If you’ve read my graphic autobiography, Scablands, you saw me driving off into the sunset in an old Dodge van, towing what would be my home, a cab-over camper mounted on a mobile truck bed. It was shortly before Christmas of 1990. When I got back to Nevada City, I was hoping to find a driveway where I could park myself until I could make enough money to live in a real house again. It wasn’t easy, and I was still among the walking wounded from years of drug and alcohol abuse. My saving grace were the friends I had here in my hometown. Steve Cottrell gave me a weekly gig at The Nevada City News, but it was only $25 a week. Jonathan Meredith let me park my trailer in the woods below his house on Banner Mountain.
Finding freelance work wasn’t easy. We were still mired in a recession and the country was about to go to war with Saddam Hussein. I was very depressed, to put it mildly. Little by little, I started to put the pieces of my life back together. If not for the kindness of my friends and family, it could have ended very differently.
During that time, Nevada County held a town hall meeting to discuss “the homeless problem.” There was a proposal to convert the old Miner’s Hospital into a homeless shelter, but of course, the neighbors shot it down. I did the cartoon below in response…