Tag Archives: panhandlers

We’re back in Austin, where every street corner features a black or white panhandler with a sign declaring him/herself to be "homeless," something notably absent in southern Indiana where we went last weekend for a family funeral. It wasn’t something I really noticed, the absence of these beggars up there along the Ohio River, until we landed in Austin last night and I went outside the baggage claim area for a cigarette. I was immediately hit up by a young man, who wanted a cigarette. I only had the one, the others being in my bag, and I told him so, and he became very indignant, as if I was somehow compromising his "right" to mooch successfully. But he went away. Not a minute later, a young woman came up and asked for one, too. At least she wasn’t indignant, just disappointed. Austin attracts these people like a magnet. Most of them are well-dressed and able-bodied. Just lazy, apparently. I suppose it’s the warm weather, or else the general liberal tendency to indulge them. They aren’t as evident in the state’s more conservative cities.