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scale rebellion. Due to irreconcilable differences at home, I dropped out of school, found a job and moved out. It wasn't a steady job and I lived with first one then another, here and there, always on the move. I married at eighteen and of all things, joined the Navy two months later. Once again I got to indulge my passion of wanderlust onboard ship and I celebrated my nineteenth birthday in the Black Sea. I must admit that becoming a sailor of the seven seas did have its silver lining of glamour and romance; just enough to brace my soul, yet more with a passion and lifestyle that has been difficult to overcome.

Those first twenty-one years laid the groundwork for the next twenty. I soon divorced and wandered. I became fast friends with Greyhound. I didn't want to be tied down with commitments, obligations and responsibilities. Besides, I had long since decided that the "American Dream" had become a cruel joke, perpetuated by those who believe that life and morality on earth are forever. There had been a time, a season and a reason for the American Dream, but it had ran its course, it had done what it came here to do; served its purpose and now it was time for a new American season, with or without reason.

Disillusioned by the collapse of "The Dream," I did begin to search for the meaning of life in philosophy and religion and I also discovered the new oasis of American life: the homeless shelter. I discovered the difference between a man, or woman, who is homeless and a man, or woman, who is a vagabond: the homeless person is looking for every opportunity to escape the oasis and return to the mainstream of stable, American chaos; the vagabond, commonly thought of as chronically homeless, is not.

The vagabond is a career professional mission man, or woman. These folk simply do not want help beyond what it takes to sustain the life of a vagabond in chains: these chains being the default settings of a disposition and belief system learned, whether real or imagined, over the course of many years. That's not to say the true vagabond cannot or will never change; some do. I began a real inventory of my life in a homeless shelter and that's where I was when I decided that it was time for me to at least begin the long process of reorientation on life.

Are homeless shelters the answer to the homelessness issue? Not altogether and completely. Homeless shelters do what homeless do. Some are good, some not so good. Some are more effective than others, but the real answer to homelessness begins at birth, in a house filled with love and life lessons. The only thing I really remember my grandfather telling me as a five year old child was, "a rolling stone gathers no moss." His prophetic words have deep meaning for me now.

In conclusion, we can enumerate, classify, catagorize and elaborate, till the cows come home concerning homelessness. I've participated in Blue Ribbon Commissions, heard the lectures, read the reports with their numbers, ratios and statistics, but I also continue to see an unending stream of the homeless. I would suggest that, by and large, the direct-indirect cause(s) of homelessness, begin at home. There simply are no programs in place that adaquately substitute for the stable home and family. I realize there is a serious problem in America and the world at large that needs to be addressed right now, but if we are to slow the tide of homelessness in the next two too three generations, it simply must be addressed at its roots, the home life.

Learn more about this author, Robert Allport.
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