On the Wall

If walls could talk...

How many times have you heard that saying? I've heard it thousands of times myself. I've said it.

Back before the military closed their base here, it was something almost everyone said. Like this one time, I remember Betty Johnson, Major Johnson's wife talking about how the worst kept secret in town was the fact that her next-door neighbour, Jessica was running around. You know, Chuck's wife. May he rest in peace. Chuck's been gone for about 8 or 9 years now.

Well apparently, she was seeing some young private. You know the type, young, dumb and carrying a gun. Talk of the town, that was. Well, that week it was. The next week, it was someone or something else.

And Betty used to always say, "I tell you, if those walls could talk..."

That was over 30 years ago. And the walls have seen and heard a lot. Affairs, arguments, budding young love, secrets, and lies. The walls take it all in, silent witnesses to the circle of life.

Now, I'm not one to go in for gossip. I find it cheap, petty, a waste of time. But I've seen too much. I know too much. I have to speak up. I have to talk about the things I've witnessed over the past few years. Maybe you can do something about it. I can't, my voice has been silenced almost as if mortar sealed my lips.

I supposed it did. It's such a helpless feeling, to stand by and watch. I can't do a damn thing. And even if I say something, who's going to listen?

The truth is, the way I see it, my hometown is dying. It breaks my heart. I've been here my entire life. Sixty-two years. I started off small and grew tall, strong, and proud. I love my city. It's vibrant, joyful, friendly, and surrounded by the most beautiful nature the world can offer. Or it was. Lately, there's precious little to be proud of or to love.

We were once 75000 strong. Now we're 72000 weak. Again, don't get me wrong, this ain't gossip, this here is facts, cold, hard facts that you need to hear.

Just this morning, guess who I saw with that Rideout girl from over the tracks? You know the one, trouble she is, has been since the day her family showed up. No wonder, poor child would have been better off raised by wolves than those people she called parents. And when I saw wolves, I mean actual wolves. My understanding is they care for their young.

Well, it was Betty's grandbaby, Maddie, out there with her.

Well, you should have seen them! No more than 20, maybe, if memory serves, looking 45, with a shopping cart full of crap, crouched on the ground with a pipe in each of their faces. Right out in broad daylight!

Now that girl, I can see, but Maddie? She comes from a good family, really good. Her mother is the mayor! Her father is a doctor. But there she was, getting high and acting out right there in front of me. Didn't seem to notice I was even there.

I shouldn't have been surprised. I'm not really. I see it every day. I see it several times a day. Young people, old people, well, not so much old, that game don't see too many really old people, but you know what I mean. Lots of people, snorting, sniffing, injecting, and smoking poison.

And it's not just the so-called "dregs of society." I told you about Maddie, a good girl like I said. But I've seen all sorts out here on the street, taking that junk.

Just last Wednesday, I saw Jimmy Finestra's wife out here getting a hit. Pulled her blue mini-van right up, met some guy, and well, you fill in the blanks. I won't mention his name, I'm no rat. She's got 4 kids and a house!

I've seen the run-of-the-mill drunks. They're always down here, sipping cheap ale all day long and sometimes holding out a hat for spare change. Old Freddy's still here. Hard to believe, I know. He's been out on these streets drinking every day since 1992, but there he is, dispensing hops-fueled wisdom to anyone who will listen. The saddest thing is, he's starting to make sense.

There's always been that. Booze and drugs. And of course the occasional dose of urine, but it's so much worse now. As much as Maddie kills me, there are so many just like her, I've lost count.

It's gotten so bad, we started calling the stretch of concrete between Steel Drive and King Edward Lane the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The part that runs along Queen, from the Old Tarts Bakery to the long-defunct General Hospital. Broken people, all day long, broken, battered, beaten, the dreams of a better life shattered. Shattered so deeply they don't even remember having them.

Then, of course, there's the night-dwellers, that's what I call them. I counted 17 last night. That's a slow evening. The night before there were 23. Minus 14 outside and there they were, huddled close, trying to avoid the wind off the river for a minute and trying to close their eyes for some rest. Some of them had bottles, some had pipes.

The shelter down the street, over on Queen St., it's full up every single evening. No wonder, it's only got 10 beds. So they come down here. They're freezing, they're hungry and they use. They use whatever they can get their hands on because they're freezing and hungry.

Times are tough. People are tougher. I watch those that have, and that number's growing smaller and smaller every day, walking over folks, angry they're in the way. I've watched them scream, "get a job," at them, and other vile things. I've watched them cross the street to avoid those people.

I can't blame them. Decent hardworking people want to walk down the street and feel safe. There's no safety on these streets. Over half of the businesses down here have closed, either from lack of business or repeated vandalism. Panhandlers are aggressively competing with each other for the ever-waning charitable kindness of strangers. It's not a good place to be. They don't seem to get how close they are to that edge. or maybe they do. Maybe that's why they're so nasty.

All day, I watch people trudging back and forth from the Salvation Army with a free slice of cold pizza and a small bag of snacks. I see the brief joy in their eyes as they gobble up the only meal they're going to have. And I see it slowly fade as the food disappears.

That look of despair and helplessness still haunts me each and every time I see it. And when you see it in the eyes of a child, you just know things have gotten out of control.

That's what prompted me to speak up, I think, the baby. I was standing there, like I always do, and it hit me, just how bad it is. A woman, tall, with a proud bearing and beautiful skin, was walking by with a baby in a stroller and a small child, a boy. I'd say he was about 6.

They were clean and appropriately dressed. The mom's eyes were darting back and forth as she and her young passed by. She knew these streets. I knew her. She's a decent woman. Works. Actually, she works two jobs. She works over at the Cheapy-Cheap, the local discount grocery store, and on weekends she cleans offices, bingo halls, and whatever else she can to make a dollar.

Anyway, I digress. And I know she'd kill me for telling tales out of school. She's proud, Mary is. Yeah, I know proud Mary, what a cliche, but that's her name, what do you want from me?

They stopped for a second right beside me. Mary started to take the wrapper off her son's sandwich. They'd come from the food bank, I saw them come out. He took half from the cellophane with his tiny hand, his brown eyes flat with that darkness only hunger can cause, and handed the other half to his mother.

"Give this to the baby, Mama," he said.

And that was it. I wish I could say it was the first time I saw that kind of thing. It's not. I see it all the time. What I want to know is what are we going to do about it?

In a country this rich, this big, there's no reason for any of it? Where's the help? Why are people huddled together out in the cold at night with nowhere to go? Why are the streets unsafe? Why is there no help for the addicted? And why is there not enough food to go around? I know how big this country is. I know we grow more food than we can consume. Where is it?

We need to do better. I've seen too much. But hey, I'm just the brick wall over at the corner of Queen and Albert, what do I know?

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