restroom where she kept the door locked.

I’d like to think the solution is as simple as it was to get rid of me: a ride out of town in a cop car.

But that’s just cold, besides being politically incorrect.

And nobody hitch-hikes anymore.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]