'Tennessee' Talks About Life on the Streets

Among the 1,003 homeless veterans from around San Diego county who attended over the weekend, many stories were told.

Patch heard from Chris Burns who used to sleep on the streets of Lakeside and Alpine. He described how happy he is to volunteer at Stand Down, which is a relief camp for former military living on the streets, and to give back what he "freely received" in support from others. It helped him recover from alcohol abuse, get off the streets and start a new life, he said.

Stand Down is a military term for a time when combat troops get a break to refresh themselves. The three-day relief camp for homeless vets originated in San Diego 24 years ago and is held at San Diego High School. Now similar camps are held around the nation.

While Burns didn't mind talking about his new life, he decided he didn't want to relive the homeless experience by talking about it. He got a lump in his throat as he made that decision.

"It's a tough life," he said. He was glad to put it behind him.

Burns is fortunate.

Others continue to hunker down in the evenings under bridges and overpasses, along river beds and in storefronts around San Diego County.

Among them is "Tennessee," who got his nickname from the state where he was born, he said.

In an earlier story on Patch, I described going with Veterans for Peace volunteers from Ramona to San Diego to see them giving out sleeping bags to the former military living on the streets.

A few homeless people told us, "I'm good, but I know someone who could use that sleeping bag."

One man said his friend had only one leg and was living a few blocks away. He led us there on his motorized bicycle, and we found a man sleeping in the dark behind an electrical transformer outside an industrial building. Volunteers called out to him and he pulled his head out from under layers of blankets and clothing, his white hair disheveled. He said his name was Tennessee. He accepted what we offered and one of the volunteers reminded him to be at Stand Down.

"I'll be there if I have to wheel myself all the way," Tennessee said. Beside him was a wheelchair.

Patch Finds Tennessee at Stand Down

A few days later, I let my curiosity take me to my first Stand Down experience as a reporter. I'd heard was cooking beef for the homeless.

Though I'd thought of Tennessee earlier in the day, I have to admit that he escaped my mind as I entered what looked like TVs MASH unit spread out on the athletic field at the school. This year, there were 3,600 volunteers.

"It's like a small city," said Jon Natchison, a clinical psychologist who founded Stand Down with Robert Van Keuren in 1988.

I walked around for 30 minutes before deciding to visit one tent that bore the sign "Vietnam Veterans." I saw a few people sitting around chatting. Many people in the tents were napping.

"I'm a reporter," I said. "Would anyone like to talk to me?"

"Sure," they nodded. It was hot. Everyone was tired.

I sat on a box and turned to the man next to me, not even noticing he was in a wheelchair.

"My name's Julie," I said. "What's yours?"

"Tennessee," he said.

"Tennessee!" I looked and saw that, yes, he was indeed in a wheelchair.

"Did someone give you a sleeping bag this week while you were sleeping?" I asked, incredulous.

"Aha."

"And socks?"

"Yes."

"That was me!"

We began our conversation.

As his buddies drifted in and out of the tent chatting or asking him for cigarettes, Tennessee proudly told them, "I'm being interviewed by AOL, yo."

He turned to me and said, "I've been on CBS too."

Tennessee told me that his real name is Earl Nothey. He showed me his Stand Down photo identification card and told me that he'd just had his 70th birthday. He said he grew up in Maryland.

"I was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Unit in Vietnam," he told me. "We rescued a lot of Marines. They called us the Screaming Eagles and the Pukin' Buzzards, 'cause when we landed everything died around us.

"I was at the Tet Offensive," he said. "I was in Vietnam for 22 months."

Tennessee said he had to cross a rice paddy after one landing, and he stepped on a "punji stick."

"It was a short piece of bamboo with a really sharp point, with stuff on the end—a booby trap," he said. "It went right through my boot. I got grangrene. They flew me back to the U.S. and amputated."

Tennessee said he was given a dishonorable discharge years after Vietnam when military police on Camp Pendleton found M16s in the trunk of his car.

"I was taking them out to sell them to the Rincon Indians on the reservation," he said. "They had nothing out there then. I used to take them peanut butter and everything. It was before the days of casinos."

He said he has lived on the streets in various towns for 15 years, off and on. He's been at his current location, a few blocks from the high school, for two years.

"I've had my own home, three wives, my own business," he said. He told me he used to build hotels in Florida and was once general manager of a hotel in San Diego.

But he had a heroin habit that he said he picked up in Vietnam.

Tennessee said there was an altercation with an employee at the hotel, and Tennessee was high on heroin. Police came and told him he'd have to clean up his act, he said, or they'd book him next time.

"So I jumped in my old Dodge, and me and my partner took off to Florida.

"There were three hurricanes in six weeks, so we said, 'Let's go back to California.' Shake and bake, that's what we called it.

"San Diego's an easy town. The weather's wonderful. That's why you've got so many homeless here," he said.

Tennessee gets his Social Security check sent to a nearby liquor store.

He lives off "dollar burgers."

"I'm usually up and gone by 6 a.m.," he said. "I'm determined to get up or else I'd be arrested by police."

Tennessee said he thinks the police should "walk their beat" rather than "driving around."

"Then they'd really know who the trouble makers are," he said. "I never urinate or defecate in the street."

He said he has a radio and listens to the news.

Over the years, he appears to have become quite the celebrity.

"Citybeat and 60 Minutes interviewed me," he said.

But he described living on the streets as "depressing as hell."

"Sometimes I want to end it all. But God keeps me alive ... wakes me up every morning. Must have a purpose for my life," Tennessee said between puffs on his cigarette.

"I think I'm supposed to tell my story so other people coming will know how to survive on the streets."

As I talked to him, Tennessee's face was bright red from the sun. On top of his head was a brown knitted hat. He wore a sweatshirt and sweat pants. The end of his amputated leg was visible.

"I have a prosthesis," he said, "but it won't fit because I don't have the inserts."

He told a Stand Down volunteer, Kevin "Mac Mac" McCoy, that he stores the prosthesis at the liquor store near his sleeping spot. Otherwise, he would be concerned that someone might steal it from him while he sleeps, he said.

Tennessee talked about how his world was "hand to hand combat" in Vietnam. He chuckled about a water pistol fight among the tents on the last day of Stand Down.

"We just took them over and doused all those sissies," he said.

Mac Mac told me the exercise was designed to encourage bonding.

Tennessee appears to have bonded with his comrades on the streets as well as at Stand Down. People watch out for him, he said. He refers to them as his brothers and he calls one friend a "grandson." He said his grandson drove him to Stand Down. As far as the volunteers know, Tennessee doesn't have any real family around San Diego.

The former paratrooper said he has been going to Stand Down for about 10 years.

"It's like a brotherhood," he said.

He described an adventurer's life.

"I haven't always been a homeless bum," he said. A volunteer quickly told him, "You're not a bum!"

"I'm a traveler," he told me. "I've been in 49 states and 13 countries. I've seen the Northern Lights ... I've been chased by a bear. I used to live in Mexico."

Tennessee said that every night he sees the colored lights of Sea World from his sleeping spot.

What advice would he give people?

"I would tell people, 'You have to live every day like you're dying.' There's a country-western song about that. You've got to have hope. Hope comes from the Big Man upstairs."

Tennessee has a bandage around one wrist these days. He said he broke some small bones when he was getting out of his wheelchair. He said it's taking him longer to get out of his chair.

He teared up on Sunday as the graduation ceremony began at Stand Down. Thirty homeless veterans qualified for transitional housing through Veterans Village of San Diego, which sponsors the event.

But with nearly a thousand others, Tennessee went back out through the gates and onto the streets. Some volunteers drove him to his spot. He was eager to go check to see whether his new sleeping bag was still there. Then he joined a few volunteers for dinner at a cafe before tearful hugs and hunkering down for the night.

Post Script

We'll try to report back about Tennessee from time to time. We've been told that he is not eligible for veterans benefits because of his dishonorable discharge. The status would make some jobs and housing difficult too.

Naturally, Patch can't vouch for all the details of Tennessee's interview. We bring this dialogue to readers as a snapshot of one elderly veteran's life as he told it to us. We will continue to do our research and welcome informed and helpful discussion of this general subject.