coffin joe

One summer a bunch of us at UCB rented a sublet from some grad students on Dana Street in Berkeley between Haste and Channing across the street from a church.

It was a cool pad, a three bedroom furnished with a balcony overlooking the street.

Overall I think there were about 6 different people living there that summer off and on.

My bedroom at one point was downstairs (later it was in the living room, I think because I was paying less rent). The wall to the bedroom downstairs bordered the garage, where the laundry machines and two parking spaces were.

A homeless man had made it his sleeping area too. I think he just pulled up the garage doors and went inside. He used to sleep right on the other side of the wall from me. He was a youngish (30-40) white guy with really greasy brown hair and a moustache. He looked like he could have been someone's strange brother in Ohio who wandered away one day. He always wore a gigantic backpack and would leave the garage fairly clean (apart from his presence).

He had bronchitis or something chronic and would cough all night, right next to my head.

Our household dubbed him "Coughing Joe" and he became a fixture in our lives for a short period of time. We never thought to kick him out or do anything about it, and for some reason the noise didn't bother anyone. Maybe we were just young.

Sometimes we'd go into the garage to do laundry and he would get up, scared, looking at you, his mouth was always open and he was drooling a lot, he never said anything, but if you just ignored him he wouldn't bother you, and he wouldn't mess with your clothes either, at least I hope he didn't.

He used to shave in our garage before heading out somewhere.

The other tenants in the building brought up the fact that they were uncomfortable with him in the garage and would we mind if they called the police on him. In our house we were all surprised because we never thought of that before but we let them call the cops who showed up one day and kicked him out with all of his stuff.

Later, silver padlocks were fastened to the garage and then all was very quiet and we felt bad.

Coughing Joe went out and did something else and then we did too.

The End