University of Louisville

I use to spend many hours hanging out on the University of Louisville campus. One of the places I hung out the most was the library. There were days that I would sit there from 7am until 12am. I mainly used the internet and played games to kill time.

There were times that I would go and find a chair in the library and fall asleep for 4-5 hours to try and catch up on the sleep that I was lacking from the night before. I done this a lot. It was peaceful and most people wouldn't even bother you since a lot of the students done the same thing.

One of the other things I use to do on the campus was walk around the buildings when classes were over looking for food to eat. I mainly looked through trash cans and sometimes I would sneak into offices and look in the refrigerators to see if there was any kind of food available. I wasn't proud of myself for doing this but at the time I just didn't give a shit about if I got in trouble or not.

There was a few times where it was so cold at night that I would go into one of the many buildings on the campus find a dark place to hide and I would sleep there until morning. I had a few close calls with people that came into clean the buildings, but I was never seen or caught inside of the building.

One of the places I use hit up all the time when I was hanging around the campus a lot was Papa Johns. I would go there to the dumpster and there was always fresh pizzas in boxes that had been tossed out. These pizzas fed me more times than I can count. I was very fortunate that I had this because there would've been a lot of times I would've went hungry without it.

I met a lot of other homeless people hanging around the campus, one guy that I met, we became pretty good friends and done pretty much everything together. He showed me where all the feeding sites were, he showed good places to hide and sleep at night. He also told me how the shelter system worked in the city. (I will tell you more about the shelters in Louisville later)

This new friend of mine introduced me to a restaurant called Mastersons. They were just off of the campus and every night we would go behind their building and they would have all the food they threw out from the buffet in the trash. They must've thrown way 30lbs of fried chicken every night. This became my hot meal each night. The food was usually still warm so it was nice to eat. Much better than cold pizza all the time.

When I wasn't with my friend, I would be wandering around the campus just trying to blend in. I done my best to keep clothes on that looked like something a student would wear, and I always wore the University of Louisville sweatshirt and hat that was given to me at a clothing place.

One of my other activities on the campus was going to the SAC (Student Activity Center). I would go to the back of the building inside and there was a television I would sit and watch during the off hours. I would catch up on the news and weather and then a lot of times fall asleep on the couch that was located by the television.

I spent about 10 months of my year or so in Louisville on the campus. For me it was a home. Lots of people around so I just blended in. Sometimes in a small small way I miss the campus.