Goodbye to my 'Texas Cowboy' [View all]

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http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0208-banks-eddie-dotson-20140208,0,4597828.column

Goodbye to my 'Texas Cowboy'
A column about homeless Eddie Dotson changed his life — and mine too, if in more subtle ways. Now I wish I had told him.
By Sandy Banks
February 7, 2014, 4:56 p.m.

Most reporters I know have a story they've covered that's stuck with them, long after the journalism was done.

Mine is about Eddie Dotson, a man who lived for years on the streets, under a freeway near USC — until I met him in 2009 and helped his family retrieve him.

I wrote a column then about Eddie and the elegant sidewalk dwelling he'd built from other people's castoffs:

He didn't have water or electricity, but he had matching candlesticks on his coffee table, a bowl of fruit on a kitchen counter and artwork mounted on tarpaulin walls. His golf clubs were propped against a bookcase, his clothes hung neatly in a closet made of cardboard.