Every now and again, I get some royalty money.

Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less.

Regardless of the amount, I take fifty dollars out of it in cash.

And, I make sure to ask the bank cashier to make it in five dollar bills.

Because I have a little rule about my billfold.

Of course, all rules about my billfold are subject to my good wife’s need to reach into it once in a while.

My little rule is simple.

If it’s a five-dollar bill, whether from the royalty or from change out of a larger bill, it goes to anybody holding a cardboard sign.

I guess you could say it has become a highlight for me.

By now, I recognize some of the folks in our local shopping town.

There’s one guy who always seems a little discouraged with life.  I never talk to him much because where he stands is often a busy intersection and there are usually some waiting behind me to get on their way.  He holds a sign that says he is homeless, and he looks it.  His voice is about as thin as he is.  He moves slowly, and sometimes I wonder if he moves slowly because he is too discouraged to move any faster.

There is a Spanish lady who looks so sad.  Her sign says she needs money for her children.  She can hardly make eye contact when we have our two second meeting.  I don’t believe she has a husband anymore.  I wonder how hard it must be for her; she barely speaks English.  I probably would have had a different attitude towards immigrants before I went to Germany.  It was while there I realized I had a whole lot more to learn than the language if I was going to live there.  The culture looked like it could take years to learn, and, just because you learned it, didn’t mean you would like it.  I felt especially bad for her one day, when I saw the man I’m going to write about next giving her a real chewing out for where she was standing.  Seems he thought she was too close to where he was, and it was robbing him of some proceeds.  I saw her submissively and quietly move farther up the street. 

I went out of my way that day to give her my five-dollar bill.

This next man is quite the codger.  He always looks sharp and used to look fairly buff too, with bulging biceps and ripped abs.  He used to, and still does, wear a tight t shirt and fedora hat, clothes clean and neat.  Although lately his t shirt has changed places where it is tight.  And his hound dog is always nicely groomed, and well mannered.  Really, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see a stogie angled sideways out of his mouth.  The man that is, but it wouldn’t look bad in the dogs mouth either.

I kept being intrigued by him, and suddenly one day the light bulb that is slow to light in my mind clicked on. 

He was the guy I picked up about three years ago on my way to the cattle sale at Pratt.  I stopped by and asked where he wanted a lift to.  He said as far as I could take him.  I said I could drop him off at the intersection by Walmart in Pratt if he wanted.  He said sure, but I asked him if he was certain, since he was walking west, and my journey took me east.  He said it was fine, he had just come from Medicine Lodge, and there were nice people there, he could go back before making his way on to California. 

He made a little place for his dog in the footwell of my truck and then, it was time to convert me to the seven principles of Christianity. 

I wish I had taken notes.  His thesis was interesting, if anything but very disjointed.

I should ask him sometime if he ever made it to California.

There’s the ancient man who sits in front of an Asian/Spanish market that is quiet until I get close.  Then he lifts his harmonica with trembling hands and plays a quiet, lilting tune.  I don’t think his hands tremble from substance abuse.  I see a hard-working immigrant gentleman who probably doesn’t have connections anymore in this world, and who, I hope, when the time comes, will have a home in a nice place for senior living. 

He definitely deserves it.

There’s an unkempt and dirty fellow once in a while that seems a little too gruff and grabby, but one never knows what his life is.  I suspicion if he had a nice woman like those of my household, he would be a very different person.

Then there’s the Vietnam war veteran.  After reading some of the atrocities this good country put those men through, my mind almost stops, and I wonder how much terror he still lives with today.

One thing though, is common among them all.  Even the gruff and grabby fellow.

They all say, “God Bless You.”

And I never can figure that out. 

Because it seems like it should be the other way around.

God has already blessed me, far beyond what I deserve.

And it seems like their lives could use the enrichment of his blessings so much more than mine.

So, I say “God Bless You” back to them, and I try my very best to say it in a way that I hope takes a little bit of that ache that each of them lives with away.