FOLEY, Ala. — Forget about global markets slumping and big banks that need to be bailed out to the tune of billions. This is a personal story about hard times. There are actual faces that go with the story, a story of two men - father and son — trying to keep the faith for each other.

The father is Roger Mercer, 61, a Vietnam veteran, born in Bainbridge, Ga.

The son is Michael Mercer, 34, who is facing serious health issues.

They are on the road and homeless; trying to get on down the road to Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., what they see as a promising area where they hope to find work.

There are “Good Samaritans” in this story of hard times on the road, and in true Good Samaritan fashion they want to remain anonymous.

“Once we lost our job - we’re plumbers’ helpers, although we do the same job as a licensed plumber, but they don’t pay us as much — we tried to hang on as long as we could,” said Roger on Thursday.

“With the economy getting more sour by the day, pretty soon we ended up homeless. From one homeless shelter to the next. Most shelters aren’t set up for long term care, and that presents a lot of problems. The shelters are overwhelmed with homeless people.”

Roger said he and Michael have spent as many nights sleeping in their truck as they have in homeless shelters.

They were passing through the area Monday and had a tire blowout. Their spare was flat too. They stopped at a Foley business, and the business sent them down the road to another where they might be able to get a second-hand tire. That’s where they met the Good Samaritan. He gave them the tire, mounted it, and put it on for them at no cost.

Roger and Michael left and went down to the Salvation Army Thrift Store to spend the night in their truck. As Roger put it, there was a “port-o-john” outside the Thrift Store that was “kind of handy for us.”

Shortly after midnight, a Foley police officer stopped and told them they would have to move on.

“The officer was really nice and apologetic,” Roger said.

“He said it wasn’t his rule. I told him I was in the military once and understood about chain of command.”

(Roger was in Vietnam from May 1965 to June 1966 with the 173rd Airborne.)

They moved on to Summerdale and parked along the road in some trees near a business. About 5:30 a.m., Roger said what he identified as a “sheriff’s deputy” woke them up and told them they would have to move on. When they told him they were having transmission problems - “We’ve been just kind of ‘pedaling’ along trying to stay out of everybody’s way so we don’t get run over” - the deputy said if they put the 1994 Ford Ranger on the road he’d arrest them for reckless endangerment.

Roger had the card of the Foley businessman who had helped him with the tire. Roger contacted him, and the businessman sent his wrecker down to pick up the truck and tow it back to Foley. As of Friday morning, the businessman was still working on the truck to get it out of low gear. He was doing the work free.

Also, he and his wife arranged for Roger and Michael to get meals and gave them a place to stay as well.

“It’s meant the world to us. Without them, we’d be stuck on the road with a flat tire and bad transmission. They would have had the truck towed off by now and impounded,” Roger said.

Asked what hard times on the road are like, Roger said it’s a matter of “biting your tongue sometimes.

“God’s gonna pull us us through. God loves me I know. I know that every morning that I wake up. I’ve had four heart attacks in the past eight years.”

Don’t jump to conclusions. Roger said he is not really a religious person.

“I know God loves me, but I can’t reconcile what things I saw and did over there (Vietnam) with what I hear (in church). I have a lot of pressure on me because of things that happened over there but I’ve learned to deal with them.”

Roger describes himself as a “heavy drinker and bar room brawler” when he returned to the states from Vietnam.

“I put my wife through a living hell,” he said, noting that after eight or 10 years he stopped all that. His wife, Michael’s mother, died in 2004.

“When she was alive the three of us leaned on each other. Now, it’s just the two of us. I can’t show any weakness because my son is totally dependent on me like I am on him.”

“Neither one of us can break down in front of the other,” Michael said.

“Both of us feel the pressure.”

The upcoming holidays mean something different for Roger and Michael from that many people anticipate.

“Things slow down on the holidays, and people don’t want to do much work. Work is more important,” Michael said.

Michael is diabetic and is on two types on insulin. He has high blood pressure as well.

“My sugar’s been off the wall lately. It puts a lot of stress on my father.”

On Thursday, when the truck transmission situation was still up in the air, Roger said, come what may, he was leaving.

“I’ll be honest with you. I’m gonna try to sneak out of town at 20 miles an hour if I can. I have no choice really. We need to find work.”

The truck situation looked somewhat brighter on Friday.

Ecumenical Ministries Inc., a United Way agency, arranged for Roger and Michael to have a case of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) and a gas voucher Friday morning. EMI typically handles their transient program through the Foley Police Department.

As Roger and Michael waited to leave Friday morning, they were confronted with another complication of sorts. Somebody told them locally that plenty of work was available in the Houston area, that compliments of Hurricane Ike.

As Roger put it, they were roughly halfway to Houston and halfway to Tampa-St. Pete, or kind of like being between a rock and the hard place.