Bison's Story

he four city blocks at the center of downtown Northampton have more tarot card readers, massage therapists, and occult bookstores than a dog has fleas. No wonder Noho has been called the "Berkeley of the East". On a warm day, the streets of this modest little New England town come alive with shoppers- and those who prey on them. There are usually two street musicians per block, along with half a dozen teenagers, homeless veterans, and panhandlers- all asking for spare change. Most of the panhandlers come from the area's neighboring economic battle zones, Springfield and Holyoke. All make their livings from the guilty consciences and loose change of Noho’s conscientious, white liberal middle class.

Bison is one of those street musicians and storytellers. He may not be the best guitar or flute player, or even the best storyteller among them--- but he knows how to connect with a crowd.

Bison’s outlandish costumes attract more attention than his words ever could. Imagine an aging Jimi Hendrix, or better yet, imagine a black Mr. Rogers on acid. Sometimes, Bison’ll show up wearing black leather pants and a vest decorated with Native American tribal patterns; on other days, he’ll wear an old sweater, plaid pants, and neon green and orange track shoes.

Over time, Bison has become as much a part of the downtown Noho scenery as its courthouse, its bank building, and its churches. Unlike the other street musicians, Bison is not a fair weather act. Even on the coldest winter day, Bison’ll work his spot on the sidewalk outside the Haymarket Cafe. His hours are from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. He takes a lunch break between 2 and 4 p.m.

I got into the habit of stopping and talking to Bison on my way to the Haymarket for my daily fix of caffeine. We would talk about religion, or politics, or the news. One day, I asked him what he thought about an article in the local paper about the "Problem of Panhandling" downtown.

"I thought the article was ridiculous," I said. "They just interviewed the shop owners. They never asked why there’s a problem with homelessness in the first place."

"You can't be biased," Bison answered. He spoke as if he were narrating a New Age meditation tape. "You’d probably feel the same as the shop owners if you were in their position. I could see where I would be intimidated if there was a tall black man standing in front of my store." He laughed, amused by the idea of himself as a "gangsta".

"Look at that woman over there," he continued, motioning towards a plump, middle aged woman who was standing just a few feet away, holding a basket full of change and dollar bills. "She’s asking everyone who walks by for money. That is really too bad; I don't think she’s that desperate. Don't you think that they see her; don’t you think they’d stop if they wanted to give her something?" he asked. Unlike the woman, Bison was present without imposing himself. He simply stood and played his flute. When someone walked by, he said "Hi" or asked if they wanted to hear a story.

A man was squatting on the sidewalk beside us, listening to our conversation; suddenly he stood up. He had a ragged appearance, with long greasy hair and the dilated eyes of someone who had once taken too many psychedelics.

"Did you guys see that article in the Amherst paper? " he asked us. "It said those guys who stand out here with those folders, you know, asking for money for all those causes... it said they're really liars." Indeed, the newest tactic for panhandlers downtown was to shove folders full of official looking certificates from some after school program, or some church into the faces of pedestrians.

"Oh, I knew that a long time ago. Everyone knows," replied Bison.

Indeed, most townies know a scam when they saw one. My friend Tanya, who worked at Breuggers Bagels, warned me about the old fat guy who collects for "homeless veterans." "He just collects for himself," Tanya said. "There’s also that one guy," she said, "who comes in here to cash his change- and he makes more than I do in a day- that pisses me off!"

While I was thinking about all this, Bison began to pick up his leather hat filled with change, his tarot cards, and his guitar.

"I’m moving a little further down," he said, "I like to have more space."

"Why?" I asked.

He looked over at the woman holding the basket. "When you stop someone, it stops their train of thought completely. It takes people a few steps before they could get a chance to regain their composure."

No sooner had we moved, than a woman and her young daughter approached Bison. She said she was teacher, and was interested in having Bison come to her classroom and do a show. They eagerly exchanged numbers.

"Wait, before you go, do you want to hear a story?" Bison asked the little girl, handing her his two tarot decks.

The little girl picked two cards. One was of a white horse with its wild mane, flowing in the wind. The other was a picture of an angel, and the word "Enlightenment".

"Oh, this story is about the Goddess and the Traveler," said Bison, not hesitating to dive in before he really knew what he was going to say. "The horse is an explorer; he is a mover in the world, but there are many obstacles in his way." He pointed at the boulders on either side of the horse. "These are all the fears that he has to overcome. He has many doubts and insecurities, but he must lean to overcome them and be himself. Through his adventures he must learn to love himself."

I was embarrassed- his story was so corny. Then I looked at the little girl, she couldn't have been older than 7 years old. She was mesmerized.

Indeed, seven year-old girls are not the only females Bison mesmerizes. His ability to "sit comfortably inside his own authority," as my friend Kate once said, has helped him earn the ear of philosophy and religion students from all over the Five College area. Kate is a self-proclaimed pagan who studies Ancient Greek Literature and opera singing at Smith College. She experienced Bison’s uncanny ability to stop people and tell them exactly what they needed to hear at exactly the right time. "I remember this one time when I was down and feeling kind of lost," she once told me, "and I stopped to talk to him, and he just turned everything around. He has a way of helping you make sense of your story, like this mystic presence that dropped in the middle the sidewalk."

It seemed strange to me that a man with Bison’s intelligence and intuition was on the street. When I asked him about it, he simply told me that he’d found his "right place". He said his life purpose was to make connections with people. "That is why I stay here, because it constantly reminds me to keep my heart open to people," he said. The silver heart he wore as an earring dangled as he spoke.

Perhaps it’s Bison’s "open heart" that’s earned him the reputation of a Casanova. He can be seen at the Haymarket Café, holding long eye-to-eye conversations with a different person, usually a woman, almost every day.

I remember one day in particular, when I went to the Haymarket to return a book he’d lent me. It was a cold day in January, so cold in fact that the windows of the Haymarket were covered with steam from the heat of the espresso machines and the people, all crowded together. I arrived at about midday, during the lunch rush. I walked in to find the usual cast of characters. The yoga moms were at the smoothie bar with their wheat grass and power protein shakes. Waiting to get coffee were the twenty-something townies who busted their behinds for $7.50/h at the artsy retail stores that line Main Street. The Smith girls had already taken over all the benches with their laptops and books.

The cold weather had brought inside the transients who usually panhandled on the sidewalks in front of the ATMS and pizzerias. One of them was Bill, a white guy in his early twenties from Saratoga Springs who always wore the same shirt and asked strangers too many imposing questions . Another was Nathan, a seventeen year-old runaway, who made a bare living from spare changing during the summer, and buying groceries for the elderly in the winter. I escaped the hustle and bustle of the juice bar and headed downstairs to find Bison.

Downstairs was another world entirely. While the juice bar's decor had a hip creepiness to it, with its tacky flea market statues of Christ, its large Victorian gold-framed mirrors, and its collection of obscure Eighteenth century portrait paintings, the downstairs area was all about no frills comfort. Old wooden beams, comfy upholstered chairs, and aging paint made the basement into a safe, cozy den, rich with history.

I looked around and found Bison immersed in deep conversation with a woman. "You see, God is not an arrival, or a destination point," Bison said in his soft, creamy voice. "God is a process. We are all evolving at the same time. He is evolving with his creation. It is the belief in a destination point, or evolution point, that has caused us to create such separations and hierarchies with each other and in our societies."

The woman he was talking to was sitting at a neighboring table, sipping her tea, starring at him intently through the lenses of her bifocals.

"Hi, hi, sit down," said Bison after he finally noticed me. "This is Julia."

"Pleased to meet you," Julia said, smiling. She looked cheerier than most people I knew. She had the relaxed look and rosy cheeks of someone who had spent the past decade meditating in a garden.

"How have you been?" Bison asked me. As I thought of what to say, my eyes wandered, getting lost in the intricacies of his dreadlocks, admiring the seashells, feathers, and craftsmanship of the glass beads interwoven through them.

"Fine. I don't really have that much time to talk", I said. " I just came here to give you this book." I handed him the "Right Use of Will" and thanked him. This gave him the perfect opportunity to start talking with Julia about "aligning his feminine principle". For Bison, that meant making a conscientious effort to open up to "the earth's receptive female energies". I’m sure that sounded very appealing to the ears of lonely middle-aged woman. I excused myself.

On my way upstairs I ran into Shira. Though I hardly knew her, Shira was my favorite Haymarket employee. She had an earthy grace to her, an unrehearsed, genuine smile. She once told me that working at the cafe depressed her sometimes because she was the only one who didn't have a morbid sense of humor.

She invited me to sit at her table, then introduced me to her friend, Gabrielle. Gabrielle seemed to be a little older than both of us--- perhaps 35. She had the down-to-earth hippy vibe of a lot of Northamptonites--- long, untamed hair, dangling earrings, and an exotic looking shirt. Shira asked me what I had been up to. I told her about my talks with Bison, and asked her what she thought.

Shira smiled pensively, and pushed back the strands of long brown hair that had fallen over her face. "I don't know much about him," she finally said. "He just appears to be someone who’s decided to form his own path. I'm just curious about where he comes from." She glanced at Gabrielle. I knew that there was more Shira could say, but she was being polite. I had to prod her a little.

"I always see him in deep conversations with these older women," Shira finally said. " He's real smooth, the way he holds their attention for hours at a time. I wonder what he's up to."

I turned to Gabrielle and asked her, "So what do you think about him?"

Gabrielle leaned over the table to speak discreetly. "Frankly, I think he’s on the make for some pussy, excuse the expression." It was strange hearing that word come from the mouth of a woman who was almost old enough to be my mother.

"I have been around the 'Shaman on the make' scene for a long time," she explained in a tone that made me feel like I was an old confidante. "He looks the look and walks the walk. Those who know, do, those who don't, talk, you know what I mean." Shira nodded her head in approval. "If you were going to create a character who could get as many women as you wanted, you would make that guy," said Gabrielle. "Whether it's planned or not, I do not know, but it is a little too convenient for me."

Was Bison just playing a role? Just acting? I could not say for sure. I had never thought that Bison was operating from any ulterior motive, but now I wondered. He was always talking about acknowledging and opening up to the feminine principle. Whether it was an act or not, it sure made women feel really comfortable around him. All of a sudden, I felt naive as I remembered the sexual references that had come up in our conversations. He once told me that men needed to be penetrated from behind in order to really empathize with women.

Still-- I had known Bison for half a year, and had never felt threatened by him. Though he sometimes said things that were a little strange, I saw him as someone who was genuinely trying to live a spiritual life.

Gabrielle didn’t care, partly because she had never even had a real conversation with him, and partly because of what she did for a living. Gabrielle was a rape crisis counselor. "I’ve heard all the lines," she told me. "Whenever I see a guy with a bunch of young girls around him, it just rubs me the wrong way. I am not willing to give people like that the benefit of the doubt."

I wondered whether I was too trusting. Bison and I had been talking to each other for several months, but he’d never disclosed any information about himself or his past. I wondered: Who was he, and what was he after? Was he a shaman, or a charlatan?

Part of me wanted to discover some dark secret: Perhaps he was just a scammer, a smooth, street-smart liar. But each time I’d had a political or spiritual conversation with Bison, his arguments had seemed sincere, his beliefs deeply held. He seemed to be honestly trying to better himself. He spoke like a pilgrim, a searcher, a man who’d abandoned everything he had, a man on a quest. I wondered, though. It seemed too romantic. Too ideal. I needed to dig. I began asking questions.

It wasn’t hard to find people willing to talk about Bison. Everyone knew him; everyone had stories about him. It seemed as if he’d attained his goal of becoming a "street empath," as he put it. However, the street wasn’t the only place where Bison behaved like an empath.

On most Friday nights, you could find him doing free form dance with a big bunch of the other aging hippies at a place called Dance Spree. The place was a big, open room on the third floor of the Fitzwillie's building, downtown.

Bison invited me to join him there once. While he went off to borrow a pair of dancing pants from someone, I stood in the doorway and watched the scene, dumbstruck.

Imagine a huge room in a renovated old Masonic building: a high ornamented ceiling, chandeliers, and smooth wooden floors. The damp air smelled of perhaps a hundred people dancing, jumping, twirling, and pressing against each other. One hundred was only an estimate: It was hard to really see through the flashing, multi-colored strobe lights. In fact, it was hard to even think: The sound of early 90's dance music bounced from the walls, onto the floor, and into my brain through the soles of my feet.

This was no ordinary disco night. The dancers were "jamming" --as they called it-- in contact improv. circles. Younger dancers were swinging each other overhead, falling to the ground, and jerking their bodies in new ways. Though the elderly folk were less acrobatic, they demonstrated twirling abilities worthy of any Grateful Dead tribute concert. I decided it was not quite my scene, and left.

A few months later, I returned to the Fitzwillie's building to ask people about Bison.

It was mid-afternoon, and no one was there except Tom, the building's elevator operator. Like Bison, Tom liked to talk philosophy and go to Dance Spree on Friday nights. Tom had an exaggerated cartoon face, with a broad smile, slightly uneven teeth, and little round eyes that shone with humor. Tom was in his mid-thirties and lived in a modest apartment downtown with a twenty-year-old girlfriend who sang jazz standards. I asked Tom what he thought of Bison.

"First time I met him", Tom said, " I was reading at the Haymarket. He sat down and he said 'Hey, what are you reading?' and then he said 'Wow, that's cool, and I'm Aha Mochachia the Medicine Man'. Then he went on to mesmerize me with his take on the cosmic world." Tom smiled in disbelief and amusement as he remembered the scene. Just then, the elevator rang. Tom excused himself, stepped into the ancient metal cage, closed the gate with a clang, and pulled the lever to go up.

Moments later, the elevator descended with two passengers, Rene and Mark. They also went to Dance Spree and knew Bison. Mark was a balding, non-descript thirty-something with glasses . Rene was voluptuous, with flowing brown hair, and rosy cheeks. My eyes were drawn to her. Perhaps it was her bright red wool coat and burgundy velvet pants.

They stuck around while Tom told me more Bison stories.

"After that", said Tom, "we used to stop and talk to each other on the street. Then he told me that women were more spiritual because they had two holes that were facing down to the earth, so they were absorbing the earth's energy more than men."

"Uh, huh," muttered Mark seemingly not amused, "Men have two holes ,too."

"One of our holes is limited, I guess, in energy absorption," answered Tom. They all laughed. Rene's cackle reminded me of Janis Joplin's, high pitched and confident.

"What did you think when he said that," I asked Tom, straight faced.

"Well, I don't know what's going on, maybe he is right!" Tom laughed, his voice cracking like a thirteen year-old. "I’ve been wrong before."

"But you know," Tom added, "I realize that he comes across to me as being really interesting, his mind is working really fast, there are a lot of insights, he is making all these connections, but also I feel like I'm being sold sometimes, like I'm being pulled into something, and I don't know what it is, because he's not necessarily selling me anything."

"A cosmic sales pitch," said Rene.

"Maybe it's his world view he's selling. But then, I really feel, at the same time, he’s genuinely trying to connect. He's really clear and genuine. He's a good story teller."

"He came up with the best line on me the other day," said Rene, " I was walking down the street and he was like, 'Do you need a massage or something? Is there any way that I can get my hands on you?" Rene imitated Bison’s seductive, soft-spoken voice.

"He's always struck me as an extreme character," she continued, "Like, I can feel that there is this charge around him. We are both Scorpios, so we talk about that a little bit."

"Ahh," said Tom and Mark, in unison. "Now I get it," exclaimed Tom. Both those guys knew just enough astrology to know that "Scorpio" represented sexuality, intensity, desire and mystery.

" Every time I see him he is in a totally different costume," Rene continued. "Once it was tropical shorts and a T-shirt; the next time he was wearing chaps and biker books; then he was African-American, really in touch with his roots, then he was some hippy shaman character. As a woman I have always been like 'Wow', and then 'No way.'"

"Do you feel threatened by all that energy?" I asked her.

"No, my sense is that his intentions are good. I feel like I could say that something was not O.K. with me-- and he’d be able to hear it and respond. That’s been my experience so far."

After saying goodbye to Tom, Rene, and Mark, I ran into Bison. I noticed that he was-- uncharacteristically-- dressed entirely in black. "I decided to wear black as a sign of protest," he said, "until the war stops with Iraq." The protesters who stood on the corner with anti- war banners and bullhorns had been telling people to break with their everyday habits as a sign of protest. For Bison, that meant looking like a peacock without its feathers.

I expressed my dismay about the war.

"It makes me disgusted that we have to sit here and watch it happen," I said. "They say this is a democracy, but Bush just went ahead and did whatever he wanted, ignoring the opinions of half the people in this country."

Bison, who usually only radiated positive smiles, shook his head and furrowed his brow. For the first time, I noticed the deep lines that worry and age had cut in his buffalo skin.

"This war could not happen if we weren't complacent, and if we didn't have a place for it in our hearts," Bison said, gesturing with his ringed fingers. "We are the ones who are attacking Iraq, we are all contributing to it in one way or another. And unless you feel like you are a part of it, and take that responsibility, you can't really change it. Even if you are against war, you are contributing to it, because you are waging war with war." At that moment, Rene walked past us.

"Hey," Bison yelled out to her, radiating a momentary smile, "nice to see you." She turned around, saw me, and gave me a coy little smile. Bison's eyes followed her as she walked down the street.

"Well, what should we do if we can't stop war by fighting it?" I asked.

"It is not about fighting. It is about aligning your Will and your Spirit so you are in a place of truth with yourself and the people around you. You know," he continued, "last time there was a war, I stopped it."

I couldn’t help it--- when he said that,my face contorted in disbelief.

"I took ayahuasca," Bison said, "and I meditated by the river, and sent over healing energy to Iraq, and stopped the war. That is when Saddam accepted the arms inspectors. Remember?"

"Sure", I said.

"But this time I am not going to do a thing. I am just going to let it happen. I have been told that the people die who need to die, it is just a cleansing technique that the earth is using to get rid of dead matter, it is just like dead skin. You know the live skin doesn't say 'Oh my God, look at all that dead skin!' .But you know the live skin, when you look at it, you can't even tell the difference sometimes." I nodded my head. All of a sudden I felt very small. Bison was on a roll.

"I had a dream I was flying through New York, and 80 percent of the people were dead, walking around. 80 percent were dead skin. When a person gives over more than half of their magnetic center, they are dead." Bison said spoke as calmly and indifferently as if he was talking about the weather. I didn’t know what to think. Bison had a way of making you listen, sucking you in like a Venus- flytrap.

"Why don't we go talk at the Haymarket", I suggested.

When we arrived, it was 7 pm, and business was just slowing down. The upstairs juice bar had just run out of its selection of scones and cakes. The ever-present hum of the coffee machines had come to a momentary halt. We took a table in the back. Bison crossed his legs, folded his hands over his lap, and began opening up to me.

"I love talking to those people with a Gemini Moon, their minds are so active" he said, referring to me.

Then he began telling me how he wound up on the street.

"I have only been on the street for a year," he told me, "Before that I ran a corporation. It was called Tiger Chi Incorporated. I used to pick up shopping carts for supermarkets up and down the Valley. We monopolized the whole area. I took the business from $50 a week to over $50, 000 a year."

"No shit. Wow." I said, not realizing, at the time, how ridiculous the whole thing sounded. Bison said he’d given the business away to a guy named Orlando Banks. He’d done it,he said, because of 9/11. That’s when he had his revelation about the horrors of this society.

"So when 9/11 happened, it opened your eyes to what was going on?" I asked, humoring him.

"Well, I knew already, I knew when I turned 50 that I had to leave. But 9/11 grabbed my attention, and reminded me that I had to find my right place."

"I have been able to accelerate my evolution, my growth. I am always working on myself. I am the result of my intention, and my intention is to, you know, understand who I am and where my place is. When you set forth with intention, there is a synchronicity of events and information that follows." His mind was flowing quickly from one idea to the next.

"I can make the wind come up," Bison said, "I can make the temperature rise in an area. I can make it rain. I am in collusion with the elements."

"You have made those experiments?" I asked.

"Yeah, I have done it. It is an act of will. It is a matter of having enough of your Will engaged and intact."

"So why don't you make it warm here all the time?" I replied, half joking.

"I am not saying that I can do that, but I am responsible for temperature changes."

I sat and listening, without blinking, trying not to judge. ‘He must trust me to be telling me all this stuff’, I thought.

Our conversation continued until closing time. He unfolded his story.

Bison broke his story down into three different phases: His African American phase, when he was known as Albert Smith; his Scottish phase, when his name was Albert Evans, and his current, Cherokee phase: he now goes by the name of A.A.Bison.

Bison’s mother was a teenage girl. His father was an older man, a friend of his grandmother.

"That drunk paid her $50 one night," he said, "Everyone in the family knew it, and they all hated me. My grandmother's name for me was ‘Poison Ivy’."

Eventually, Bison escaped the Cincinnati ghetto where he grew up by getting a scholarship to play football at the University of Michigan. Bison got a kid to take his SAT exams for him. The kid scored so high that the people at Michigan put Bison in the honors dorm. Bison said he played running back for Michigan- one of the Top 10 college teams. The year he played, Bison said, Michigan went undefeated.

"Even as a football player," Bison said, "there was something different about me. I could see death come for people. That didn't stop until I was in college."

During his freshman year, Bison tried needle drugs for the first time. He contracted hepatitis. He quit the team, had a ‘spiritual revelation’ and switched his major from sports science to psychology. He began doing acid. He protested the Vietnam War. Not surprisingly, his scholarship was revoked, and--- he never graduated. It made no difference, said Bison: The Oakland Raiders drafted him before the US Army could.

Bison was vague about how his NFL days . Instead ,he talked about the next big turning point in his life: The death of his mother. After she died, Bison found out about his real father. Bison changed his name to Albert Evans--- and rose from the ashes to begin the second phase of his life.

He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, and built a business that he ran for 17 years. In the process he got married twice. Each marriage lasted for seven years.

"I had a home, a car, the whole deal," Bison said. Now all he has are two ex-wives and four daughters, spread out across the country.

"We talk some," Bison said about his daughters. "But---I wait for them to call me. I am very much in the now. If my daughter does not have anything to say, I am not going to pretend I have stuff to say to her. I will just say, 'Look, this is boring.' I don't have that guilt that I have to be with my children because they are my children."

At some point during his Scottish phase, Bison said, he studied to be a minister. He studied for 3 years. He stopped because it "limited the number of people he could connect to."

"It’s funny, because the church that I went to, the Pastor wound up having a relationship with his secretary, and he was married. The membership and the other leaders in the church would not forgive him and made him leave the church. And the assistant pastor--- they would not forgive him for not telling them and exposing the pastor, so they made him leave. Those so called ‘loving Christians’ got so ugly--- you would not believe how ugly they got."

Bison began his current phase- his "Cherokee Phase" by giving his business away, selling his belongings, and changing his name to A.A. Bison.

Bison told me all this---but was he telling me the truth? The only way I could be sure was to check the facts.

Trying to track down people and verify information was practically impossible. "Tiger Chi Inc." was not listed in any telephone directory. Neither was "Orlando Banks". However, I found a listing for a James Banks living in Springfield.

The person who answered the phone said that Orlando was in Florida, but that his brother James might have his number. I called back and nervously stated my case to James--- who was suspicious. I figured he had his reasons. It must not have been often that some strange white girl would ring him on a Sunday night to ask questions about his brother. James muttered "I don't know" to every question I asked.

My role as intrepid girl detective didn’t end there…. I called the University of Michigan Athletic Department. I searched the internet looking for Bison’s football records at University of Michigan and at the Oakland Raiders. I found nothing. Was Bison lying to me? Was he just an old lonely man embellishing his past? A few days passed. Then the secretary for the U of M’s football team left a message on my answering machine. He confirmed that an Albert Smith had been a halfback from Corona High School (in Cincinnati). Albert Smith had joined the team in 1967. In fact, said the secretary, Albert Smith had even managed to earn a letter.

I had even better luck a few days later when I contacted one of Bison's four daughters. Amanda Preston lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and works as physical therapist in a nursing home. She is Bison's second daughter, born while he was still in college. Though she was the only one of Bison’s daughters to be born in wedlock, Amanda never knew her father any better than her other three sisters. Bison, then Albert Smith, left his wife and deserted his daughter when Amanda was six months old.

Bison did not return to Ann Arbor for another 30 years. When he did, it was to attend a reunion for the University of Michigan’s football team, the Wolverines. Amanda said she’d accompanied him. She sounded excited as she told me about meeting his old coach, as well as his old teammates. She said that many of her dad’s teammates had gone on to play for the NFL.

In fact, Amanda said, she and her mom had followed Bison to California when he got drafted to play for the Oakland Raiders.

Sadly, Amanda had little else to say about her dad. Instead, she quoted her mom. Bison was "a great athlete who’d walked away from it all", her mom once said. " He had a great mind", her mom used to say. "But he’d never developed it …"

Eventually, I was able to contact one other of Bison’s daughters, a woman named Lucy. Lucy was the only one Bison’s daughters whom he raised himself., For this reason, Lucy may be the daughter who knows Bison best. She co-owns a lingerie store in Springfield and works as a model. She called me late one night after work. She confirmed the existence of Bison’s company "Tiger Chi Inc."

"He saw a flyer in a grocery store once, asking for someone with a pickup truck" she said. "He responded, and started collecting lost shopping carts. He even had a hotline."

I asked Lucy what she thought of the way Bison was living now. "As long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters," she replied. " He’s , naturally, a drifter by heart. He’s very adaptable…. He’s one of a kind." I believe that Bison’s being "one of a kind" is what everybody loves and respects about him. He marches to the beat of his own drum. He stands on a street corner--- and inspires everyone else to be themselves as well. Even though Bison made life decisions that I, myself, don’t agree with, I do believe he always tried to do the right thing. He wasn’t a charlatan--- or a saint, or a sinner. He was a man on a journey.

The next time I saw Bison, I mentioned having spoken to his daughters.

"So, do they like me?" he asked. His voice sounded the slightest bit insecure.

"Of course," I said. "They expressed a desire to see you more often, though."

Bison smiled. "Well," he said, I’m going to visit Amanda next month. I’m really excited. I just bought a van." I noticed that Bison didn’t have his guitar. He’d sold it to buy a Volkswagen.

"I've always wanted a van," he said. "It’s good to travel for a little bit, but then you have to come back home."

"And--- this is home?" I asked

"This is home," he said.