Keith D. cultivates positive change

IMAGES AND STORY BY HANNAH HERNER

When Keith D. started selling for The Contributor in 2011, he was almost out of money. A bit of inheritance was keeping him afloat, but for the first time in his life, he was having trouble getting hired. That’s when he overheard some people with Contributor badges talking amongst themselves on the bus. He asked them where to go to become a vendor, and he’s been with The Contributor ever since, selling at Hamilton Church Road and Murfreesboro Road. In 2011, Keith didn’t know the positive changes that would follow.

Your housing situation has changed a lot since you started with us. Can you tell me about that?

I had roommates when I first started selling the paper, but they were all drinking and using drugs a lot. I figured I’d rather camp instead of being in that situation. After a few weeks of that, my landlord now was wanting a roommate just to help with bills. He started building this apartment that I live in now and he let me rent it.

He said ‘you sell a paper, how are you going to pay rent?’ You know, it’s been over 300 weeks and I’ve never been late once.

You mentioned a bit about having struggles with drinking. Do you want to talk about how that changed for you, too?

I was getting established on the spot that I have now. I remember too, it was March 14, 2012. It was in the 80s already. I had bought an 18 pack of beer and I was going to drink six a day for three days. Well I drank all 18 beers, plus probably some more. I went to my spot on the 15th with fumes rolling off of me, sweating. I just said right then, ‘go home and don’t drink ever again.’ Because I didn’t want anyone ever to see me buying beer after I’d been out selling papers. Somehow I quit. For 34 years I drank, and I’d quit for a few weeks. Then I’d get drunk for three, four, five days in a row. Lose jobs left and right. July 15, 2020, was my 100th month of not drinking.

What was your life like growing up?

I grew up in Michigan and it was a real bad family situation. I was put in a mental facility along with my sister when I was 13 and she was 11. They decided I didn’t need to be in there, that actually my step mother needed to be in there, not us.

I went to a group home for three years. It was kind of an unusual situation. It was three houses in a semi-circle on a big piece of land and it had house parents that worked in shifts. It was boys and girls, black and white, all mixed together in these houses. The little town where I was growing up in Michigan, there weren’t that many black people. So we were fighting for our friends in school because they got picked on a lot. The manager of that group home embezzled the funds and since I had nowhere to go, I was put back in the mental facility for about two weeks in 10th grade.

A girl at school heard about what happened and asked her mom and dad if they could take me in. They took me in for three years. They had never had a foster kid before, and I was not a good kid. I was a teenager with issues. When I graduated high school, I went right into the Army because I didn’t have job preparation or anything like that, and I stayed in the Army for my two years. When I came out, my foster mother gave me like $1,600. She was getting paid a little bit for having me and she used that money to buy my clothes, but she didn’t keep any of it. That’s one of the lessons I learned about giving when you can. If I’m behind someone at McDonald’s and they’re short on money, I step right up. Whenever I can do something like that I try to do it. They’re the ones that taught me a lot about giving.

Something we at The Contributor love about you is your positive attitude. Is that how you’ve always approached life?

No, when I quit drinking my attitude changed. It didn’t come in a day, it came gradually. The more I was not into myself, the more I became aware of others. Eight years ago, I wouldn’t have cared. But now I can instinctively tell when something needs to be done to help somebody out. I’m pretty good at figuring it out.

When we used to be able to hang around in the Contributor office, I’d see 20 vendors go in and out buying papers. But the certain two or three, I would have a feeling. They’d be coming in and scraping $1.50 together to get three papers, and I’d just say ‘give ‘em 13’ and I’d pop a five dollar bill down. I knew when it was time to do something like that.

Tell me about your garden this year.

This year I planted triple because of COVID-19, and I was not going anywhere. I knew I would have time to take care of it. This year, the squash and zucchini grew so good I harvested roughly 170 to 180 pounds and was able to give over 90 percent of that away to mostly elderly people, like my elderly customers, that wish they could have a garden but can’t. I also have some low-income people who come by me. So I always have bags of stuff. It’s going to be even more when the tomatoes get ripe. I’m going to have three or four bags a day for somebody.

It always works out where who I hoped would come by, would come by and get their bag of stuff.

What is your gardening philosophy?

My gardening philosophy is to hope and pray and be grateful when it turns out good. And don’t get mad if it doesn’t because there’s always going to be another time. And share, share, share! I have people that tell me, ‘I’ll buy some.’ I’m not selling a thing. I think it would be bad karma. If I have enough to give, I’m going to give.