Your Tax Dollars @ Waste

Your Tax Dollars At Waste

Perryville Veterans Administration Facility

Perryville, MD

I am intrigued by this massive place.  I don’t know how many acres it is.  But there are more than 1000 buildings on the site and too, too many of them sit vacant and decaying right before my eyes.  I am told that this was a thriving place during the Viet Nam war.  But now, most of the campus is abandoned and filled with a heavy, creepy sadness. Neglect and abandonment permeate the air.  Canada geese and deer outnumber the patients and the staff.

The facility sits on the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.  It offers prime real estate and both the sunrise and the sunset view.  There are millions of tax dollars tied up in this ghost town on the Bay.

There is a neighbor on these grounds. Hundreds of middle class homes cluster together on tree lined roads. But, except for maybe 5 or 6 homes, they sit empty, decaying from the elements and zero maintenance.  Each time I visit this place, another home falls to the wayside.

One day, I see two people sitting on the porch of one of the houses so I stop to talk to them.  There is a man who greets me and there is a woman I believe to be his wife.  But as we talk, the man tells me, “Gary here just arrived.  I think there are just about ten of us living in the houses.  They don’t have too many of us because the houses are in bad shape.  You see a house with a big blue dot painted on the front door and you know that house is coming down soon. It’s been condemned. “

I look around and see that most of the homes around me have big, blue painted dots on the doors.  I see openings; empty lots between homes that indicate many houses have already come down.

“Why aren’t these houses filled with Vets”, I asked the man.  “My God, we have such a homeless problem with our Vets. Why cant all of you live here?”

“I don’t know but there are plenty of us who need housing. Someone told me, during the Viet Nam War, that’s the war I fought in, all these houses were filled.  Now, people don’t want us here.  They say we’re bums and they don’t want us here.”

“How did you two get to have a house here?  What makes you different from the other Vets?  What do you have to do to get in here?”

Gary finally speaks up in a voice filled with shame, “You have to have a mental illness.  You have to be crazy.”

Now, I am ashamed for asking such a thoughtless question.  I am embarrassed for both men and for me.

“Well”, I stammer a bit, “I don’t know about you but I think anyone who goes through war and sees such horrible things as you have seen, must come back with some form of mental illness.  How can you see so much killing and not come back with PTD or something.”

“Yes”, Gary tells me, “That’s right, none of us ever come back the same.  We’re all messed up.” His eyes dart away from me but not before I notice that he is crying.