ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
There is an unspoken hierarchy among the people who make the Roanoke City Market benches their home.
There are those who panhandle, and those who earn their own money - shoveling snow, hauling produce boxes, lugging Christmas trees from the trucks to the stalls.
There are those who sprawl out on the benches to sleep, and those who will sleep only sitting up.
Milton Ray Jones Jr. - ``Piggy,'' to both the people who work and sleep on the market - slept sitting up.
Once, when another street person had stolen a bag of onions from the Thomas Market open-air produce stand, Piggy chased him up Campbell Avenue three blocks, snatched the onions and returned them to Eloise Lewis, who works at the store.
``A whole lotta 'em call me `Granny,' but he never did,'' Lewis recalls. ``He called me `Miss Lois.''' Out of respect.
Piggy died Nov.10. He was 51.
Lewis misses him, she said last week. ``Especially this morning. I had all these pine trees here to haul in, and I really could've used him.''
Lewis paid Piggy every morning to help her unload produce from the truck, and every afternoon to help her put it back. He showed up daily, religiously - except when he was drunk. He didn't try to work when he knew he couldn't do the job.
She does not refer to Piggy as a street person. ``I don't think it's fair to call them that when they make their own money,'' she said.
From his desk at Books Strings & Things, Richard Walters recalled the daily shtick he and Piggy shared: ``I'd be driving into work, and he'd look at his watch and yell out, `You late!' and point for me to get my butt in the store. Over the years he's fired me 40 or 50 times, docked my pay, rehired me.''
Every morning when Walters walked over to Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea for his to-go coffee, Piggy always greeted him with, ``Whatcha drinking that dishwater for?''
Once Walters bought him a bagel from Five-Boro Bagels, but Piggy turned it down. Too fancy.
Piggy kept an eye on the store for Walters in the early morning hours: ``We used to get our newspaper bundles ripped off all the time, but Piggy and his buddy Wild Man started watching out for them and we haven't had a problem since.''
When another street person harassed one of Walters' female employees, ``All I had to do was talk to Piggy, and he'd say, `I'll take care of it,' and he did,'' Walters recalls.
Walters says Piggy's death hit him hard - harder, it would seem, than it did Wild Man. ``I guess to them life is short and, except for Wild Man, his name hasn't even come up. When one of their crew is gone, the attitude is, `That's just the way it is.'
``Like Wild Man said when he told me the news: `Piggy's gone.'
``He wasn't dead, he was just gone.''
Racial differences don't enter into the street person's hierarchy. Piggy was Wild Man's best friend. Piggy was black, Wild Man white.
Wild Man stood near a curb on Campbell Avenue recently and described the last conversation he had with his friend of 15 years. They were cater-corner from each other, in separate cells of the Roanoke City Jail. They'd been arrested 12 hours earlier for stealing newspapers - not from a shopkeeper, but from a box.
They'd planned to resell the papers ``to make a few bucks for wine. Why not?'' recalled Wild Man, who won't divulge his real name.
``The last thing he said before he died was `Three minutes to eight.' I'd asked him what time it was.''
Piggy started coughing a lot, but Wild Man didn't pay much attention - Piggy always coughed. ``He said he was gonna lay down and rest awhile.'' But Wild Man didn't pay attention to that, either - Piggy liked to sleep. ``He liked sleeping more than he liked drinking,'' he said.
Someone noticed Piggy coughing up blood. The rescue squad was called. Wild Man believes he died before he was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In a crowd that goes by nicknames - and where few speak of the history that landed them on the streets - Piggy's passing was noted more with resignation than sadness.
Last week, a street sweeper came to Wild Man to offer condolences; he'd just the heard the news.
Wild Man's response: ``Sometimes your time comes and you just gotta go.''
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB