Community

John Harte sat behind the wheel of his new home, an old blue mini-van, parked on a busy corner of Borden Avenue in Long Island City. He puffed on a small cigar, looking almost directly into the sharp afternoon sun with wild blue eyes, now watery with age.

“Jose, you know, he bailed me out,” said Harte, smiling, his tongue twisted in the hole where two upper teeth used to be. “I’ll pay him back, as soon as I can get back out on the road and make some money.”

Harte, 73, is better known to the Long Island City community as “Papa John,” a man born and raised on the same corner of Vernon Boulevard and Borden Avenue where he still lingers. Three weeks ago, a fire destroyed a blue Honda Accord he’d been living in for nearly a year. Papa John, his “adopted son” Teddy Fuller (a grown man with a learning disability), and his dog Suzi, a cute smaller-sized cocker spaniel, were all sleeping in the car during the blaze. They got out with no serious injuries, but no criminal investigation was made.

“We don’t investigate all fires,” said Jim Long, director of public information for the FDNY. “Some warrant attention from fire marshals, some don’t.”

Long said they didn't want to "stretch resources" to investigate the cause of this one. Papa John lost everything in the fire – clothes, books, pieces of identification.(“I don’t even know my own name anymore,” he said.) With massive new construction slowly encroaching upon his territory, Papa John is convinced that someone’s trying to drive him out, one way or another.

“They’re sending in the wise guys to get me outta town,” he said.

Jose Rodriguez, 59, bought him the van. Jose said Papa John was one of the first people to befriend him when he relocated to Long Island City to Brooklyn 18 years ago. He’s currently laid-off from his job as a handyman at Queens Progress Reprographics, but he gave $750 of his unemployment to a cook at the nearby bagel shop for the van.

“It’s a gift,” said Rodriguez, addressing Papa John on the subject of paying him back. “I told you.”

“I don’t want no gift!” Papa John snapped back. He looked down at the can of Budweiser in his lap, then turned his head into the van and exhaled his last puff. The smoke rolled over his notebooks on the dash. Teddy and Suzi sat quietly in back.

Rodriguez began to cry.

“A friend is a friend,” he said, wiping tears. “I don’t want to see him...”

He had to stop speaking, but he pointed to an empty gated lot nearby, the lot where Papa John struggled to stay dry and warm under a black tarp after the blaze.

Joe Colletti, 57, a member of the Hunter’s Point Community Development Council, has known Papa John since he was a child. Like many neighborhood residents, he gave the haphazard family of two men and a dog a bag of clothing after the fire (“I could open a thrift store!” said Papa John). But Colletti, knowing their reputation for partying – and several resulting apartment fires over the years – understands why local authorities would be hands off.

“It’s because they’re homeless – you know how people are,” he said. “John prefers living in a van or a car. He likes the freedom, but he’ll get kicked around from block to block if he wants to live that way.”

“He was a smart boy at one time,” said Lenny Gravino, 67, a retired Pepsi -ola worker and Long Island City native. “My sister went to school with him. It’s hard to imagine, but between the ages of 20 and 40, he was very handsome. He had a clean life at one time, a wife and kids, a good family.”

To Gravino, Papa John’s a sort of Willie Nelson a literate, artsy free spirit who was always on the road, working odd jobs, always able to support himself, but he took the wrong turn at some point.

“Things just went sour for him,” he said.

Papa John doesn’t think so. He said he’s the happiest homeless person he knows. From behind the wheel of his new home, he looked up at the tower of concrete and metal in front of him, soon to attract the young and affluent, soon to envelope his world. He laughed, wild blue eyes brimming with enthusiasm.

“Just you wait ‘till they finish the ninth floor,” he said. “Then we’ll throw a party up there!”