Ralph and Rebecca Dash are no strangers to homelessness. The couple, both 55, have struggled to keep a roof of their own over their heads on and off for the past quarter century.

 

After struggling to make it in Cumberland, the couple made their way to Chippewa Falls in the late 1990s before landing in Eau Claire. Since then the Dashes have bounced in and out of homelessness, from one apartment to another, evicted for cluttering their residences. They lost their last apartment nearly three years ago, they said, after their landlord accused them of starting a cockroach infestation.

 

“We don’t think we did it, but that’s what they said,” Rebecca said one late-January night while meticulously rolling a cigarette using a plastic rolling machine and rolling papers.

 

When they haven’t been in apartments, the Dashes said, they’ve lived in whatever vehicle they owned at the time, sleeping through muggy, jungle-like nights and overnights so cold they painted the inside windows in a silver-white blanket of frost. They've been residents of the Sojorner House homeless shelter in Eau Claire since it opened in the fall of 2011.  

 

In their happier moments the Dashes speak of a yearning to live in a place of their own, the kind of place where they can have their own furniture and dishes and all of the other items that make a house a home. Ironically, while they don’t own a place of their own to live, they rent space at a storage unit that’s jam-packed with items of all sorts. Their van is similarly cluttered, evidence of the couple’s hoarding tendencies.

 

“Yes, we have a problem keeping too much stuff,” Ralph said in his distinctive southern drawl, the result, he said, of spending 18 years in Arkansas. “But it’s our way of making sure we have it ready for when we do get a place of our own.”

 

That goal appears overly optimistic most days. As the Dashes made their way through Eau Claire’s historically cold, snowy winter, wandering the streets from one arctic day to the next, they most often seemed beaten down, struggling to survive. On most days, smiles were few. There were expenses to worry about, concerns about coming up with enough money for gas for their van.

 

In her down moments, Rebecca spoke solemnly about broken family relationships with her five children from relationships with three previous men, men whom she described as “a drunk, a cheat and a bastard.” Interactions with her children are nonexistent, she said, noting she last spoke to any of her children two years ago.

 

“They don’t want nothin’ to do with me,” Rebecca said dejectedly. “They won’t talk to me for anything.”

 

Ralph looked at his wife, listening quietly to her pain before chiming in.

 

“We don’t even know where any of them are right now,” he said of the children.

 

Discouraged by their failure to find someone willing to rent to them, the Dashes said they’re pondering leaving Eau Claire, their home for the past 15 years since moving from Cumberland, where they met in the mid-1990s when one of Ralph’s relatives introduced them at a bar. They were married and have stuck together through mostly tough times that have included a variety of medical ailments, including Ralph’s 1987 motorcycle accident they said nearly killed him.

 

“I died twice. That’s all I know about it,” he said one night during a brief break from playing a computer game at Sojourner. “Then I woke up in the hospital.”

 

Rebecca listed multiple medical ailments and hospital stays during the past decade or so, including having battled breast cancer in 1998 and a bout last year with pneumonia. During one conversation she references chronic back trouble, saying “I was born with a broken back.” She wears a light-blue medical mask to prevent spreading bronchitis she said she’s had for most of this winter.

 

“I’ve been sick a lot,” Rebecca said. “I’ve had lots of problems. That’s why I have this,” she said, pointing to a large plastic bag packed full of prescription drug containers.

 

But he’s been with me through it all,” she said, turning her head to smile at Ralph. “When I had to come from Cumberland to Eau Claire for my radiation treatments, he came with me, every time, and sat at my side. He’s stuck with me through it all.”

 

Ralph smiled back at his wife.

 

__________

 

 

It had been a tough day.

 

Ralph and Rebecca Dash had weathered this late January day, a day on which the high temperature was 4 degrees below zero, just as they had each day this cold winter, as best they could. They spent the day much as they’ve spent every day since they began staying at Sojourner House. After venturing from the shelter’s warmth into the frozen morning at 7:30 a.m., they wandered a couple of blocks along South Barstow Street to the Acoustic Café, where they sat at a table after buying a cup of coffee.

 

When they left the cafe, Rebecca, donning her warm red snowsuit and a knit hat, pushed a small cart stuffed with plastic bags containing materials of all sorts. The stroller, difficult to maneuver through an inch or so of new-fallen snow that covered the sidewalk, left wheel marks in its wake, a trail marking the Dashes’ travels through downtown as they whiled away their day, looking for locations to stay warm.

 

At each stop, the Dashes were grateful to escape the bitter cold outside. Then they moved on dutifully to the next sites, the same downtown locations they have visited for the past 800-plus days they’ve stayed at Sojourner.

 

Darkness set in, and the temperature dropped along with the daylight. Ralph’s nose and cheeks turned bright red, wind-bitten and numb with cold. Rebecca trailed behind her husband, following as best she could as she struggled to push her wheeled cart through the snow-ice ruts worn into the slippery path they trod. Ralph stopped periodically to help push the stroller.

 

At 6:15 p.m. the couple returned to Sojourner, the place they began their day. Alone, they took their place on a wooden bench at the shelter's entrance. Orange-yellow light from a light above the building’s front door illuminated their breath in the frigid air. Huddled in their warmest clothes, husband and wife leaned toward each other hoping to stave off the cold.