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7:30 p.m. - 2004-09-28 Some People's LivesA While ago, I wrote about a guy who brings us pallets named Martin Stamper. He is the rough gruff yahoo who blew in from Texas with a little girl who looks all of 14 or 15 and he looks about 30. One day he didn't come to pick up the money we owed him for scrap pallets and we speculated that the Daddy of that little girl had caught up with him. We found a story on him in the paper the next day and he had been arrested for auto theft and was in jail awaiting trial on Sept. 17th. We thought we had seen the last of him. Did you know that in Illinois, you can be convicted of stealing an automobile and even be a drifter from another state and still get off with only 200 hours community service and a years probation? And according to this guy, this is not his first offense. I know this because he said, and I quote; "Man that was the roughest time I ever had in jail." I am going to digress here a bit, but this is why I get really PO'd when the powers that be talk about wanting to take guns away from law abiding citizens and then don't enforce laws on those committing crimes. This guy is scary looking with a mohawk and chipped teeth and a sneer. It scares me that he comes around and brings us pallets. OK....I'm done digressing...just had to get this off my chest. Anyway, I have recently been reading in our local paper a series of articles they did last week on the poor children who are trapped in the Illinois State Foster Care Program, and how most of them have a minimum of 10 different homes before they grow up, and when they grow up, they usually end up in trouble. Very few go on to be normal adults with normal lives. Reading this made me want to cry. I thought about Martin Stamper. He seems to try to be friendly enough, but there is something that went wrong somewhere in his life and I can't help wonder what it is. All this thinking took me back to an episode of "COP's" that I watched. The setting was a police station and they had all these inner city kids from disadvantaged homes come through on a tour. These kids were only about 3 and 4 years old and in a community day care program. The idea was to expose them to the officers in a friendly way from an early age so they would not be afraid of them or have jaded opinions of the Police as being the enemy as they grew up. In this manner the Police hoped to influence the hearts of a new generation. The children were all so adorable and were walking in a line, two by two, holding hands and they went from room to room in the station meeting all the Officers. As they left each room they sweetly waved and said "Goodbye Mr. Policeman". They were excited to be there and well behaved chubby cheeked little cherubs. I wanted to jump through the screen and hug them all. The Officer who was narrating the episode started discussing the rough homes that most of these children came from and the rough neighborhoods they lived in where drive by shootings were as common as I remember George the Good Humor Ice Cream Man to be when I grew up. I started to cry thinking that all of these sweet things were normal little children at the ages of 3 or 4 and that by the time they were 10, most of their little lives would be disrupted, taking from them any spark of optimism or hope for the future. By 10, most of these little ones will have experienced so much violence and so much noise and so much dysfunction that they won't give a damn about their own lives, let alone anyone elses. Martin Stamper called his Grandmaw from our phone today. While on the phone with her, this grown man sounded like a wounded little boy. "Yes Grandmaw, I know Grandmaw...I'll be right home Grandmaw." He came to visit "Grandmaw" and now "Grandmaw" is stuck with him for the next year while he has to remain in Illinois on probation. I get the impression that this is a man who never really got the chance to grow up and who's Grandma loves dearly and is trying to help him get it together. I just hope he does right by her and doesn't bring his troubles into her life anymore than he already has. One thing that makes me cringe though, Martin Stamper mentioned that he had children, children he wasn't living with. Looking at his little teenage girlfriend, I wonder about the childrens mother(s). Is this yet another generation that will grow up and not know the comfort of a real home? P. I. Yarnsmith
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