Preston Lewis opened a door, and the afternoon sun streamed in.
About 13 people formed a line in front of Lewis, a corps officer at the Salvation Army on University Avenue, a couple streets west of Main Street.
The agency provides more than 1,700 meals each month, said Karen Lewis, Preston Lewis’ wife and co-worker.
Visitors filtered toward the plates of lasagna and bread lining a counter.
The beginning of the month is slow, Lewis said, because the homeless get welfare checks on the first of the month.
Becky and Greg Sylvester were there. They are regulars and have been together for seven years.
“We understand each other,” said Greg, 41. “We don’t really have all the problems that other people have.”
The Sylvesters are homeless. They live alone under a tent in the woods.
People always ask how they stay clean, Becky said.
“I do our clothes in a pail bucket,” she said.
They use another bucket for showers.
“She washes. I dry,” he said.
“That’s a lot of compatibility,” she said, laughing.
Staying clean isn’t a problem, she said, and neither is the lack of shelter. They can handle the rain pouring down on their tarpless tent, even when it soaks everything for days.
Their biggest problem is prejudice: The Sylvesters are an interracial couple.
When people see the couple holding hands in public, they call her white trash, she said. At him, they yell racial slurs.
“We have a hard time going to the shelters,” she said.
They always get racist comments. The passers-by they meet on the street ask why they’re together. She said they should mind their own business.
“God never judged anybody,” she said.
Her husband said they just have to brush it off.
“I think it’s better living in the woods,” he said. “You don’t have a lot of racist people.”
The Sylvesters said their love keeps them going. They’ll be together forever, she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 4/16/2014 under the headline "Homeless couple stays together through rough times"]
