Living Under the Pier

Every time I witness the rich pageantry of America at play, I wonder about the people under the piers.

This time it’s the $2-billion baby being staged in Atlanta, a festivity so grand that it dwarfs by comparison anything remotely similar.

Opening ceremonies had tears, lights, bands and butterflies, and enough gooey goodwill to last a lifetime . . . or at least until the Olympics is over.

It was after the opening extravaganza that I began thinking about the disparity between the haves and have-nots and about the poor people who sleep under our piers.

They’re always there, L.A.’s homeless, huddled against the timbers and against each other, troubling metaphors of those who dwell beneath the rest of us in a world fashioned for the affluent.

I’ve had them on my mind lately, not just because of the lavish Olympics kickoff but because of a couple of incidents that occurred recently.

One was an interview with a driving, ambitious young woman who suddenly gave up an executive position in the film industry to help instill dignity in the lives of those who had temporarily lost it.

The other was a low-key confrontation with a homeless man who looked at me and asked, “Why do you call us bums?”

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Mara Manus is the woman who gave up a fat salary and the fast track of show biz to take over Chrysalis, an agency devoted to finding work for those living on the streets of Southern California.

The daughter of a New York literary agent and a successful attorney, she’s been asked a thousand times why she abandoned a promising career at major studios to dwell among society’s dispossessed.

Manus was raised in Manhattan in the upscale company of those who can easily afford the luxury of a trip to the Olympics wherever it is held, who can stay in the finest hotels and dine at the best restaurants.

She attended Stanford University, and thereafter slipped easily into the film industry. For the next 14 years she rose rapidly to executive positions and was involved in major projects until she discovered Chrysalis, a mostly privately funded organization that believes pride dwells in labor.

Inspired by their aims, Manus volunteered her help at first and then, totally committing her life, applied for the job of executive director, a position paying about half of what she was earning as a film executive.

Why? There is rarely a flash point that creates decisions or an epiphany that sheds light on moral certainty. Manus remembers her mother pointing to the homeless drifters of the Bowery when she was a child and telling her they were good people to whom something bad had happened.

On return visits to Manhattan as an adult she saw it “turning into Bombay” with its mounting homeless problem. When she realized L.A. was heading in the same direction, Manus knew it was time to commit.

At 34, she abandoned the fantasy world of movies and stepped into the reality of despair to offer what hope she could. Her answer to the why is simple and direct: “I wanted to make a difference.”

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Ron Taylor is the homeless man who asked the troubling question. “Why do you call us bums?” It was said without rancor, calling me gently to account for a phrase I had used in a recent book about L.A. I wouldn’t use it again.

“If you wrote about any other group of people the way you wrote about us,” Taylor said, “you’d be in big trouble.”

He’s a bright man who works occasionally for a homeless newspaper called “Hard Times.” He was a truck driver who lost his job after an accident a dozen years ago and has been homeless off and on ever since.

The job loss cost him his family as well as his self-respect. “It was totally devastating,” he says, hunched over a cup of coffee. “My kids were hungry and I was at a loss on how to feed them.”

He drifted to L.A. in ‘91, leaving his family in Bakersfield with relatives. He slept in doorways and lived out of dumpsters as he looked for work and, meanwhile, through his writing skills, became an unofficial voice of the homeless.

Now, at 51, Taylor lives temporarily in a friend’s small trailer and dreams about “coming back”--finding a job and a permanent place to live and being reunited with his wife and two children.

He believes it’s possible and hopes that Mara Manus will make the difference she seeks in restoring pride to those without it. The people under the piers deserve at least that much in a nation that spends billions on a party.

Al Martinez can be reached via the Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com