Bradley B. reflects on survival, hardship, and the value of a good conversation

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For Contributor vendor Bradley B., selling the paper is about more than making a dollar. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give someone is meaningful acknowledgement—a rare currency when you’re living on the streets.

“Even if you can’t give, give time,” he said. “Time is just … a couple minutes. ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ Talk about the weather. I love it when somebody stops to talk. It’s definitely the best part of a day out there.”

That’s not to say Bradley doesn’t appreciate everything his customers give. From a woman who’d visit weekly with new clothes to donate to a complete stranger who dropped off well over a hundred dollars without a word, the Nashville community has offered a hand to Bradley through rough times while he was living outside.

During the worst of it—2022’s sudden, deadly winter storm—he didn’t know if he’d make it out alive.

“During the big old blizzard right around Christmas, I was out there in it. It was the first time I’d ever been homeless and thought I was going to die,” he said. “I had a tent, but it wasn’t big enough for me to sleep in with all my stuff in it. I had it down by [the Cumberland River] and I was using it as storage. That night, it hadn’t started snowing yet or anything and I didn’t know it was gonna snow, I failed to check the weather … it just hit up out of nowhere. In a matter of minutes, my beard and mustache and snot and everything was icicles.”

“I put down four or five blankets on top of this metal grate, I’ve got other blankets on top of me, and the blankets I had tied to the top of this railing, I pulled around me like a canopy. Even with all that, I ended up falling asleep off and on, but I couldn’t stay asleep for more than 15 minutes. Mentally, I was terrified that I would not wake up.”

“I’m just glad I’m not out there to endure it again.”

He stressed the responsibility of a community to work to address all those survival needs, from connection with others to shelter in the harshest weather. This year, though, Bradley not only has an apartment of his own, but was finally approved for disability income after months of doctor’s appointments and waiting.

Working with The Contributor’s SOAR team, his long wait finally came to an end when he got some good news from SOAR specialists Andrew Terry IV and Ree Cheers.

“Andrew texted me and told me to call Ree. Ree said, ‘I’ve got this number for this lady at [Social Security] you need to call so you can set up your disability. I’m like, wait a minute, does this mean what I think it means?”

It did.

“It was a lot of waiting. There were a couple bumps in that road … I literally screamed in bliss and joy, I’m like ‘Yeah! Woohoo!’”

Now that he’s got a roof overhead and enough income to survive, he’s spent a lot of his time enjoying his new home and doing things he rarely got to do on the street. Having the means to sleep in a bed behind closed doors is one thing, but Bradley has gone the extra mile with a gaming setup he’s held onto since his previous time in housing. Not that that stopped him from enjoying it even when on the streets, of course.

“We had a bunch of valuable stuff from before we were homeless this time around, like I had my older Xbox and one of my TVs we kept in a van,” he said. “We used to park over [in East Nashville] and plug up to a light pole and play games in the van.”

Moving forward, Bradley’s ambitions revolve around keeping his housing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dreams to chase on the horizon.

“Maintain a budget, don’t end up homeless again,” he said. “[My plan for the future is] short and sweet.”

He said he’d like to travel if he had the means, but disability income isn’t quite enough to facilitate a cross-country road trip. While he and his cousin Russell have a fixer-upper RV Russell got on Facebook Marketplace, it’s in pretty rough shape—made worse by the weather it’s had to endure outside.

Still, Bradley hopes to one day take steps to see as much of the world as he can and cross off all the items on his bucket list. When asked where he’d most like to go, he had a one-word answer.

“Everywhere.”

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