I came across Mitch Snyder’s name the other day. Remember Mitch? He made the news first about three years ago, when, as head of the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), a Washington-based “homeless rights” group, he spoke out against the indignities perpetrated against 61 -year-old Jesse Carpenter, who “froze to death in the shadow of the White House.” Snyder called Carpenter’s death “unconscionable” and said it dramatized the need for shelters for the homeless. Since then he’s been in the papers occasionally advocating the same cause, most recently last week, and it made me think of Bob.

I’ll call him Bob here, but I don’t know his real name. He now lives in Bismarck. On sweltering days this summer I saw him sleeping in Interstate-exit ditches at the north end of town, or propped up on two gigantic Coleman coolers near the Post Office, his back against a light pole, hands behind his head, folding chair forgotten behind him.

Bob is black, so he’s probably not a long-time North Dakotan: We have only a handful of black families in this state. Clearly, then, he came here from somewhere else, God alone knows why. Just as clearly, he’s heard of our winters and doesn’t intend to be caught off-guard, because when it was 102 and cattle were dying in the fields, we found Bob dressed in what he’s always dressed in: a brown snowmobile suit, bright yellow rubber raincoat and rain pants under that, jeans and who knows what else under that. I know at least the three top layers because the top two are slit carefully across his backside and flap as he walks.

Bob travels with only his lawn chair and coolers and a ghetto-blaster. What’s in the coolers is a mystery, but they support him in his frequent and obviously satisfying naps. He hangs out at the Post Office, hurting no one, talking or humming to himself, just standing around. Several downtown churches let him use their bathrooms to wash in. What he eats, I don’t know, but surely Bismarck garbage cans hold no slimmer pickings than those anywhere else in prodigal America; Bob is a healthylooking man.

I’ve done some checking. The Salvation Army has a new building full of dorm rooms, but they can take care of people for only a few days. They didn’t think Bob had come in. The police said that if they saw Bob sleeping in the ditch, they’d have to move him along but weren’t equipped to take care of him. There’s a brand-new home for the homeless in Bismarck, but, at least for now, Bob’s not living there. The state Human Services Department said that Bob would be the county’s responsibility, and the county said that they were powerless to do anything unless Bob came in and asked for help.

I can imagine what Mitch Snyder would make of all this. “Another one fallen through the crack,” he’d write; “just another case of bureaucratic insensitivity, of government irresponsibility.”

I say. Where is Bob’s family—and what if he likes living this way?

It’s odd—Jesse Carpenter, frozen stiff in the shadow of the White House, had a wife and a couple of kids he left 20 years before he drank himself to death. Mitch Snyder left a $50,000-a-year job, a wife, and a family to go into the real world and do good (with a little time in prison for attempted robbery). If his kids decide Dad left them because they’re worthless and become street people, will he consider them government property? Snyder is the same kind of symbol as Jesse Carpenter and Bob, only he doesn’t know it, and he’s not exactly part of the solution, if you catch my drift. Where there is no God, as Chesterton said, all is permitted. Where there is no family life, all is neglected.

This being said, there’s a lot of evidence that Bob is happy, and no evidence that he’s hurting himself or anyone else. He told my priest that he got $300 a month, knew that he could get clothes at the Salvation Army, knew where he could stay if he wanted to, was looking for just the right apartment, and wasn’t especially looking for a job. Winter’s coming, and yes, in spite of the snowmobile suit, I worry about where he’ll sleep, but not obsessively. Bob is part of the larger Family of Man, of course, but it’s my job to worry about the much smaller Family of Mine first, something Mitch Snyder doesn’t understand.