He Extended a Helping Hand and She Took It--for $8

I was about to enter Langer’s Delicatessen, at 7th and Alvarado, when I was approached by a street woman. She may have been 50, maybe 30. She bore the signs of wear and tear. She was dressed in a soiled blouse and blue jeans. She was scrawny. Her movements were quick.

She said, “Sir, could you help me out?”

I opened my billfold and gave her a dollar. She thanked me, acting surprised and grateful.

I went into the restaurant and had a patty melt and a beer. I’ve been dropping in at Langer’s for lunch now and then for many years, usually by myself. It is an old-fashioned deli. The waitresses are no longer young but they call me dearie . I couldn’t remember that I had ever been hit up by a mendicant outside it before.

When I left the restaurant the woman suddenly appeared again. “Sir,” she said, evidently pushing her luck, “could you buy me a hamburger? I’m awful hungry.”

I hesitated. I knew I was being taken. But she probably was hungry. I started walking. She fell in beside me. We came to a little hamburger shop. I knew I should go in with her and buy the hamburger, make sure she ate it. But I felt diffident about that.

I opened my billfold and took out two ones. They were the only ones I had. I gave them to her.

“Hamburgers are $3,” she said.

I saw a sign in the window. Hamburgers were indeed $3.

I was in for $2, I might as well go all the way. I took out a five, thinking I would go in the shop, buy the hamburger and collect my change. She said, “Give me the five and I’ll give you back the $2.”

I knew there was something wrong with that, but I wasn’t sure what. As I have said before, I am not good at numbers. I gave her the five, thinking she could buy the hamburger with it and give me the change.

She looked quickly at the five and the two and evidently decided that she was not likely to improve on such luck. She darted into the street, doing a little victory dance, like a wide receiver after scoring a touchdown.

“Give me back my $2!” I shouted, simultaneously realizing that I was miscalculating somehow. She mocked me jubilantly and darted up the street. She was too fleet for me to catch, and even if I had caught her, I couldn’t see myself wrestling her to the sidewalk and extracting my money from her fists.

I stood there trying to figure it out. She not only had the $2, she also had the five. So, counting the dollar I had given her in the first place, she had $8 of my money. Not a bad score for a street person.

I was angrier at myself than at her. After all, she had just been trying to make a buck. I was dismayed by my own stupidity. I ought not be allowed out on the streets alone, I thought.

I walked back to my car, dejected.

I have been thinking of going back to 7th and Alvarado and looking for her. Surely she wouldn’t have abandoned such a lucrative corner. But if I did find her, I thought, what would I do?

Would I say, “Hey, you stole $7 from me,” and demand my money back? Don’t be silly. She would simply pretend not to recognize me. Would I look around for a cop? Don’t be silly. What cop would believe I could be that dumb? Besides, I wouldn’t want to admit to a cop that I had been that dumb.

I am just counting it among the many adventures I have had in the neighborhood of what I still call Westlake Park. I used to walk through the park on my way home from high school, in the 1930s. That was before William Randolph Hearst exerted pressure on Mayor Fletcher Bowron to change the park’s historic name to Douglas MacArthur Park, a feat that was accomplished with a noisy parade down 7th Street. (Hearst was booming MacArthur for President.)

MacArthur was a good general and deserves our respect and gratitude; but Westlake is a fitting and historic name. Several businesses around the park are still named Westlake. I know of none called MacArthur. The old electric sign above the Westlake Theater on Alvarado still says WESTLAKE.

Today, when the city is energetically restoring many of its architectural monuments and recalling its cultural past, would be a good time to reclaim Westlake Park’s true name.

That little statue of MacArthur, standing stiffly at attention above a dried-up South Pacific, is pure kitsch, and never would be missed.

To arms!

Jack Smith’s column now appears on Mondays.