Montrose - Daily Press

MONTROSE — The guy under the bridge with the scraggly beard and weathered blue eyes uses charcoal in a soup can to warm his tent. He passes weeks without speaking to anyone.

Footprints and bike tracks in snow along the highway end at the banks of the Uncompahgre River. Here he sleeps — in a tent he purchased through scrap metals collected on the streets.

Frosty white edges along the murmuring river reflect a biting cold environment. He talks with a shiver and a sniffle on a frigid afternoon.

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"I've been down here for three years. I pretty much don't know how to get back into it. This became my way of life, you cannot understand it, but, you know," said Troll, 49.

He became homeless after losing a job at a local restaurant. He no longer speaks with his family and has no way of contacting them.

Troll was born in New York under a different name with a father who took him fishing. His father has died and his mother, siblings and children have no telephone number should they desire to contact him.

Troll's attitude isn't dark. He's not disabled. He's not disgruntled. His only message for the community is tongue-in-cheek: "Kids, stay in school. Don't end up like me."

His own kids are 21 and 18.

"I stayed in contact when I first got out here and stuff like that but they just up and moved — I called one time. The phone was disconnected and (I) got letters back, you know, 'no longer lives here,' stuff like that," he said.

He came here 10 years ago to start a new life. He'd served 64 months of a 10-year sentence in a New Jersey prison for trafficking cocaine. His pen pal promised him a job and a place to stay.

After two months with her, his drinking habits created a conflict and he moved out. He worked a handful of jobs and lived for a while with a girlfriend who moved to Texas. When she left he had no job and immediately set up a pad under U.S. Highway 550.

Now he wakes to the sound of a snowplow blade scraping the bridge. He scavenges then returns early in the afternoon to crush cans and strip copper wires.

"I try to keep a step ahead of the mice," he said. "They chewed holes all through my tent."

"Last year was a bad year — the worst winter since I've been down here. This year ain't so bad. When it gets so cold out — it rains or snows — I'm pretty much stuck down here, can't go out."

Accommodations for the willing

Troll is under the bridge because he chooses to live there. He refuses to pursue shelter in Homeward Bound in Grand Junction or the Olathe farm dormitory because the concept reminds him of prison.

"To me that's a little too close-quarters. I like my privacy," he said.

However, many homeless take advantage of local services to get back on track. Montrose County has no official homeless shelter, though an unconventional option has opened doors for many peoples' lives.

The farm dormitory in Olathe was built in 1993 through the federal government with the intent of housing farm laborers. Dorm residents must be U.S. citizens. Because most farmworkers now come from Mexico on visas, the 72-bed dorm has been largely vacant.

Mary Strohm has managed the dorm for five years. Today about 27 people live there. All of them were homeless.

"They come in and out," Strohm said. "When they leave they have housing, steady jobs."

She helps them stabilize their lives after living in cars or other substandard circumstances. Most of the residents have jobs within 30 days with the help of Colorado Workforce. Once employed they pay a rent of 15 percent of their wages.

Many of them aren't local.

"We've had homeless all the way from Michigan, Utah, Denver, Alamosa, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Albuquerque," she said.

"They find out through social services, organizations, get referred."

In 2007 more than 300 homeless people stayed in the dorm. They included families, battered women with children, seniors and even some 18-year-olds. About 30 percent are war veterans, she said.

Strohm said Montrose doesn't realize homelessness is a growing problem.

"I think Montrose and Delta county, Gunnison don't know. They see the homeless but they don't wanna face the problem that there is homelessness. It's getting to be a big problem like Grand Junction," she said.

"This year it progressed a lot."

She said the number of homeless she sees has doubled in the past year.

As she explains her perspective of the problem, a man with a dark blue tuque and a plastic bag walks by the office door.

Stuck in between

Robert Higley, 54, has been out looking for a job. He doesn't expect much, just to work at a restaurant washing dishes.

He talks with a grin and it's clear the gears behind his soft, genuine expression are turning hard. He fidgets with a tissue.

"I've been kind of homeless off and on in recent years," he said. "It happens. I'm sure there's other folks who've been homeless from time to time."

He comes from Wichita, Kan., where most of his family still lives. He has a high school diploma and never went to college, never married. He doesn't use drugs, doesn't smoke and seldom drinks a beer.

Higley moved to Western Colorado because he enjoys the environment.

"It's just different— quite a variety of scenery out here, like the canyons over here — beautiful canyon country. Glenwood Springs, Crested Butte, Lake City, there's quite a variety," he said.

He worked at a restaurant in Delta during the summer then went to Chaffee County hoping to find work in the mountains.

"I got this notion to head over to Salida — 14er country — that's the largest number of 14ers in a given county is over there," he said.

After searching for a month he couldn't find work and returned to Montrose County.

He lived in his 1995 Chevrolet Corsica during the warm seasons, using a sponge to bathe. By Thanksgiving Day temperatures were too cold to bear and he moved into the dorm.

"Believe it or not I worked for an aircraft company for eight and a half years. I can do more than wash dishes, you know."

He was laid off from that job. He said it was easier to find work when he was young.

"I've got a bad back, I've been in a couple of automobile wrecks and I can't do too much lifting. That's one reason why I've done dishwasher work, there is not too much lifting — those bus tubs aren't too heavy."

He worked for awhile helping a disabled woman in Cedaredge with errands and housekeeping, though that ended because she refused to front him the money to pay for gas.

He opens his wallet and thumbs through some note cards with handwritten names and numbers of nearby restaurants. He said he's thankful for the farm dorm and its services.

"It's got to get better, you know, I need to get back in a full-time job with benefits. Gotta get my life back in order."

Out in the cold

Troll sometimes thinks about returning to work. He said he lost his last job after he was wrongfully accused of stealing liquor from a storage room. Now he's "blackballed," he said.

"It's like I crawled down here and just gave up," he said.

Some days he doesn't leave his tent. He has a small radio that picks up one station.

Troll's inhabitance is tidy. It's one of a handful of tents under the bridge, but there's little to no neighborly camaraderie.

"We pretty much keep to ourselves down here, you know, mind your own business," he said.

He has a friend from Grand Junction he once met fishing who occasionally takes him in and buys him meals. He had a dog — a chihuahua-poodle mix — for a couple months but it was stolen outside Wal-Mart.

"I had him trained. He used to sit in that milk crate down there on the back of my bike," he said. "He gave me a lot of company, like somebody you could talk to that didn't talk back to you."

"Dino, he was cool. I miss Dino."

Sometimes Troll thinks about dying alone under the bridge. He strives to keep busy, to keep his mind occupied when such thoughts come in.

He'll go for a walk in the park or go fishing. He'll play chess with himself or read books. He's even tried to cultivate a patch of dirt between the bridges.

"My focus right now is on getting through the winter and getting my garden started," he said.

Farther downstream is a bridge under West Main Street. Beneath its east side are reminders of a former inhabitant who died Oct. 26, 2007.

James Foster, 66, left behind a cooler full of groceries, a bare mattress and some cooking utensils. Personal items and clothing are scattered, mixed with leaves and dirt surrounded by cold, graffiti-scribbled cement walls.

Bedding lies on the bank over some rocks, partly submerged in the frigid river. It is without purpose, empty and lost beneath a crusted layer of snow.

Contact Robert Allen via e-mail at roberta@montrosepress.com

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