The Quarry and the Peacock's Eye

I was so tired of the way I was living and eventually broke down and decided to stay for a week at a home for the homeless. I went on several interviews for jobs while staying at the shelter as it was easier to clean up. The shelter had a shower and bunkbeds. It was something that I hated to do; I felt so degraded. From a land baron to homeless on the streets of Gainesville, Florida; and now to a shelter for the homeless. I felt like a person who had been at war, a vicious attack on my being. I needed a place to rest for awhile, just a few days out of the traffic, sun and sleepless nights. I was at the shelter for three days, and there was a ten-day limit. I was just getting comfortable enough to get a good night’s sleep, and they had a kitchen and food every night. There was one small but important catch about eating food at the shelter. Before you ate you had to say out loud that you professed "Jesus as your Savior." I thought it was weird. The homeless people there told me they said it just to get a meal. The shelter had a kitchen, dining area, and living room area with a few comfortable chairs. This was a big change for me and the rest would really do me good.

A new man came into the shelter three days after I was there. He seemed very intelligent. He said he was a landscape architect, or land planner. I became curious about the man and his timely entrance on the scene, and of course remembering my close work with the landscape architect on the quarry park. I was cautious, but I needed a friend, so we started talking during the day. You must remember that I was, at this time, almost at the end of my rope, trusting only a very few people. I thought I was as low as a human being could be. The people here were very bad off, and I knew I was not one of them; yet, I was one of them. I remember wanting to maintain my self respect. In this situation it was hard to do. I was almost going in for a fifty cent cup of coffee and stealing sugar packets for safekeeping. I couldn’t believe that all this was happening to me. I didn’t know why. Plus, it was all so deceptive that I couldn’t explain it to anyone. The land planner and I talked one day for most of the afternoon. I could have been very vulnerable at this time, and he, realizing this and possibly the fact that I had in the past a high regard for an intelligent land planner such as Cheryl Barton (although I never, ever mentioned anything about my past to him), ( I was wary). Yet, he did not realize I was wary. To him I was truly feeling low, abused, degraded and much less than homeless. This is what he told me as he talked:

1. That we were all being watched by the government.
2. That all the streets and intersections were under surveillance.
3. That certain people were under surveillance by the government.
4. That UFOs were real and that the government was looking out for space aliens that had made contact with humans or that were, in fact, aliens themselves.
5. That the government was looking to identify these aliens.
6. That the government studied them.
7. American canned food was drugged by the government.

Well, after hearing all this, I really thought this new, homeless landscape architect was himself over the edge, or trying to push me. Was he a plant by the government? I decided not to get involved in a friendship with anyone at the shelter. Later that same day I was on the front porch of the shelter for the homeless and a white, four-door sedan pulled up in the driveway. The car was the same type as the police car, but with no markings. It had government service tags. The men were dressed in white shirts and ties. The backseat was loaded with black cases, like amplifiers and audio sound equipment. There were three or four black cases. The men got out and brought the cases of equipment inside. I had learned to be wary of these cars, so I watched them unload the cases of equipment. Then they left. This was my third day at the shelter. I went inside and asked one of the guests what they did with those boxes. He said they brought them in here and led the way to show me. I was very surprised and curious, if not shocked. There were two bunk rooms in the shelter. These two bunk rooms were divided by a large wall. The wall was wide, about five feet wide, and behind one of the bunks was a door to a hidden room! The young boy said they asked him to move the bunk and they brought the equipment in there. It was bizarre!

The door to the room was locked. We moved the bed back in position. This was very interesting to me. Keep in mind that no one heard what the architect told me. My bunk was on the opposite wall from the secret room. There were three bunkbeds in the room, and the night before there were only three people, and the night before that, my first night, there was only me and one other person in that room. People came to sleep and rest there, but there was no certainty that when they came in at night if they would come back at all.

That night, I went to bed on my top bunk at the shelter. There were three bunks in my room, but only three people were sleeping there that night. To say the very least, I was anxious about the bizarre conversation from the landscape architect, and then the hidden room revealed and the equipment. I really needed a good night’s sleep, but I was very nervous about all this. I fell asleep around midnight and then awoke at 2:00 a.m. and heard faint sound. I didn’t know what woke me, but the sound continued, then started to fluctuate higher, then lower. It was a high pitched sound or squelch, like from tuning radio frequency modulations. This continued for about 10 or 15 minutes. I became literally frozen with fear. It was coming from the room between (the secret room). The bleeps and hums continued, and I began to think or rationalize about this whole plot – the talk with the timely architect, the unmarked police car, the equipment, and now the weird sounds at night! What were these people trying to pull? Was this another tactic to generate fear? Why would the government go to such extremes? And I wondered, why? How long was this going to continue? I left the homeless shelter the next day. My own car/home looked real good now. A person needs to have a home, a place of his own.