There are things you don't notice when driving or riding, things you only see when walking. State troopers and Boston public works were cleaning out someone's home under the Mass. Ave. bridge at about 10 o'clock this morning. There were blankets and makeshift beds and even a bike so someone had created an oasis in this dry, almost out-of-the-way cranny of the city. The Pollyanna part of my brain pretended that the homeless folks who lived here were woken up and moved by city outreach workers to more comfortable, safer, indoor accommodation. (I like to delude myself daily with dreams of a better world - it helps me to get out of bed. Some mornings).
And then I got to H Square and as the Spare Change news hawkers waved their papers in my face I thought, Shit! That home probably belongs to one of these people. Some hapless guy is out here in the city somewhere working a godawful job (or three) that pays less than minimum wage and he's going to come "home" on this dreary, chilly, wet evening and everything that signified his home will be gone; all the stuff he's managed to collect or assemble to make the place livable now in the dump over by Magazine St. in Roxbury. Nothing left but the rain streaked cement underbelly of the bridge.
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