Jan 2015
when I was nine, my brother Tommy and I used to walk by old South Bend Sammy on our way home from Sunday school. I used to give him half of my allowance every other Sunday, because I figured that was what God intended.
Sammy would send me inside of the neighborhood grocery store to buy him some sterno for a buck 50. I always wondered what he could possibly have to cook, with him being homeless and all.
I never asked him, but every other week, as promised, there I was delivering the sterno.
when I asked my daddy, he told me that old South Bend Sammy was cooking his insides. “that stuff’ll **** em one day, so don’t go wastin’ your money on a man like that,” he said, but I did it anyway.
when I was eleven, old South Bend Sammy was found dead on his corner. He died on Christmas day. Bobby Richardson, who was in the eleventh grade, told us that he saw the body before they carted em off. Said his uncle killed em accidentally when he threw his cigarette **** on the ground by Sammy's feet. Poor old Sammy was burned like someone was fixin’ to make a barbeque.
but Lisa Jameson’s daddy was a cop, and he said that old Sammy died from an old fashioned case of a heat poisoning.
“I didn’t know that heat could poison you” I asked my daddy later that night. “darlin’, it can if you drink it.”
Sammy would send me inside of the neighborhood grocery store to buy him some sterno for a buck 50. I always wondered what he could possibly have to cook, with him being homeless and all.
I never asked him, but every other week, as promised, there I was delivering the sterno.
when I asked my daddy, he told me that old South Bend Sammy was cooking his insides. “that stuff’ll **** em one day, so don’t go wastin’ your money on a man like that,” he said, but I did it anyway.
when I was eleven, old South Bend Sammy was found dead on his corner. He died on Christmas day. Bobby Richardson, who was in the eleventh grade, told us that he saw the body before they carted em off. Said his uncle killed em accidentally when he threw his cigarette **** on the ground by Sammy's feet. Poor old Sammy was burned like someone was fixin’ to make a barbeque.
but Lisa Jameson’s daddy was a cop, and he said that old Sammy died from an old fashioned case of a heat poisoning.
“I didn’t know that heat could poison you” I asked my daddy later that night. “darlin’, it can if you drink it.”
this was inspired by Bukowski's poem "canned heat." I looked into it, and it turns out that homeless people in Philadelphia used to use Sterno as a cheap substitute for alcohol. In 1963, 31 people died because of the consumption of "canned heat."
