The Adventures of Franco & Cindy

I was out on Sunday running some errands and noticed a woman on a corner of Division and Foothills begging for money from the passing cars. She was 40 to 50ish with a thin hard face. On an adjacent corner, there was a guy doing the same thing. I have seen this guy before. He too looked close to 50 and hard. He stakes out these two corners and has been there off and on for over a year. He's pretty animated as he looks at you and holds up his hand gesturing for just a little bit....whatever you got...help a brother out!

I was puttering in the yard a couple of hours later when the same couple approached and asked if I wanted the yard raked. They carried this really crappy spindly rake that someone had cast off. I didn't really want the yard raked because there are a lot of leaves yet to fall. Then again, it is good to stay in front of the leaf deluge. So I offered Franco and Cindy $40.00 to clean it up. It took them about an hour and a half to get it done. It was a mess two hours later when the sky opened up and poured down hail and rain for about ten minutes.

I bring this up because I never give money to people begging on the streets. I am however, happy to help someone out who is willing to work for it. But I think I may have created a problem for myself. It seems that if you help someone out then they feel much more free to return to offer more help. I was stringing up some Halloween lights last night when Franco came by to see if I had anything else for him to do. I told him, "Sorry! Nothing today!"

"How bout tomorrow then?" he immediately asked.

I then had to do the thing I hate...be firm. "No! I'm not going to have anything for a while and I'll probably finish the clean up myself."

"Well, I can help" he asserted.

"I'm not made of money here. It'll probably just be my wife and myself."

I'm sure I disappointed him but I am confident I haven't seen the last of him. But he probably won't be by for a week of so.

So now it brings up the issue of helping these people at all. How much of an extra pain in the ass am I going to have to deal with now that Franco sees me as a possible meager meal ticket. It would be sooooo much easier to help the poor if they weren't so...you know...poor!