The Full Story
There's an old homeless woman living in this car, just down the road from where I work in Silicon Valley's industrial Santa Clara. I walk past her several times a week on my way to pick up lunch on de la Cruz. She's been living there for at least two years now, but virtually none of my co-workers even know she exists (why would they? You'd have to walk rather than drive to notice her, and no one's going to walk in Santa Clara). She's sometimes yelling and screaming at imaginary people and things when I see her, but if you look at her walking down the street otherwise she just looks like a slightly down-at-heel older woman in her sixties or seventies.
What's intriguing about this is that the car and her are in the private parking lot of the big old Jeff Smurfit recycling plant on Martin Avenue. She's surrounded by (or only metres away from) workers and roach coaches, etc., every day of the week. No one seems to think it's odd that this derelict old car full of cardboard and old clothes and a screaming old lady has been left alone on private property in industrial Santa Clara for several years. Someone must have intervened -- or be intervening -- for that to continue in a place and culture that is otherwise quite ruthless about getting rid of derelicts and things that stand in the way of Progress.
I wish I knew the full story here.
2 Comments:
Maybe the word "ruthless" prevents you from seeing the whole story.
Or, well, maybe they've just never noticed.
All I'll say here is she -- and the car -- are a little hard to miss (being in the main Jeff Smurfit truck parking area on Martin), and it's a part of the world where derelict cars rarely stay untowed for more than a week...
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