Peter Scales was the seventh of 10 kids. “There was supposed to be 16, but those passed away.” His father was a mechanic; his mother a nurse. They moved a lot. “The houses weren’t worth nothing. In the winter months [in Detroit], it was cold, the draft going through.”
Peter started smoking early. “My father said, ‘Boy, you want to smoke cigarettes, you’re going to have to pay for them.’ By 10 years old I had a job.”
And when he wasn’t in school, he was working at a produce stand for up to 12 hours per shift.
“I didn’t mind the work, but I missed out on a lot of fun. In school I was trying to have fun and getting messed-up grades. So I didn’t finish. I made it to ninth grade.” Peter was hit by a van while riding a bicycle. “It messed up the van pretty bad.” And he ended up in the hospital.
Things were bad in Detroit. “Kids started breaking into people’s houses and taking everything while they were still there! I wasn’t doing what they were doing — I was stealing cars, but I had parents in the home. My mom died when I was 17 or 18 and I went deep downhill. I started doing bad and worse with drugs.”
Peter decided to get out of Detroit. It didn’t help; he ended up in prison in Oklahoma. “From Oklahoma, I went back home to see if I could get a place there. Found out the kids are even worse. I said, ‘I’m going to come out this way [Seattle], because I heard that [being] homeless is a lot better.’”
“I stayed at DESC and I was hanging out during the nights. The winter is so mild, I thought it wasn’t even winter. But I ended up with walking pneumonia because I got caught in the rain.”
He was grateful to get a low-income apartment in downtown Seattle; however, he’s happier to be able to move. “My housing came through this month. I’ll get another place further out, that way when I wake up I don’t have to worry about gunshots or car alarms, trash trucks in the middle of the night. I hear people hanging out; I want to hang out, too. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, trying to turn over so many leaves.”
Peter has a friend in North Seattle and likes the neighborhood. “[There’s] a police station across the street, a store on the corner, and it’s quiet. I need some room. I like to stretch out, have my bed separate from my room with a couch and dining room table. I got to have a TV.” His favorite cartoon is “Felix the Cat.”
He says his customers are generous even though he doesn’t stay in one selling place. He likes to share jokes with them: “Tigger, why does he always bounce on his tail? So he don’t step on Pooh!”