One of my long time massage clients told me the following story. Growing up during the depression, he noticed that men would come to his house asking for food; above the neighbors. At one point, one of them took him to underneath the bridge nearby where folks would sleep. And there, in a kind of pictograph, was clearly showing his house as the one to go to for food. He told his mother, and she said she didn’t mind. She always gave what she could, and was glad to do it. He had the same kindly and charitable nature as his mom. I believe his recounting of this.
So, what’s your Erdos-Bacon number?
Google ‘hobo signs’
Wiki and 100’s of ‘samples’.
You decide how authentic.
The scam:
Step 1: Show up at somebody’s door asking if they need their gutters cleaned/yard raked.
Step 2: Work for 10 minutes. Peek in the windows to see what there is to be had.
Step 3: Come back a few days later and knock on the door to see if anyone’s home. If the door is answered, beg for money to solve a complicated transportation problem. If not, burgle the house. Either way, boost anything you can from the yard on the way out (christmas lights or wiring are great).
I would hate to turn away anyone who was truly hungry, but I would not let them in. I would fetch a loaf of bread and maybe some lunch meat, or whatever I had that was handy, and give it to them.
My grandparents lived a couple of miles from Eloise, the Wayne County poor farm. A lot of the folks there were homeless alcoholics, and in good weather, would sneak out to get small cash jobs, so they could buy liquor. One guy worked at their place off and on for several years. He was from Denmark, a former ship’s carpenter. My grandfather would hire him, as his budget allowed, to work on the house. The guy made some beautiful doors, bookcases, trim work, including a arch made from several types of wood, dividing one room from another. He made some beautiful tables also. My grandfather would only pay him at the end of the week, as when he had a couple dollars, he would buy booze, and drink himself unconscious. He was allowed to sleep in the screen porch in front of the house. Back then, the area was pretty rural, and pretty poor. My grandfather was lucky to have a job, sometimes he only worked a couple days per week. One day he didn’t show up, and nobody at the hospital seemed to know where he went either.
Edit. This was during the depression, probably 1930 to 35, at the latest.
Even when she was quite old, my grandmother would give folks food, but rarely money. She fed a friend of hers off and on for years, another old lady who lost her husband. But she was tight on spending money for other things!
I had a rather disreputable-looking guy show up asking if he could pick the scrap metal out of a bulldozed out-building across the road from my house. I told him it wasn’t mine and I couldn’t give permission, but if he wanted work I needed help with some fencing.He worked for 4 hours, Good, steady worker. I told him if he could come up with a good weed eater, I could use my fence rows trimmed. That took a couple weekends. That was about 5 years ago. He still does occasional chores for me, but now he has a full-time job.
Now, my neighbor calls first, but she “borrows” food all the time. Never returns it, of course. But they’re good neighbors despite that and I’m happy to share.
StG
Many moons ago, my husband was busy readying our home for a pre-Christmas open house( I was still at work) A knock at our front door caught him at a very inconvenient time, but at the second knock he went and opened the door. He was greeted by a very shabbily dressed woman who asked for some food. His normal placid and giving nature failed him, and he slammed the door on her. 30 seconds into doing his holiday tasks once again, he was filled with remorse. He ran to the door to look for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. We lived in the middle of a city block, and he assumed she just rounded the corner, so he went to look. No evidence of her, he even knocked at several neighbors’ doors to see if she had been admitted to their homes. Zip. He was consumed with guilt, and when I came home he was crying. He saw the incident as having failed his “Jesus moment” as his sweet-natured, Aunt Bee of a mom used to call it. He tells the story on himself every Christmas.
When I was living outside of the U.S. my house was situated on the main drag and my windows were very close to the street itself. Down and out folks would sometimes tap on the sill and after seeing my foreign appearance would pantomime the old hand to mouth gesture.
I always gave those guys some fruit or something because I knew they had no safety net to rely on,
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Once had a neighbor’s 6 year old child knock on our door and beg for food.
It was one of our first clues about the horrific abuse and neglect going on next door. It’s not a story I care to get into at the moment. Although one of her older sisters managed to get free of [del]the monstrous bitch[/del] their mother things did not end well for the 6 year old.
I don’t have an Erdos number that I can figure out, but my Bacon number is 3.
I don’t recall anybody ever coming to my door to ask for food, but a guy did come up to me while I was getting into my car one time and asked me to drive him to the hospital because he had just been stabbed.
Fortunately he didn’t bleed all over the car.
Wow! I have visions of you and the tidily-bleeding man making polite chat as you dash to the nearest hospital.
“How d’you do? Nice to meet you. Oh, just been stabbed, I see. Gosh, never a dull moment, eh? Blah blah.” 
I’ve never had anyone ask for food in the sense of really needing the food - just a couple of occasions when a neighbour asked for some sugar or similar. Obviously, I would also say “oh, no problem and -look - if you haven’t been able to get to the shops, do you need some bread, milk, cheese …?” in case there was a serious need that the neighbour didn’t like to mention, but it was only ever a minor ingredient issue, not big-time food.
I attend a church that has AA groups that meet in the evening, and several weeks ago, our secretary got a call from a facilitator to inform her that someone in the group found a man asleep in a nook or cranny at the church. She came right over; the man had been hitchhiking and was not familiar with our city, so he didn’t know where any shelters were. He stopped at our church because he was tired and it was cold, and he could tell the building was unlocked.
She got him some food and took him to a shelter.
A few years ago, not long after Halloween, my doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I was greeted by two young boys. The youngest shouted “trick or treat” which confused me. The older boy said “Can I have a bag?” I replied “a bag of what?” and he said “an empty bag?” and showed me that he and his brother had collected a bunch of oranges and were holding them in their shirts. (In our neighborhood, at that time of year, windfall citrus fruit is common.) I gave them a shopping bag, and would have given them citrus fruit from my own back yard but they seemed to have enough.
I have been once asked if I want to buy a removed car radio by two tattooed guys in graffiti-covered van…
Hee. I thought it was usually a cup of sugar. Stingy bitch.
An well-dressed gentleman once came to the door early on a Sunday morning claiming to be visiting a relative in the complex and needed money for gas & tolls on the way home. Gave him the only cash I had on hand (a $20 bill) to get rid of him.
Turned out he was part of a pair who had been hitting up the entire complex.
The service club I belonged to in high school did the door-to-door food drive thing.
I haven’t had it happen in the city I live in in southern Canada. But I spent a couple of years working in the far north - in the vicinity of the arctic circle. There were no roads into the community. Everything had to be flown in. Basic groceries cost in the magnitude of 10X what stuff costs in the south because of the high transportation costs.
As I was known to be a southerner in town only to work, the locals thought of me as the rich guy who was never without a meal. And they were right - I had all of my groceries shipped to me and paid for by the company I worked for. I could also afford to shop in the local groceries.
The locals belonged to a community that typically shared in wild game meat that was obtained while hunting. During migration periods, there was plenty to go around and no one went hungry, even if they couldn’t participate in the hunt. Particularly the elders of the community.
But once or twice a year, the food sources weren’t available. During these times, I would get a knock on my door once or twice a week. These were proud people who wouldn’t directly ask for food from me. However, they offered to sell me something. Usually soapstone art, sometimes of quite a high quality. I amassed quite a collection of art during my time in the north. I also often gave them more than the price they were asking. If I wasn’t going to buy their wares, I did engage them in a conversation about where the caribou were lately. This would let them open up to me and tell me that they hadn’t seen any for weeks. And then I could offer them some food to take to their family to tide them over. They were grateful for the offer and it allowed them to maintain their dignity. They didn’t have to ask for it, but they would accept my offer with thanks.
No one ever tried to take advantage of me, but I was happy to help out when needed. The community took care of each other.
I actually did see something like the OP asks at another house. I mean someone hungry looking for a meal, nothing like a scavenger-hunt situation or someone looking for margarita ingredients. It was in El Paso, and while I was visiting this couple, a Mexican man knocked on the door and asked for food. The wife told him to wait on the porch while she fixed him a sandwich. They told me they got a lot of people from across the border doing that. This was in the 1980s.
This is genius. Thank you for sharing.
One time I was home alone and a young guy knocked on the door (despite our “No Solicitors” sign :rolleyes:) and tried to sell me a service, something about lawn aeration. I said no thank you. He knocked again and offered me a discount on the service if I’d make him a sandwich or something for lunch. I still said no.