Photo by Robert Burroughs

Foster Hood: " Some people say yogurt is the best dang thing in the world for you, but it gives a lot of Indians the runs."

Foster Hood don't have no “Native Californian" bumper sticker on the back of his Blazer. Anybody else who's lived in this county long enough to have a suntan may try to pass himself off as a local, but not Foster. “I'm still just a displaced Okie," he says. “I've only lived here in Pala for 27 years."

Foster Hood: “I'm still just a displaced Okie."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Foster, a Shawnee Indian originally from Oklahoma, has a broad Indian face and an easy smile that breaks into laughter at any excuse. He wears a bright red baseball cap that says “Chief” across the front and looks so much like an Indian you might think he was typecast in Hollywood, which, in fact, he was. Over the years Foster has appeared as an extra in several Hollywood movies. For the last year or so, though, he's been using his charm and talents for another purpose: delivering about 100 hot meals a day to homebound elderly people on the Pala, Pauma, La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual Indian reservations.

To the San Pasqual Reservation woman recovering from a broken hip: “I wish you'd hurry up and get on your feet so I could sign you up for my soccer team."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

On his 100-mile route through the backcountry, Foster drives an old, beat-up Blazer four-wheel drive provided by the Area Agency on Aging. The vehicle looks and handles as if it were selected without prejudice toward age: the transmission howls and the brakes squeal; neither the heater nor the air conditioner works; there's a hole through the windshield that looks suspiciously like a bullet hole If the Blazer were a horse some kind soul would take it out and shoot it.

Foster Hood: "No matter what I do, I'm stuck in the middle.”

Photo by Robert Burroughs

And at age 69, Foster's no frisky young colt himself. “Just old enough not to be so damn mean," he says. At one of his first stops on the Pala Reservation. Foster honks his horn loudly three times, and before long an elderly woman appears at the front door of the shack. As she ambles toward the Blazer. Foster reaches into the hot box in the back seat and takes out one cardboard plate sealed with aluminum foil; from an ice chest he takes one tiny plastic cup of salad, one small cup of canned peaches, and one pint of milk. “Well, what do we have today?" the woman asks.

The transmission howls and the brakes squeal; neither the heater nor the air conditioner works.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

“Today we have seafood." Foster says. Barbecued seagull.

“Again?" the woman scowls. Then, in spite of her best efforts, a faint smile appears at the corners of her mouth.

For most of the people on the route Foster's good humor and easygoing charm provide as much sustenance as the hot meal itself, and for some of the old folks living on the remote back roads. Foster will be the only person they will see that day.

Diabetes is quite common on the reservations, and several of the recipients of the meals program have had legs amputated because of the disease. Some of the elderly are blind from cataracts or glaucoma, others are simply too old and feeble to prepare food for themselves. “For the most part, old folks out here are better off than they would be in the city because the community here is so close-knit." Foster says. “People here look out for each other. But some of the young people who went to college have moved away — there aren't any jobs for them here — and that leaves some of the old folks stranded, with nobody to look after them."

At another stop, Foster tells an old man, “If hell's half as hot as this day, then I don't ever wanna go,"

“Well, they say hell's fulla people who never wanted to go," the man points out.

Foster nods. “It's a damn good thing Indians don't believe in hell, ain't it?"

On the San Pasqual Reservation, an elderly woman lives by herself in a tarpaper house surrounded by beautiful prickly pear cacti. She's recovering from a broken hip and is barely able to get out of bed.

Foster, who also has one leg that gives him trouble from time to time, gets out of the car and carries the meal in to her. Then he spends a few minutes trying to cheer the woman up “I wish you'd hurry up and get on your feet so I could sign you up for my soccer team," he says.

“Oh, Foster, I don't wanna play on your soccer team," she replies.

At another home lives a woman who can't digest milk. “I've got extra milk today if you want it," he teases.

“I was weaned from milk a long time ago," the old woman cackles.

Foster smiles, “Just asking."

A little farther down the road, Foster says, “It's amazing how one type of food is nutritious to one person but ain't worth a damn to somebody else Take yogurt, for example Some people say It's the best dang thing in the world for you, but it gives a lot of Indians the runs." (Some native Americans lack an enzyme that helps them digest milk products.)

At one stop on his route Foster points out a very old man sitting in the shade of a big live oak. “He's 90-something years old," Foster says with a grin. “Just the other day I saw him out here mending fences."

Many of the places Foster visits are dilapidated mobile homes surrounded by dead cars and heaps of trash, but a few of the homes are newer buildings built by the US. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Some people out here got lucky," Foster says, pointing to a small, neatly kept HUD home “But the qualifications were idiotic If you weren't working you couldn’t quality because you didn’t earn enough to meet the payments, and If you were working you couldn't qualify because you earned too much." He shakes his head and scowls, reflecting the Indians' cynicism about government-sponsored programs. While the sophisticated urbanites who inhabit most of Southern California look on government regulations as minor challenges in the game of wealth, a lot of native Americans look on government regulations as humiliating, and they refuse to play the game regardless of the consequences.

Foster slams the groaning old Blazer up and down the eroded dirt roads like a kid playing his favorite video game He knows precisely when to swerve right to avoid a bad rut, when to tromp on the gas to fly over a sand hole Most of the homes on the reservations have no addresses posted out front, but Foster knows by heart where everybody lives — a skill that makes him uniquely suited for this job Not only does he know where everybody lives, he knows their age, their ailments, and their personal tragedies. Foster can tell with just a glance if the folks have been up and about since he was there last. “You learn how to read signs on this job," he says. “See that string latch on that front door? The latch is done up. so there's nobody home No point in stopping here"

Seven times now in less than a year, old folks on Foster's route have passed away. “That's the worst thing about this job." he sighs. “It can get too damn emotional."

It would be difficult to imagine anybody doing Foster's job better than he does. And for perhaps a fourth of those who are on the home-delivered meals program, it would be difficult to imagine them getting along without him. Yet the program on the reservations has been in jeopardy for some time now, and Foster knows that any day could be his last on the job.

The meals program is funded by the federal government via the Older Americans Act, and the money is tunneled through several layers of government agencies before finally arriving at San Diego County's Area Agency on Aging, which assigned the contract for the meals program in the northeastern part of the county to the Joslyn Seniors Center, in Fallbrook. In San Diego County, the Area Agency on Aging hasn't received an increase in funding in more than five years, and even though this county has a high percentage of retirees, the funding is the second lowest of any county in the state Still, the government's funding only provides for about half the cost of the meals program. The other half must come from voluntary contributions from the recipients themselves, from fund raisers, and from donations from the community — George Bush's famous thousand points of light.

But even in some of the most affluent communities of San Diego, donations for senior citizens' programs have been grim. One local program administrator mailed out 500 urgent requests for donations to every member of the chamber of commerce in his community. After three months he'd only received three responses and a total of $150.

The director of the Joslyn Center in Fallbrook is Stewart Gast, a tall, thin, kindly gentleman who finds it exasperating to try to understand the Indians of his meals program. “We just can't afford to provide meals to those five reservations anymore," he says. “The average donation we get from them is about two cents per meal, but it costs us about $6.50 to deliver it to them. There are no churches or Lions Clubs out there we can go to for donations. Our direct appeals to the tribal councils have been totally ignored… The people need the service If we were compensated, we would continue to provide it. But there's an animosity toward the white man out there It's irrational. They're still fighting the Indian wars, and if you're a white man you're victimized by it."

If the Indians seem indifferent to Mr. Gast's efforts on their behalf, it's because the animosity has been building up for some time now. A few weeks ago an article In the Roadrunner, a newspaper published in Valley Center and distributed on the reservations, said the meals program on the reservations may be discontinued because the Indians weren't paying their fair share “That's where the trouble really started." Foster Hood recalls. “The people who were able to donate something quit the program right now. I lost about half the people, and the donations went down to nothing. They told me 'Well, if that's the way they feel about us, then we don't need them.’ It was a matter of pride"

But putting pride aside, and putting idiotic government regulations aside and putting aside a wasteful system that sifts relief funds through infinite layers of bureaucracy, the people on the reservations need the meals program far more than their elderly counterparts off the reservation. Some seniors on the meals program in wealthier areas of the county live in lavishly decorated $300,000 homes on modest but adequate pensions and have no trouble donating the requested $2.50 per meal. For those people the home-delivered meals program is nothing more than a government-subsidized catering service Meanwhile many old people on the reservation survive on social security (one woman admits to living on $260 a month), and making any contribution to the meals program is a burden to them.

“We're survivors out here," one tiny, gray woman in Pala says, “and we'll get by without it if we have to We'll just go back to our old ways"

Mary Matteson. who lives on the San Pasqual reservation and receives the meals program, is less fatalistic about it. “We're entitled to this program just as much as anybody else," she says. “I'm 77 and blessed with pretty good health, but I have days when I can't get up and cook for myself. I can get along without the meals if I have to, but there are lots of others out here who really need it. Soon as I can. I'm gonna start making some phone calls and see what we can do about starting our own meals program."

"That's what the people on the reservations really want." Foster says, a meals program of their own, which they manage, receiving the same federal funding as the other programs.

If the reservations were to organize among themselves, they could request separate funding (as much as $45,000) through the Older Americans Act. The remainder of the necessary funds would come out of the tribal budgets. One reason the tribes haven't done this yet is because of an old, deep-seated mistrust of the government. To share costs with the federal government is like making a pact with the devil. As one local administrator with the Area Agency on Aging, Roger Bailey, puts it, "Historically, the Indians' relationship with the government has been that the government will pay for whatever service is provided, or the service isn't provided."

Foster Hood states the problem a little more bluntly. "Like Indians everywhere, these people out here been getting screwed ever since Columbus landed. The only thing they ever got for free was bullets, Bibles, and disease. They ain't gonna give the government any more than they have to"

Since he's not Luiseño and only part Indian at that, Foster doesn't feel it's his place to speak for the people of the reservations. "No matter what I do, I'm stuck in the middle,” he says cheerfully, managing to find an amusing irony in his dilemma. "Some people are gonna say I'm just a newcomer here so I should just mind my own business, and others are gonna say I'm just trying to protect my job What a lot of people don't understand is this isn't really a job Mostly, I'm just trying to make myself useful.”

A happy postscript: On June 31, the contract with the Joslyn Center in Fallbrook expired, and Foster Hood made what he thought were his last meal deliveries. But at the last minute, after a sudden shakedown of the Pala Tribal Council and the appointment of a new tribal chairman, the five reservations submitted their own bid to the Area Agency on Aging and were awarded the new contract, much to everyone's relief. After a few renovations are made, the meals will be prepared in the kitchen of the tribal hall in Pala and delivered by the same old broken-down Blazer to homebound seniors on the five reservations. Foster Hood has agreed to stay on as the driver.