Chuck Williams: Picking your friends carefully

Jerry has become a friend.

He is someone I like and trust -- you know, two of the essential elements in building a friendship.

I see him most days in downtown Columbus and have known him for about five years. He is an interesting guy.

Ask him how he is doing, and he is likely to respond, “Still on the green side.”

For several years, he was a hawker for the Ledger-Enquirer. He would spend the better part of his Sundays selling the newspaper in north Columbus.

About dusk you find him in the same place along the riverfront reading the paper. That’s where our conversations started.

Jerry could provide feedback about what stories drove the sale of the newspapers. He was my personal market analyst. Some days, he would simply say it was the coupons that people were after. That always hurt when the front page had one of my stories on it. It was his way of saying, “Don’t flatter yourself.” Friends have a way of doing that.

More than a year ago, I was roaming downtown on a Saturday night. My wife was out of town and I was just killing time.

Sitting at an outside table in front of a pizza place, Jerry rode by on his bike. After asking him how it was going, he said, “I could sure use a beer.”

That night Jerry and I rang up a nice tab drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and talking. My wife still doesn’t understand how you can rack up that kind of bill on cold beer. I would like to say it was all Jerry, but it wasn’t. I was buying, and he was drinking. I have a lot of friends who would take that deal. So, Jerry is not unique.

He was playing me. Don’t kid yourself, we all play each other from time to time.

Did I tell you for what it’s worth my friend Jerry is homeless?

And he’s not just my friend. A lot of folks consider him a friend of sorts. You see him drinking coffee in the morning with folks who work downtown.

Downtown merchants give him work when they can. Another bought him a clean white shirt a year ago so Jerry could attend the funeral of a popular downtown merchant.

Jerry is a piece of the fabric of Columbus. He’s a little tattered and worn to hell and back from years on the streets.

Last month when the cold weather rolled in a few weeks earlier than normal, I ran into Jerry on the coldest of afternoons as someone was buying him a cup of coffee. He was more worried about his friend Cheryl than he was about himself.

Cheryl went into SafeHouse, the shelter run by the Chattahoochee Valley Jail Ministries, that night. Jerry held out. I knew where he was sleeping and found him about 9:15 that night, and all but begged him to go to the shelter.

He wouldn’t budge, “I don’t do shelters well,” he barked from the relative comfort of his sleeping bag.

The next night it fell into the low 20s. Jerry did the shelter thing. My friend is stubborn not stupid.

Like everyone in his situation, Jerry has a story and I have only picked at the edges of it. And Jerry has choices limited as they might be.

But for now, I guess it is what it is. And on the coldest of nights let’s pray the stubbornness of a homeless man in his mid-50s gives in to the man who has a lot of street smarts.

This story was originally published December 1, 2014 at 6:57 PM.