Finding your Place

Remember that young man I bailed out of jail one of those many cold nights this winter? I’m still in touch with him, trying most lately get him proper identification. He has none, zippo, and finds without it he can do very little-buy a bus ticket, open a bank account, fill a prescription, get a job, and so on. How he came to be living without identification is, he says, a long story.

Actually, it’s not long at all. In the interest of personal safety, as in, I’m convinced, fearing for his life, he walked away from an apartment which had in it his driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card, high school transcript, a manila folder with the important papers we all have somewhere, usually entrusted to us when by our parents after reaching adulthood. In addition to those items he also walked away from everything he owned. Ran away is likely a more accurate verb to apply to what happened back then, far from here. How he found himself in that predicament probably is a long story, and I don’t want to hear it. But from what little I gather running away may well have been a good decision. But it left him nameless, paperless, cardless, without identify. Surprisingly he found an employer and a job that required none of that for a short while. But that was months and months ago. Now he’s unemployed and pretty much stranded.

I’ve always had all the documents I needed to prove myself a legitimate person with a traceable past. However I did get one of those jobs, like my young friend, that required nothing but a strong back and showing up. While traveling in Europe I found myself in Aberdeen, Scotland working some low level but real job in an urban lumber yard, having failed to get onto an oil rig in the North Sea as planned. In a bar I met three Irish kids new to town who had made their way up North hoping to work for a guy they knew from back home, County Cork I think, who was assembling a crew to do the dirty work of laying a natural gas pipeline North of Aberdeen by a town called Peterhead. They invited me to come along.

We ended up outside a tiny house late at night on a dark street in a bad part of Aberdeen, the light from inside the house blocked by a very big man in the doorway. I stood behind the Irishmen as they introduced themselves, referencing relatives of the man they knew from a community back home, whom he recognized. He shook their hands and told them the corner where they should meet the bus in the morning to take them to the job.

“And we met this Yankee,” the most talkative of the three said, “who looks like he could work. Grew up on a farm he tells us.”

He stepped aside so the man could see me better. He looked me over without smiling, not saying a word. When he did speak he spoke to them not me.

“Well he’s big enough. Bring him along.”

That ended the shortest job interview in my life. There was an oil boom in the North Sea, labor was in short supply, and the man hiring us that night was there to deliver able bodies to work. He had just included mine.

I worked that job till the weather, mostly rain and mud, shut it down. At noon each Friday while it lasted the man that hired me came out to the job in the Scottish lowland countryside in a tweed sport coat, its pockets bulging with cash. His assistant, a fast talking little man with a squeaky voice, called out our names and the foreman in the field, consulting a dirty list he kept in his shirt pocket, confirmed how many days we worked that week. The man then counted out an appropriate wad of paper notes, each man stepped forward to take his pay, and we went back to work. They never called my name. When it came my turn the man with the squeaky voice simply yelled

“Yankee!”

After which I walked up and got my money. It was a simple arrangement. I did think from time to time that if the Caterpillar tractors with side mounted booms, while swinging the big pipes up onto the timbers we stacked as a platform in the mud on which they were welded, had hit me in the head and killed me they would never know who I was. Maybe my Irish friends would alert the people at the hostel where I lived and they would find my passport. Hard telling what would have happened. Needless worry. As you can tell I made it through that experience just fine.

As did my young friend, who successfully negotiated a similar but safer experience in America on his own. As far as I can tell that stands as one of the few successes of his life. But he finds himself today in a different time and place. Without ID in this century he is less than invisible, he’s suspect. So I set out to help him become authentic, a real person once again, with papers. At times he’s skeptical, but cooperative. His demeanor is of a person beaten down. Hope barely flickers in his eyes when he talks about the future. I tell him making himself legitimate is his only chance to enjoy a decent life. I’m not sure he sees it.

He started with absolutely nothing that would identify him. Our first step was to go on line with the county in which he was born to order up a birth certificate. Not hard. He knew his birthday, his full name, his parent’s full names (including his Mom’s maiden name) and that was all it took, plus twenty dollars. Did it all on line with a credit card (not his).

Next we ordered a transcript from the high school he attended, a document which would contain his social security number. He didn’t graduate from that school mind you. He later got a GED from another school. That wasn’t what we were after. We were after a piece of paper from a legitimate place (schools have a solid sort of standing) that confirmed he was who he said he was and contained his social security number. We got that one fairly easily as well, after they received a personal check (not his either). The only complicated part was the confirmation process. They required a phone number in order to talk personally with the former student and confirm it was truly him requesting the document. Phone numbers are a mess for the poor these days.

He’s only been in town since last fall but I have in my phone at least five numbers for this kid. I’ve taken to entering the number, his name, and the month in which it’s active. He loses phones, runs out of minutes, gets old phones from people buying new ones, calls on the phones of friends. It’s a jumbled communication mess. His numbers are fluid, from month to month, or week to week. He texts me, because it’s cheaper, from an unrecognizable number and starts his message with

“Hey Dave, it’s me. Here’s my new number.”

I used to know the phone numbers of my friends and relatives by heart. They were land lines and the numbers never changed. They were in the phone book. I can still recall them. That’s over. We had to give his old school district a number so they could talk directly to him to verify his request. We did so and hoped the current connection lasted until they processed the application. It did. He texted me one day to say he’s just talked to someone at the school district office who “asked him a bunch of stuff” and predicted the transcript would arrive within five days. It did, in my mailbox.

Armed with that and the birth certificate, along with some bills indicating his address, we went to the Secretary of State’s office in Ottawa, took a number, and after a very short wait were called to the counter. This young man grew up in an urban area. “Back home you would wait hours to get called,” he said. Almost everyone realizes enjoys that advantage of small town life, or should. We take so much for granted.

His documents proved not enough to get a photo ID. We were given a list that designated acceptable proof of identity in each of four sections, and delineated what was not acceptable for each section. The residency section requires two documents, neither of which we had. Common to all the sections save for residency was a social security card. So we got in my car and headed to Peru to the relatively new Social Security office on Wenzel Road.

There were three people waiting including us, a security guard, and a couple of staff behind the counter. I have a new appreciation for the Social Security system since they began to deposit money in my bank account. I thought to myself that working for them must be a good job, Federal, with pensions. That being said the staff didn’t look all that happy.

The security guard showed us to a touch screen computer for a little machine interview. The first question was “Do you have an appointment?” to which my young friend answered no. Given the lack of folks waiting it didn’t appear that would be a problem. The security guard directed us to take a seat until we were called.

As we waited an older man, perhaps a little younger than me, with a very long beard, worn out boots, and a folder full of papers approached the counter after his name was called. He, like my young friend, was trying to establish his identify and get a new social security card. He presented his stuff with the pronouncement “this is all I have.” The woman behind the desk, who was curt, shuffled though the documents and told him it wasn’t good enough. She gave him a list similar, I guessed, to the one we were given at the Secretary of State’s office, and pointed out what he lacked.

“But I know my social security number,” he said. “And I’ve paid into social security.”

“Yes but how do I know that you are the person associated with that number, sir? You have not proven your identity.”

“But these papers are all I have.”

“You’ve said that several times but what you have is not sufficient.”

“Is there someone else I can talk to?”

“No one else will tell you any different. We have strict rules. Now please step away from the counter. We’ll be glad to help you when you produce the documents required on this list.”

There was a long pause finally broken by the woman behind the counter. “You can stare me down all you want sir, but we’re done here. I can call the security guard and you can be escorted out the door.”

He didn’t move. “Jack?” she announced loudly. “Will you please show this gentleman the door?”

The guy stayed at the desk. The security guard came over and talked to him about the list, pointing out that he would be best served by getting a birth certificate.

“But I was adopted,” he said.

“Then you‘ll need your adoption papers. What you need to do is to contact some of these places on the list who have your records, get them, and bring them here. We don’t look them up for you.”

The security guard was more helpful than the woman behind the counter. The bearded man turned and walked quickly out the door. He looked absolutely disgusted. Or was it defeated? Those looks can be a lot alike.

It was my young friend’s turn next. He breezed through. We had a newly issued birth certificate, a school transcript with his social security number on it, and that was all we needed. The woman behind the counter, much more pleasant than before, promised to mail a replacement card to my young friend’s current address. I cringed at that. He lives in an apartment with a relative and I’m not sure how secure the mailboxes are in that building. But mailing to that address might help establish residency for him. I warned him to find out when the mailman came and to check every day close to that time. Whether he will is anyone’s guess. But he seemed encouraged at the ease of the transaction.

“It’s going well because you’re getting your shit together,” I said, borrowing an old phrase from the sixties. “Once we get all your shit in one bag you’ll be ready to get on with a real life.”

As I watched that bearded old guy walk out of the social security office I realized that I didn’t want my young friend to be him. I didn’t want his life, thirty five years from now, to be one of what I imagined was constant struggle, and finding yourself entering the last part of your life with nothing to show for it. I shouldn’t judge. The old bearded man may have had a lifetime of rich experience and only recently fell on hard times. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think I saw the struggle in his eyes. I see that same despair sometimes in the face of my young friend, during this cold Illinois winter when nothing good has happened for him. I know how that feels.

I have never lost my passport or had a driver’s license get away from me. But I have had times in my life when I had no idea what I was going to do next. No hint of a plan, and no ambition to put one together. In that way I understand my young friend. He won’t even talk about the future unless I make him because it scares him. I don’t think he’s convinced he has one.

Even when I felt most uncertain of my future, like standing in the mud as a Yankee laborer in Scotland, I always felt I had assets. I had caring parents and stable family, an education, a work history, and some confidence. I got a good part of that confidence from being successful in jobs. I worked hard, they kept me on, and I was paid for my efforts. In addition to that I always felt I had skills.

What I want for my young friend, in addition to establishing his identity on paper, is to find an identity within himself. He needs to be successful at something, anything, so that he develops confidence in his ability to make his own way. He doesn’t start with my assets. His life has not followed the same path as mine, but then we all come from different places. I believe it is too late for no one. Keep your fingers crossed for this young man, and so many others like him. We all need for them to succeed.