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Got beer? He could use one

Jim Tolbert thinks honesty is the best policy. And it pays off when he's panhandling.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published January 19, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton] Jim Tolbert, 57, checks his cell phone while taking a break from panhandling Thursday. Tolbert has lived a tough life of panhandling, physical infirmity and homelessness. His panhandling sign says it all: WHY LIE NEED BEER.

HUDSON - "Will work for food."

On street corners across Tampa Bay, you see men clutching those cardboard signs.

Not Jim Tolbert, professional panhandler.

He tried "God bless."

Then there was "Support the troops." He does. So what if he couldn't get into the military?

Then, months ago, he found a better pitch: Honesty.

WHY

LIE

NEED

BEER

Finally. Truth in advertising.

"I need a beer," says Tolbert, 57. "It's the truth."

* * *

And it works.

Tolbert was standing on his favorite median Thursday, where State Road 52 meets U.S. 19, when someone handed him a cold silver can of Coors Light.

"I never used the 'work' or 'homeless' signs," he says.

He first panhandled with the beer sign at this very corner 18 months ago. He saw one like it years ago, hitchhiking through Montana.

His best haul: $120 in four hours. He's gotten 12-packs, wine, champagne and - he swears - Xanax.

Some seem grateful to hear the truth.

"Thank you for your honesty," says Tolbert, recalling the nicest thing he's ever heard.

Some are not appreciative.

"Get a job," they tell him. "Get a life."

It doesn't bug him: "You hear it all the time."

* * *

Regrets? He's had a few.

"God has my answer," he says. "I haven't figured out what his program is yet."

He regrets not having kids.

He has no wife - no regrets there.

The factory where he worked in his hometown, Cleveland, folded when he was 34, he says. His life went south, and so did he. He was homeless, living in the woods.

Now he rents a room, scratching out an existence through disability checks, odd jobs and panhandling.

But he's got the basics covered: food, shelter ... cell phone.

"If you didn't have this," he says, waving an old Nokia with a cracked face, "you're dead in the water."

He has an arrest record, including DUI and larceny, but no mental problems, he says, no problems with drugs.

But what about problems with alcohol?

"I did," he says. "But I got rid of it."

* * *

When panhandling Tolbert doesn't so much walk as shuffle across busy 19 and 52.

It's not just years of lean, hard living. He's busted up both legs and his left arm, he says, so when he does work it's with his right. And he has a pacemaker.

"I need beer," he says, wincing as he flexes his feeble left arm. "It's good anesthesia."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Jamal Thalji can be reached at thalji@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6236.

[Last modified January 18, 2007, 23:50:07]