Perry McIntosh, a homeless man in Sellwood died recently. I wanted to pay him a tribute because he deserves one.

I lived in Sellwood caring for my invalid father from 2021 to 2025. While in Portland, I met and interacted with Perry countless times as he picked up trash (usually wearing a clip-on tie!) and maintained the landscaping of the traffic islands. If I had cash on me, I always tipped him for his service and thanked him. He never solicited me. He was occasionally tipsy or stoned, but never addled. He always looked me straight in the eyes.

In time, I got Perry’s story from neighbors. He’d been homeless in the neighborhood for over a decade and performing the same clean-up duty the whole time. For seven years he had lived in an overgrown vacant lot along a creek, planted an informal community garden, shared his produce. That pastoral life ended when an absentee landlord showed up and evicted him. A little while later, dilapidated RVs, cars, trucks, tents and pallet shanties were erected near the area. Perry’s presence had prevented the encampment and once established, it took five inexplicable years for the city to clear it.

In my many conversations with Perry, I learned a lot about his history.

He hadn’t worked in 35 years. He was a full time “volunteer.” He collected no Social Security. He’d grown up in the neighborhood. He slept most nights in a mobile contraption. Would I like to see it? You’re damn right I wanted to see it.

Perry had constructed a makeshift tiny trailer covered in black plastic that he towed with a bicycle. It reminded me of a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail. Perry opened the wagon and let me peer inside. Someone had recently broken in and stolen some of his belongings. He wasn’t upset. Some people needed things worse than he did.

I asked him about the t-shirts I always saw him wearing, with PERRY emblazoned across the front and S.O.S Save our Sellwood across the back. Perry told me a man in the neighborhood was so taken with the ongoing beautification efforts that he had them custom made! We certainly need more of that ad hoc encouragement related to homelessness in Oregon these days.

He utterly despised the fentanyl and meth miscreants who defecated on sidewalks, left garbage everywhere, menaced Sellwood with their public addiction. He taught me there was a definite hierarchy in the homeless community and drug miscreants were the bottom dwellers. He refused to pick up garbage from their encampments. His metaphor for them was chumming. You tossed them chum (see Jaws the movie) and they would devour you on the subsequent attack. I didn’t necessarily agree but it was one of the most astonishing metaphors I’d ever heard and I wrote an essay about Perry and chumming that will appear in my forthcoming book about the crisis of Oregon homelessness.

Toward the end of my days in Sellwood, my newly adopted husky and I were out for a late morning walk when I saw Perry sitting in a chair outside his domicile wailing away on a harmonica, not playing anything recognizable. He loved the husky and previously warned me about needles on the ground. He waved me over.

I fished out a sawbuck (Dad taught me that phrase) and gave it to Perry. He asked about my state of mind. I said sadness gripped me, but I was also relieved at Dad’s death. He was ready to go. Those last weeks in hospice had been brutal.

Perry asked about my future. I said I wanted out of the big city. He asked where I wanted to go. Somewhere on the Southern Oregon Coast was my reply.

“Well, bring me back some ******** dungeness crab!” he yelled.

When a homeless man demands (with profanity) that you bring back dungeness crab, you better follow through.

“I’ll get you canned dungeness,” I said. “It’s damn good.”

“***** yeah!” Perry screamed.

Rest in peace Perry. I apologize for never returning to Portland and giving you that can of crab. Your great work in Sellwood will surely be missed. I got to know you when I lived there, that makes me lucky. Doubtless the landscaping in the traffic islands will need some weeding soon.