Barry Rosenberg

You could say I was a street person back then.

These were the hippie days, late 60s, San Francisco. Fun times? Love and peace? Sex, drugs and whatever?

Yeah, right. I was already going bald, veteran of a failed marriage, military service, corporate indentured servitude.

Suddenly here I was, long beard, dead broke, living in a VW van, scrounging meals from supermarket dumpsters. Bundle of laughs, you bet.

Christmas was coming. Oh joy. The put-on pomp and fake cheer, incessant bad-art music everywhere, unbridled consumerism, family, family, family.

Christmas: number one suicide day of the year, especially for solos. I decided to do something about it.

I got some mates together. Planned and plotted. We would call it The Loners and Losers Christmas Dinner.

Rented a hall for peanuts, got the hippie radio station to promote us, drummed up donations of food and winter clothing.

Begged a few local bands to play for free. Jefferson Airplane. The Mommas and the Poppas. Price of admission: a dollar or a joint. A few hundred people turned up. Very few paid cash.

I’d made several gallons of eggnog. My first time; what I didn’t know, you’re supposed to let it settle for a week. Like getting whacked in the head with a crowbar.

It’s all going well. Everybody happy. Good food, live music. Lovely Bay Area babes dolled up in scanty red and white, Santa hats, fake antlers.

Not all the L&Ls in attendance were hippies. Any number of straights. ‘Okay if I come in?’ Sheepishly, like one of us crashing the annual mayor’s ball.

Then I notice a crowd by the door. Some celeb coming in? I hurry over, make my way through the gawkers.

A long black limo has pulled up at the curb. Liveried chauffeur opens the back door. Slowly, very slowly...

She emerges. Thin as a rake, complexion of dirty snow. Had to be 90. Looked older. Furs and pearls. Elegant walking stick.

Not a word, eyeballs no one as the sea of jaw-slung L&Ls parts and she slow-steps in. Crumpled up dollar bill.

Up to the food line, silk-gloved hands shaking, delicately takes a tray.

Forget the free plastic cutlery, she opens her exquisitely-tooled leather bag, brings out silver. Good silver.

Moving at crawl pace, surveying every heaped container, she takes a little of this, a bit of that. Cup of chamomile tea. Oat bran biscuit.

Toddles over to an empty table. Sits perfectly erect, daintily dabbing emaciated lips with a monogrammed silk handkerchief following each tiny mouthful. Not a glance at anyone.

Finished, she rises slowly, places tray on the dirty dishes trolley, back out, into the limo, away.

I can only wonder who she might be, what kind of life she’s led. She might be a loner, yeah, but I had serious doubts as to the loser bit.