It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I’d had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.
By Michael Allen, Free Press Staff Writer | Friday, June 23, 1989
Joe Martin and Shirley Boucher were not the only people who befriended Dennis Racine.
The street also brought Racine the friendship of “Action” Jackie Marselli, 41, a former welterweight boxer – now a transient – who wants to fight again some day. He recently suffered a cut under the left eye and deep wounds on his knuckles.
“Won’t be long before Johnny Scully is middleweight champ of the world,” Marselli said. “He’s with Moochiein Hartford.”
Racine also came to know Ed Ritchie, a 42-year-old street person who said he has had three attacks.
Racine’s best friend, Martin, often totters on spindly 1egs. A mop of unkempt brown hair covers his head and face and a pair of blue jeans hang at his waist.
“I’ll take me a bath next year,” Martin joked. “I’ve got a lung problem. I’m dying. I have lung cancer, right. So, I don’t cut any corners. I do what I want to do.”
Bill Provost said he sometimes fears he is going to end up like Racine. Provost, 32, said he has lived on and off – mostly on – the street for much of his life. He said his chances of making it off the street were set back last year by a drunken-driving conviction that cost him his driver’s license and earned him 120 days in the Chittenden Community Correctional Center.
On the evening of the vigilfor the transients who died, Provost was standing on North Street, leaning against the same brick wall Racine leaned on when he was alive. Albert Ploof, 72, who lives next door, was standing next to Boucher.
Boucher asked Provost: “Why are you on the street? Why do you live the way you do? Are you doing this because you are out of choices, or is this the way you want to live?”
“It’s kind of a messed up situation really,” Provost replied. “I come down here because these are my friends.”
“Do you have a home?” Boucher persisted.
“Yeah.”
“Why do you choose not to go to it?”
“It’s hard to say,” Provost replied in exasperation.
“Do you ever think of the good Lord and ask him to help you?” interrupted Ploof, who said he’s a recovered alcoholic. “I did.”
By Michael Allen, Free Press Staff Writer | Friday, June 23, 1989
Framed by giant ash and poplar trees, the hobo encampment along the banks of the Winooski River was a special place for Dennis Racine.
In 1983 he and Joe Martin had built the encampment, a sheltered area filled with armchairs, mattresses, cupboards, bookcases, a clothesline, a toilet, a file cabinet and a plastic drum – things the men dragged there over the years.
Racine died three weeks ago in a favored armchair in the encampment, and Martin mourned his loss at the camp as the sky grew dark, the mosquitoes grew fiercer and a tree limb burned in a fire nearby.
“I’ll tell you how Dennis lived. Dennis was my best buddy – my partner for 30 years,” said Joe Martin, who first met Racine when the two were teenagers in Burlington. “We drank together.”
Dennis Racine, above left, and his friend ‘Action’ Jack Marselli, above right, stand in front of the Emergency food Shelf in Burlington on May 9, less than a month before Racine died. Credit: JYM WILSON, Free Press
“I never thought in my born days that Dennis will die in a chair without me. I’m the one with the bad lungs,” Martin said, pointing to an armchair covered with a sheet.
“What they said was, he curled up and died of his own phlegm. I expect that to happen to me because I’m a cougher and a hacker. But, Denny …” He shook his head in disbelief.
Racine spent 25 years as a street person – becoming a fixture on North Street in Burlington’s Old North End. His friends said he went to the street to die.
“When I die, I want to die alone; by the river,” his friends recalled him telling them time and again. “I don’t want no tears; I don’t want no flowers.”
When his final hour came the evening of June 1, Racine, 29 days short of his 44th birthday, went to the encampment by the river, got into his favored armchair and died.
He was the best known of the three transients who died between May 30 and June 1, officials said. Police have ruled the deaths of Oinus Jones and Keith Destrom, who died that same week, were homicides.
But Racine died of natural causes, a victim, perhaps, of years of heavy drinking and living on the streets. Dr. Eleanor McQuillen, chief state medical examiner, said he was in a position in the chair that pressured his chest cavity, stopping his breathing. Blood tests to see if alcohol contributed to his death are pending.
The street people who were Racine’s closest friends were not allowed to view his body before it was cremated. They were not allowed to pay their respects.
Michael O. Allen — Journalism, Reflections & Essays 