NEWSBYDIANE NILAN

The parking lot was their playground. Now it's gone, thanks to an apparent deal between the Congressman, Georgia's majority Senate leader and an assumedly hapless mope.

The Oglethorpe Inn, off the exit ramp in the decimated carpet industry town of Calhoun, GA, is like one of thousands of nondescript motels peeking at our nation's Interstate highway system. Gordon County, sitting in northwest Georgia, where 1 in 10 school children are reported to be homeless, has no shelter for those without. So the 2-story motel became "home" for about 80 people who lost the keys to their own places.

Now the kids and their families are forced to involuntarily check out of their 12' x 12' abodes to search for a safe place to sleep, do homework, play, and keep their stuff.

Good luck with that.

Other than racking up 2,500 miles on my road-weary motorhome, emptying the bank account to pay for gas, and adding to global climate change, what did our two week Southern (Dis)Comfort tour accomplish in the world of helping homeless people?

At my last post, Pat LaMarche and I were headed to Birmingham, AL, "The Magic City," to nudge a much-needed movement to house homeless youth ages 19-26. The event brought together community members, social service types, media and experts - two courageous young men who knew life on the streets from living there, Courtney Brooks and Josh Pugh.

New Orleans, the city reshaped by Mother Nature, NOLA lovers and hucksters, is a perfect laboratory to demonstrate what works, what doesn't and what is needed in the world of ending homelessness.

Our ever-changing, weather-dependent Southern DisComfort tour travel plans gave us the gift of an unplanned day in the Big Easy, which filled as quickly as the levees on a rainy day.

My HuffPost blogging friend Pat LaMarche and I soon found ourselves transported through a culinary wasteland (west bank of NOLA) into Cafe Hope, a jewel of an effort to give at-risk youth a chance at success by teaching them a trade that opens doors to a hopeful future. Martin Gutierrez, head of Neighborhood and Community Services for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans (CCANO), was our affable chauffeur and guide.

Isolation does strange things to people, and we’re no exception.

Yesterday’s massive storm that debilitated the bulk of the country forced us into hibernation in, of all places, New Orleans, the place deemed to be the best spot for people watching by Travel and Leisure magazine.

This Southern DisComfort tour had, until yesterday, proceeded without a hitch. We’ve traveled over 2,000 of our 3,000 mile 8-state journey.

But Big Mamma Storm had other plans.

We naively thought we’d been through the worst as we got blasted by rain, winds and thunder in Mobile. Ha. My Blackberry had a message about cancellations of events in Lafayette, LA due to the big storm. Huh?

Florida, the Sunshine State, has changed since I lived here as a kid. What was an exciting vacation destination and a great place to raise kids now has all the charm of an aging vaudeville performer standing along the roadside holding a "will dance for food" sign.

Pat LaMarche and I, on week 2 of our homelessness awareness trek, dubbed Southern DisComfort Tour, have crisscrossed miles of Florida backroads on our way to speaking and film screening engagements. We see the other side of the Fun in the Sun state. Dreams once represented by the opening of new restaurants or small gift shops now sit shuttered, by the thousands. It's not just in the backwater communities away from the sandy coasts, but this destitution disease has spread to the main drags of the tonier resorts.

The tall, neatly dressed thin man could have been a poster child for the Sunshine State with his bright yellow tank top and spotless white pants. Instead he was the target of local police. The issue? Drying his clothes on the Gainesville dog park fence across from the St. Francis Shelter and Soup Kitchen.

Pat LaMarche and I are into the 2nd week of our Southern (Dis)Comfort tour. Yesterday after our presentation hosted by the Big Bend Homeless Coalition in Tallahassee,  Pat and I stopped in at a laundromat to clear out our week's worth of dirty clothing and managed to spend about $10. I'd suspect this man didn't have the 10-spot to invest in looking respectable, but that didn't stop him from drying his clothes the old-fashioned way on a sunny, warm day. I watched as the police officer walked from the "offender," who then deliberately and neatly folded his wash, placing it in his carry-all satchel. He disappeared around the fence that supported his habit: hygiene.

We're were in rural, rebel flag country over the weekend, where razor ribbon, re-po joints and roadkill adorn these flat Georgia highways.

After waking up in a parking lot to the bang of garbage trucks doing their job, Pat LaMarche and I finished our posts (hers can be found at Huffington Post). We left our "camping" spot in Georgia Southern University's parking lot and headed to Tallahassee, rolling diagonally across the Peach State.

Speaking with folks at our GA Southern event the previous night confirmed what we've seen so far on this 2,000 mile, 8-state journey: rampant poverty and hidden homelessness take the "shine" off bucolic rural life. A school social worker, obviously stressed by her day-to-day challenges, begged for information about how to start a shelter for the desperate families in her community.

I'm an optimist. But what I've been seeing across the country, including what Pat and I have witnessed in the first few days of our "Southern (Dis)Comfort" tour, gives me the willies.

I, the stalwart one, find myself struggling with our ambitious 2,000 mile homelessness-awareness tour. It's the little things—leaky roof, balky step, lack of water for the night. If I'm feeling it, what do families living on the edge in poverty and homelessness feel about more daunting realities?

Pat LaMarche, my travel companion, and I have been in plenty of shelters. We just visited one that (sadly) reminded both of us of what we've seen in too many places: buildings not intended to house humans converted into emergency housing by well-intentioned people wanting to offer a haven to the unhoused people in their community. What typically results is a facility that is, um, shabby. I know—I ran a shelter carved out of a former municipal incinerator that at times was shabby.

A little boy looked at the toothbrush in the bag of toiletries he'd been given and exclaimed, "I've never had my own toothbrush."

Our travels for Southern (Dis)Comfort tour today took us to an impressive clothing distribution center in Shelby, NC, stocked and staffed by volunteers from the local Junior Women's Club. They raise funds and purchase new clothing and toiletries for the hundreds of homeless kids in this typical small (21,000) city in south central North Carolina.

Seeing the smiles on kids faces when they receive a new outfit, get a stack of new undies and socks, and walk out with their own toothbrush has to be rewarding for volunteers running this operation. They do it right, with dignity, and give families a chance to "look normal" despite their abnormal living conditions.

Mayor Terry Bellamy (Asheville, NC) is far from the enemy in my books when it comes to compassion for homeless persons.

Meeting with her today, my southern (dis)comfort cohort Pat LaMarche and I heard sincere concern for people who are hungry and homeless in America, the topic of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors hunger and homelessness report.

The report in question appears right before the Christmas holidays, attempting, I don't know, to prick consciences of those slipping into ultra-consumerism? It mumbles, "Pssst. People across the country are hungry and homeless." And that's about it. Ho hum. The media scrape crumbs from this content-deficient report and toss a few anemic stories our way.

Some of us seasoned advocates long for a more comprehensive picture of what cities and towns of all sizes are seeing with regards to hunger and homelessness. This doesn't need to be another report of HUD-statistics-lite, but a reflection of the desperation (or prosperity!) of America's forgotten impoverished folks. It will be a snapshot of a nation's coping with horrendous fiscal challenges and might inspire outrage and action from the immobilized masses and attention-deficit-disordered lawmakers.