Black Collegian News & Views

As I approached the intersection of Carrollton and Claiborne Avenues in uptown New Orleans late one night, I spotted Robert Brewer reclining on the steps of the First NBC building under the moonlight puffing on a cigar. 

Walking home after a party, the combination of the nighttime quiet and the humid summer breeze helped to cleanse my mind of the party's noisy environment.  My walk back home was a kind of meditation.  Streetcars rolled past and left trails of serenity behind them.  The only distractions on my journey home were my thoughts. 

Mr. Brewer seemed to have emerged out of my already dream-like state.  We greeted each other with the familiarity of old friends. 

"Hello, sir," I said. 

"How are you doing young man?" he questioned in return. 

"Oh I'm fine," I responded.  "Would you mind if I sat here with you to see how you see the world?" Mr. Brewer, who looked like a 60-year-old man to me at first, smiled so enthusiastically that he immediately looked 10 years younger. 

"Certainly young man," he beamed as he stood up to shake my hand. "Have a seat here with me and you can see how I see the world." 

Mr. Brewer and I sat next to each other in silence for a while.  His world was one where silent observation was a survival technique; and the silence that we shared was my initiation into his world.  I began to notice an air of sagacity, or wisdom, about Mr. Brewer.  Through his peaceful stillness, he began to slowly reveal himself as a teacher. 

Without speaking, we sat and watched people go by.  We saw people ride past in cars with children asleep in the back seat, as well as college students on their way to some Friday night party.  We saw people walking by, who Mr. Brewer immediately pointed out as heroin addicts.  Upon noticing Mr. Brewer and I sitting in the shadows, they ran back to us to ask us for money.  When we said that we didn't have any, they gave us some excuse as to why they were broke. 

The excuses ranged from, "My wife kicked me out," to "I just quit my job." Mr. Brewer turned these addicts away so efficiently that he was able to make them feel shameful for asking us for money in the first place.  I have been in New Orleans for four years and I never would have guessed that the people who came up to us were drug addicts.  They simply did not fit the stereotype of junkies.  They looked like any other person in New Orleans. 

Mr. Brewer's keen observational skills regarding the recognition of junkies made me feel both naive and stupid because junkies are potentially dangerous people, and here I was, strolling down the street at night totally unaware that I was in the midst of them.  Oddly enough, Mr. Brewer did not treat the few heroin addicts who asked us for money as threats, but rather, as if I were his honored guest and they were disrespecting me with their begging.  The fact that Mr. Brewer did not respond to them as though they were threats made me suspicious as to whether Mr. Brewer himself was a junkie. 

Inconspicuously, I scanned his arms for any signs of tracks and found none.  I was relieved.  Despite his homeless state, I had begun to respect Mr. Brewer as a teacher.  I would have been disappointed if he turned out to be a mere junkie.   I listened attentively to Mr. Brewer's stories about his life.  He had grown up in the South, fathered a child when he was 17, and married soon after.  His storytelling was so eloquent and lively that I almost forgot to ask him how he became homeless in the first place.  It wasn't until after we had been harassed by some drunk college students from a nearby university driving past shouting obscenities at us that I lost patience with his storytelling and wanted to know why he, being an obviously intelligent man, would put himself through the hardships of being homeless. 

My reaction to the students' taunts  made him realize the frustration I felt for his situation.  As I angrily jumped up to "assert my manhood" by confronting the belligerent college students, he just sat watching me.  I was not so angry that they were cursing and yelling at us, but that they would target a homeless person for their attacks.  And since I was not homeless, and I was young, I felt as though I had to protect Mr. Brewer from this injustice.   

Before I had a chance to say anything to the students, Mr. Brewer pulled me back and silenced me with his passiveness. After the car pulled off, Mr. Brewer began to chastise me for reacting to them the way I did.  I tried to explain to him why I did what I did, but he already knew. 

"Listen here young man," he said authoritatively.  "You have got to respect every person for being a man.  People may not always respect you for being a man, but that's no excuse for not giving them that respect.  You may not like them, but you have to at least respect them for being men." 

Then Mr. Brewer grew a smile and patted me on my shoulder.  He had just taught me another lesson.  He knew that I would not appreciate what he had just told me at the time, because I was still angry.  But, he sat there with the patience of an old sage, smiling with the realization that he had just planted a seed.

This is being reprinted with the permission of the Xavier Herald.