There's a place in San Antonio, Texas, where the down and out can rent sleeping space. It's a men's dormitory. One-hundred bodies can be accommodated at any given time. On occasion one of them winds up dead. His bunk is rented the next morning.
In this world, that's considered, "C'est la vie."
The rent is eminently affordable (250 dollars per month when I left in September 2023). For this you get a roof over your head, a bunk bed (top or bottom depending on age and health), a locker for 5 dollars per month, restroom and shower facilities. There's a day room with a television, microwave ovens, vending machines, a spacious backyard area with benches and cover from the elements. You can eat out or cook. You must provide your own cookware (electric fry pans et al). Barbeque pits are in abundance. Very important is the security from the streets that it affords. Perhaps more importantly, you can drink till you're blotto -- as long as you don't disturb others.
There is no curfew. Men come and go at all hours. Mostly this is for work purposes, as some jobs are shift related.
The building's layout is irregular. Seen from above it resembles an isosceles triangle with the long side fronting the street. Once inside it becomes a maze. One could say exactly the same thing about the residents. They're irregular. If they weren't when they came in, they get there at approximately the speed of light.
Upon being checked in by the clerk, you will be given the dime tour to get your bearings. It begins at the office and eventually winds up in the backyard. If you can find the office again on your own, you're considered a natural.
The Bunkhaus was founded by a company that specialized in temporary work. No one knows the why of the spelling. If anyone ever did it's been lost in the mist of time.
Somebody came up with the idea of having a residence for temporary workers close by the labor hall in each city. Hence, Bunkhauses. Cheap labor was always just a hop, skip and a jump away.
Each worker was paid daily, usually minimum wage. This afforded men the wherewithal to pay the rent and eat, in short, daily sustenance. After booze, cigarettes, horizontal refreshment-- whatever got them through the night-- they were busted, disgusted, and couldn't be trusted. So, it was back to the mines interminably.
Like a company town.
As for the clientele, I'm talking about men who are at the bottom rung of the ladder. Men with a smorgasbord of problems, some caused from without some caused from within, many from both. These men run the gamut from anger to acceptance.
I can't remember how many times I've heard some guy in the backyard screaming into his cell phone at a girlfriend, or whatnot, in an attempt to explain why it was their "goddamned" fault that he was in the Bunkhaus.
Then again, some guys have been there for decades.
One has been there since the '80's, off and on (mostly on). Another guy, with an impeccable work ethic, has stayed since the early 21st century. I never bothered to ask either why, although I've been with them for years. Some people are just easy to please; I guess.
I learned never to delve too much into a guy's life; I had made that mistake before. The problem is that he'll probably tell you-- at length. Then you're stuck like Chuck for God knows how long.
A going consensus is, "Thank God," and "It's a hellhole" depending on who you ask and on how he's feeling at the moment.
I resided there for two years in the 90s, two years in the aughts, and 7 years this last time. To me it was, "Thank God" and, "It's a hell-hole," and all points in between.
I was very moody while there.
I am retired on Social Security, and poor health precludes work. Ergo, it's catch as catch can. I don't mind. I'm easy to please.
This is a microcosm of mostly low income males of every race, creed, and ethnicity. Men from all over America have stayed there, as well as from around the world.
In the aughts of the 21st century, post 9-11, a guy showed up at the Bunkhaus from the middle-east. America was divided at that time.
Fancy that.
They were divided over the relative worth of anyone from that region. In fact, some guys were downright worried about having him there and didn't mind saying so right in front of him.
That floored me. Not the brazenness. In a culture such as this, that is the reality. These guys don't even know how to spell "woke," much less give it credence. No, what got me was the ludicrous paranoia of the time.
I asked him how he had gotten here from his home. He spoke of air travel and routes and things. He said he had come through Washington, DC, then somehow wound up at the Bunkhaus deep in the heart of Texas.
I said, "Let me get this straight. You came through DC, the capital of the United States of America, and didn't blow anything up?"
"Yes," he replied gravely. "Why?"
I said, "Don't tell me you came all this way just to blow up the Bunkhaus.”
He laughed. I laughed.
Nobody else did.
When a man first steps foot in this strange testosterone soaked world, he finds he has, also, stepped back in time. Picture Dodge City, circa 1870. Like most sane people, all he wants at that moment is to get the fuck out of Dodge.
To be sure, there are rules to follow. If some guy continually gets noticed by the powers that be, or pulls something egregious (think knife), he gets 86'd (evicted).
They have a book, a large, LARGE binder that goes back decades with the names of men and their social security numbers etched prominently within for perpetuity which have been 86'd. These men have been politely asked by the establishment, and extremely tall security guards from the ranks of the population, and even San Antonio's finest to leave. A few actually went quietly. No one gets in without checking the book first.
Saint Peter could use that thing at the Pearly Gates and cut his work in half.
When I first moved in to the Bunkhaus, I was given a top berth directly in front of the office. The door leading out was next to the office. It was there, on a daily basis that incorrigibles were unceremoniously tossed out, generally by "security staff" behemoths with half-pints ever at the ready in their back pockets. Sometimes, when they were feeling especially brotherly, the bulls would actually open the door before propelling a body toward it with glee.
The desk clerk asked if I'd prefer to move to another, ostensibly quieter location.
"What," I replied, "and miss all the action?"
Besides, I once slept through the better part of a hurricane that hit Miami with me right in the big middle. I figure that I've either got a clear conscience, or I'm so fucked up I don't care anymore.
Either way, "C'est la vie."
A typical week day begins any time you're broke and need rent money, sometimes food and definitely booze. But most have tickets (contracts thru the temp service with companies), and the men are usually flush, albeit always momentarily. Tickets can last anywhere between two hours to all day.
If it's a short ticket, then the temp is back at the labor hall sitting on a bench waiting to catch whatever he can. He might wind up being out for 15 hours just to make 8 hours of pay.
On the other hand, I've known guys working the same ticket for months. They simply get what's known as a "re-peat" daily. Re-peats can even be extended by the week... sometimes longer. The only restriction is that the "Temp" can't secure a full-time job with the company until he's completed at least six months through the temp service.
This being America, that point is debatable (which one isn't). Whatever can get done is got done, wink-wink.
In the 90s, I knew two guys who after a maximum of four days on any ticket would cringe at the word, "re-peat." If the ticket is stamped "re-peat" it must be honored. If not, that is labeled, "walking a ticket." That's a no no and can lead to being passed over for future "good" jobs.
HB and HC needed just enough to catch up on rent, have food, beer and toke. They spent the next several days reading, imbibing, and playing endless games of chess. Only then did they even consider working a ticket.
They, too, were easy to please.
Lest you think they weren't ambitious, consider this: there are degrees of ambition as with everything else. Taken as such, they were not only ambitious but downright successful for years. It all comes down to exactly what one desires.
The work assignments can vary widely. One day you may be digging a ditch under a blistering sun; the next day you may be unloading a house full of furniture from a van and the guy tips you fifty bucks on the side. It's an excellent gauge of where you are in the scheme of fate at any given moment-- standing in a rose garden, or up to your throat in a vat of shit.
Then it's back to what the undiscerning call, "home."
Only three things are feared. Two of them concern time, specifically week-ends (particularly Sundays), and worse, holidays. If you haven't had a good week, you could easily wind up becoming the most dreaded human being on the face of the entire globe -- a borrower.
That's the third fear. Fear of becoming or being hit on by a leech. Some guys make a career of scrounging. When they’ve gone through the population, they bide their time until the next sucker checks in. And they’re good and fast at it. It’s like some poor schnook fresh off the streets just found his long lost twin.
Christmas might as well have been dreamed up by a sadist. There’s no work to be had. New Years just compounds the problem. It's no wonder that by high noon on New Year's Eve, half the population is drunker than Cootie Brown. Many of the other half are desperately trying to get their hands on the cash to join their brothers in oblivion.
Once you've been there for awhile, you pretty much give up on, "Now I've seen it all." If you think you have, just wait 5 minutes.
When I first ventured out in the backyard, I noticed a very large barbeque pit. It was brand new and had been fabricated by a former resident for everyone's use. It had required removing an entire section of a wall-like fence just to get it inside. As I started over to inspect it, something moving through the air above caught my eye. A second later a fully grown deer landed at my feet, deader than a mackerel. A moment later a group of men came charging in, hauled the carcass to a huge tree, gutted and skinned it as if they did it on a daily basis and thus was the pit inaugurated.
As I think back on it, the only thing that surprises me, now, is that the head with antlers wasn't mounted over the front entryway along one of the most travelled thoroughfares in the city.
Many travelers would not have been surprised. The Bunkhaus is the stuff of legend.
I once met a girl at a bar. We were getting along famously until she learned where I resided. She hated the Bunkhaus, as did many that had never stepped foot inside of it. It was well known in neighborhood lore. Tales of murder, rape, illegal drug activity -- mayhem in general, were all well known. Some of it wasn’t true. But that never stopped some residents of the Bunkhaus from spreading rumors, either to be mischievous, or as payback to management for slights real and imagined.
The girl at the bar told me that she was thinking about checking her unruly nephew in to the Bunk Haus just to teach him a lesson. I told her that if she did that, a SWAT team, a psychologist and his own mother couldn't talk him into coming out of his own free will. There was simply too much temptation.
I never inquired as to the boy's age. You have to be 21 and prove it to gain entry.
Wink, wink.
This is a minor sketch of this world. It would take a book (pending) to include most of, if not all that I witnessed and partook in.
Have there ever been women in the Bunkhaus? Undercover, as it were?
Yep.
Gambling, illicit drugs, violence?
Yep.
Can a guy have 5 dollars in his pocket, short on rent, and walk out of there two years later with 7 thousand dollars having never collected a paycheck in the interim?
Can we please leave the IRS out of this?
Has there ever been instances of world-class compassion?
You bet.
As I alluded to earlier, this is a microcosm. The same things happen here that occurs in all other hierarchies of society. Only here the supposedly worthless, shiftless, lay-about riffraff spend approximately 80% of their lives just trying to stay afloat waiting for the miracle (external or internal) that will get them back into the so-called, "world."
In the meantime, exceedingly strange history is made constantly.
*Bunkhaus is the old name of the establishment. It exists as a totally new entity and has since the early 21st century. It is not to be confused with any other establishment. However, even today, should one ask in a particular neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas, for it's whereabouts by using the official name and it's location, one just might get the answer: "Oh. You mean the Bunkhaus. What the hell you want with that fuckin' place?"
A rose is a rose is a rose, I suppose.
The images of the Crop Circles are real. No one ever figured out how it was done. It remained pristine for months through the fall with trees dropping leaves around it constantly.
Personally, I haven’t got a clue except to parrot the phrase, “No where but the Bunkhaus.”
As for the third image of some backyard junk, I call it, “Whatever happened to R2D2.”
