More Nostalgia, Tree Man division

My friend J wrote to chastise me for not writing about Tree Man in my previous post.  I told her that it was up to her to document that particular trip down memory lane, because she had the most interactions with him.  Also, he wasn't a problem patron, he was a volunteer.  And most of the volunteers I worked with were absolutely lovely people.  He was the anomaly.

He was in his late 30's I believe.  He wore jeans and flannel shirts and had long unkempt mousy-brown hair, parted in the middle, hanging down in a fuzzy, straggly mass.  He had a pitted, pale face, and looked a little like he'd lived in his parent's basement since his teens.

Actually, it turns out it was his brother's basement.  And he was volunteering because he had no work history.  According to J, his income from the previous 10 years was through sales of marijuana.  You gain a lot of interesting experience, of course, but I can see the difficulty of explaining the work gap, not to mention codifying the skills on the resume or job application

Entrepreneurial Sales, Agricultural.    Self-employed.  1979-1989

• Business skills 
• Able to organize and schedule shipments
• Able to keep financial records, set up payment plans, make change
• People skills 
• Able to inspire trust and confidence through maintaining confidentiality and providing a quality product.  
• Able to grow a business.  
• Reason for leaving:  competition and government regulations.  Desire for a more stable job.

Anyway, he was volunteering for the library to gain some skills and job references that would look credible on a resume.  His job was checking in the huge book drop, which was also one of J's jobs, so he spent a fair amount of time chatting her up. To be fair, she's very good at chatting with just about anyone, so he may have just succumbed to her conversational charms.

He worked for a few months and then stopped showing up.  I asked the Volunteer Coordinator about him, as I didn't have a phone number.  I'll always treasure her answer.  After saying that he was a bit sketchy, was living with his brother and had no job history or obvious skills, she said, "He's the type we can use, so I referred him to you."  Really?

We never did get him back, nor did we want to, but shortly thereafter J ran into him on the Johnson Creek bike trail.  It's a heavily wooded trail, a swath of creek land that cuts through the SE Portland residential area and later links up with other trails.  It is fairly heavily used, but because of the trees it feels lonely and isolated. She said he was just sort of hanging out, and told her that he'd been kicked out of his house.  She asked where he was living and he said, "Found a tree."  Totally creeped out, she hopped back on her bike and pedaled away.

So, he was an interesting character.  But he wasn't a problem, per se. And, as I said earlier, most of the volunteers were lovely people.  Many were students, looking for the community service credit.  For several years we had a mother/daughter team:  the mom was a teacher, the daughter a high school student.  Both were intelligent and creative, and writing a reference for the daughter was one of the biggest pleasures I've had.  (She was awesome, so the reference was just a little bit of icing.)

My dear friend B was a volunteer before she was hired by the system and then moved on to become an electrician.  Another woman was from Sierra Leone:  she was an elegant and beautiful black woman with a luscious and exotic French accent.  Later I ran into her and she loaned me her Pema Chodron CDs.  I believe she is living in Canada now.

While not all volunteers were as exceptional as they were,  most are pretty interesting people.  The reasons for volunteering are as varied as the people themselves, and only a small percentage have obvious mental issues, far fewer than the percentage of problem patrons.  At one point I was supervising close to 40 volunteers, and it was one of the easy and rewarding parts of my job.

I think I'd have to say the most rewarding volunteer experience was with the highly functioning autistic kid from the nearby high school.  He was doing a work study sort of program (I worked with a lot of interns, too), and he spent most of the school year shelving and shelf-reading for school credit instead of pay.  He was very quiet, tall and good looking.  He looked at you intently with round shining eyes out of an expressionless face, and he was detail-oriented and an excellent worker.  After graduation, he got a job at the convention center, which was a pretty cool gig for any young man.  Lots of great shows and games take place there.  He came in to the library to show me his badge and thank me for the reference and the work experience, and I almost cried.  He was so proud.

I don't think he'll end up living in a tree.