EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Quake Gives the Homeless Temporary Company in Their Daily Misery

Phil and his rag-tag compatriots sat squat on a two-foot-high wall bordering the Lucky supermarket parking lot at Lennox Avenue and Vanowen Street. They stared blank-faced across the street at their new neighbors, scores of Van Nuys residents pushed out into the street by the Northridge earthquake.

They didn’t talk much. Occasionally one of them would make a comment or take a sip, but mostly they just watched the newly homeless across the street in an athletic field, camped out in their cars and vans, spread out on bedspreads, huddled under blankets and makeshift tents.

They watched as the adults gathered to swap stories, trade information or just commiserate with their neighbors.

They could see children hustling up and down the basketball court or riding their bicycles around the field.

They could smell aromas wafting up from the barbecue pits that burned all day as families prepared meals. And they could see the concern on the faces of those who now found themselves dreading the night and wondering what the next day would bring.

“There’s a new joke on the street,” said Phil, 51, whose only asset is an old white Chevy. “The new joke is that they’ve been calling us bums, they call us dirt, they say to us, ‘Go get a job,’ and now because of this earthquake, they are just like us. Now we say to them, ‘Go get a job.’ ”

A couple of his friends smiled slightly in amusement. But quiet quickly returned to the gathering because deep down they all knew that the people over there scattered across the field of the Van Nuys Rec Center weren’t just like them. Phil knew it. So did Jack and Bogie and Jana and Victor.

*

The fence bordering the athletic field and recreation center served as a reminder. It provided comfort and a sense of safety for the new homeless neighbors. It was a barrier to Phil and his friends. Keep out. Stay away. This is not for you.

While the people across the street sleep under blankets and sleeping bags, Phil and his crew hunker down in cardboard boxes on the hard asphalt parking lot behind Lucky or down by the Los Angeles River or in abandoned houses or in the local armory or near the police substation over on Tyrone.

Each day, various agencies, volunteers and individual good Samaritans come laden with food and gifts for the newly homeless.

Although the care packages are not intended for Phil and his friends, they have become inadvertent recipients of this outpouring of concern, standing in line in a nearby parking lot for the earthquake rations.

“Man, I haven’t eaten this good in a while,” said Bogie, 38, patting his stomach. “I ate three times today. It’s the first hot meals I’ve had in three days. I tell you, when these people get their power back on, we’ll be missing those meals.”

But misery loves company, and for a moment, Phil would like to think that he has some kinship, some connection, with those people who are down on their luck, and maybe they have some kinship to him.

“My friend asked me to take him over to check on his grandfather because he kept calling him and he didn’t answer the telephone,” he began. “So, I said if you put some gas in my car, OK. We went over there, and everything was destroyed. Everything! Wasn’t nothing left but some orange trees and some grapefruit trees.

“We never did find him, but he must be OK because he wasn’t there. That guy worked for Water and Power all of his life and now ain’t nothing left but those orange bushes. Everything is gone. Just like me.

“I had a beautiful life once, but just like that earthquake, everything went down one day,” said Phil, who has been on the streets for six years. “I rode racehorses, I sold cars, I worked in the brewery for 28 years. But then I lost my family, I lost my kids, I lost everything.

“I worked at Budweiser over on Roscoe. Worked seven days a week. I worked there for 23 years. I would get cars and fix them up and sell them. It was too much work. My wife complained that I was never home. But I didn’t know. I thought I was getting ahead, because I didn’t have no education.

“Then I worked at Miller for five years. That was just five days a week. But I had burned myself out. My wife left me. My kids were 20 years old and they didn’t even know me. I lost everything.”

*

Phil fell silent, and gradually reality crept in. He sniffed the aroma of chicken and beef and corn that drifted toward him on clouds of smoke from across the street.

He ogled the tents and bright blue tarps dotting the field. He listened to the laughter of the children playing freely among themselves.

“This is like an adventure to them,” he said. “Those people got money.” And he admitted to himself that they weren’t really the same. Eventually, most all of the people in that park, he knew, would leave. But Phil and his friends would still be there on the streets of Van Nuys.