Attention Homeless People: Pack Your Bindles, A Semi-Truck in Alvord, Texas Has Spilled 8 MILLION DIMES All Over U.S. Highway 287

FOX 4 KDFW - ALVORD, Texas - Crews worked for hours on Tuesday to clean up a truckload of dimes that spilled onto U.S. Highway 287 in Wise County.

The Alvord Fire Department confirmed the dimes spilled from an 18-wheeler that overturned on Hwy. 287 near Alvord High School around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said the driver veered off the roadway, overcorrected and then rolled onto its side.

Roughly $800,000 or 8 million dimes were scattered on the roadway.

The highway was shut down until about 7 p.m. so that crews could recover all the loose change.

The driver and a passenger were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It’s not yet clear why the 18-wheeler was carrying millions of loose dimes.

Images from SKY 4 showed some workers scooping up piles of dirt and coins with a shovel. Other workers used a vacuum cleaner to suck up the coins. One person appeared to be picking up dimes by hand.

There's no word on where the dimes were headed or if they were all recovered.

If you're a homeless person living in Fort Worth, Texas, according to Apple Maps, it's only a 27 hour walk to Alvord. I mean what the hell else are you doing? Throw your belongings in a bindle and head north up 287. Make an adventure out of it. Maybe if you're lucky you can hitchhike part of the way. Maybe you'll be joined by one of the many homeless dogs that wander around the DFW area, and you'll make a new best friend. Give your life a purpose for a few days by giving yourself a nice little mission to go on. There's not a chance in hell the fire department was able to pick up all 8 million dimes. 

You spend a couple days pacing up and down U.S. Highway 287 in Wise County, I bet you're leaving there with a few hundred bucks. Maybe more depending on your dedication. Or depending on how much focus enhancing drugs (crack, meth, etc.) you were able to acquire for the trip. 

Again... what else are you doing? What do you have to lose? I've learned a thing or two about being homeless in my day. I spent a summer living in a van in Los Angeles. The van belonged to a friend of mine named who had previously spent 10+ years living on the street. He referred to himself as a "traveler". He would literally jump onto trains and travel from city to city with his traveler friends. Apparently there's a secret underground map only homeless travelers know about that tells you the best times and locations to jump onto freight trains without getting caught by the train police. It's a whole different world. Crazy stuff.

This guy was homeless through 2011. That year him and his friends attended Occupy LA. The story he tells me is that him and group of 100 other people were protesting. I don't even think he cared about the cause, I think he just viewed a protest as a fun excuse to get drunk and yell at cops. While they were protesting, they were forcibly arrested. Apparently the cops did it in an unlawful way, because as a result, he became a part of a lawsuit that eventually awarded him and his traveler girlfriend $10,000 each. They used it to rent a nice little apartment in Silver Lake, and buy an old conversion van. When I met him in 2016, he was still living in his apartment. I sublet a room from him for a few months, but when the girl who actually lived there returned, I moved into his van. The van could barely even run anymore. Just enough that I was able to move it across the street every week to avoid a street sweeping ticket.

During this time, we were both aspiring stand-up comedians. In the day I would drive Lyft (I also had my car) for about 10 hours. After that we'd drink Steel Reserves and hit some open mics. But this guy didn't have a job. Just because he was off the streets, didn't mean he completely gave up the homeless lifestyle. He wouldn't work a lick during the week. But when he needed money, he'd pack up his tent and take a bus out to some random Los Angeles suburb. Somewhere like Palm Springs or Bakersfield. He'd set up shop for days on the side of an exit ramp where lines of cars would build up at a stoplight as they got off the interstate. At every red light, he'd walk his ass up and down the lines of cars. All he had was a cardboard sign with a smiley face on it and a change cup. He called it "spangeing". Once he had enough money to pay rent, or do whatever he needed to do, he'd come back home. He'd make a good $100 bucks a day doing that. Sometimes more. You'd be surprised how often some rich guy would just drop a $50 in his cup. 

He always tried to convince me to go with him, but I never would. He swore to me that I could make $1,000 in a weekend easily. He said the less homeless you look, the more likely people are to give you money because they can relate to you. He said I had the perfect face for it, and if I held a sign that said, "FAR FROM HOME ANYTHING HELPS", that I would clean up. I never had the balls to do it though. That was step into the world of homelessness that I just wasn't willing to take. Also I would have been a complete fraud. I was doing great financially. I didn't even have rent to pay. Saved up a lot of money that summer actually. 

My point is, I don't like seeing homeless people be lazy. Because I know there's money to be made if they put forth just a little bit of effort. If I'm driving and get stopped at a light when coming off the highway, it drives me crazy to see a homeless dude just standing still at the corner. But if they're walking up and down and working the car, I'm liable to give them a dollar. I respect the hustle. I just need to see a little effort. Spangeing is a numbers game. If you can hit enough cars in the right location, especially if it's a spot where people are too frequently bombarded by homeless people, you can spange your way out of any situation. And if you can fall ass backwards into a class action lawsuit, that helps too. 

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There's plenty of change out there to be had people. Whether it's in the cupholders of cars exiting I-10, or on the ground in Alvord, Texas. You just gotta put in the effort. If they're not disclosing whether or not they were able to recover all the dimes, you know there's more out there. 8 million dimes is so many dimes. But even if you get there to find the dimes have all been picked over by more swiftly acting homeless people, at least you can sleep soundly at night knowing you put you best homeless foot forward. At least for one day.