Dear Editor:
Dirty Ralph was homeless before it became fashionable.
He wasn’t called Dirty Ralph in a derisive way but to distinguish him from Ralphie Westmark and because he was, well, dirty.
He wore a tweed overcoat and a stocking cap winter and summer.
Ralph wasn’t a panhandler or asked for money. People in the neighborhood put some change or a dollar or two in his pocket and he always said “thank you mister or mam.”
He had a small pension from the Army but he was often victimized and robbed.
A kind lady who owned and operated a neighborhood tavern named Louise and Jerry’s arranged to have Ralph’s pension check mailed to her, and she tried to help Ralph manage his money. But Ralph would get a furnished room for a while and then drift off into space.
He occasionally slept in the St. John’s Homeless Shelter or the railroad terminal where the Hoboken police kindly looked the other way. On very cold nights the operators of the Hoboken Cinema allowed him to sleep in one of the theaters but he snored so loud that they had to ask him to leave.
I got to know Ralph in 1955 when I returned from two years of Army service during the East Berlin Crisis. During the riots, we essentially lived like homeless people but we were young and better equipped physically and mentally than people like Ralph but I know what it was like to sleep on a concrete sidewalk when it was 20 below zero.
The other thing that kept us going was that we were soldiers and most of the time we were on missions that were dangerous and exhausting.
We were proud to be American soldiers serving in General Patton’s 2nd Armored Division. When I came back to Hoboken in ’55, yuppies were starting to move in because it was safe and inexpensive.
I would often see Ralph standing motionless on the street corner staring into space.
One snowy night I went to Louise and Jerry’s for a few drinks while the storm began to intensify.
While I watched the TV a young yuppie girl came through the door and screaming “Louise, call 911. There is a man frozen to death on the bus stop bench.”
Louise called 911 and shortly thereafter we heard the sirens of the ambulances and squad cars as the police and EM workers tried to calm the young lady.
While this was going on I saw Ralph walk in almost covered in snow. There was about six inches of snow on his hat.
He recognized me and said “Mister what is all the commotion about?”
I said “Where were you Ralph?”
He replied that he was sitting on the bus stop bench.
Louise bought a round for the house and Ralph drank a beer and walked out into the storm.
Leo Genese