Seven hundred yards down from McDonald's, by the entrance of Burger King, two dirty kids sit in a shopping cart filled with cans, children's toys, and blankets smelling of piss. Their father leans against the cart, and the two-year-old girl and three-year-old boy stare at me with blank expressions. The girl holds a crumpled bag of potato chips, the boy an empty Mountain Dew bottle. A dirty Barbie doll sits tangled in filthy blankets, its leg jammed into a pop bottle.
By this point, I have seen a lot of frustration, a lot of pain, a lot of desperation. I have seen countless adults pulled low by their addictions, sometimes pulling down those around them. I have become somewhat numb--out of necessity--to the chaos that seems to be now normal for much of the country.
Yet seeing two dirty kids in a shopping cart jolts me [back to awareness]: it's a visible level of despair that I hadn't seen since Hunts Point, and I can't just walk past. I go over to talk to the father, who leans against the cart.
The father, James, politely answers my questions with no sense of desperation in his voice, no anger. He is straight-up, speaking with a calm that clashes with the whoops and yells coming from a handful of others loitering by the entrance.
James has been living this way for a while, and some kids have come into his life, and he is gonna do the best he knows how for his kids. That means keeping them around him all the time, and that means pushing them in his shopping cart as he collect cans and bottles, tracking close to their mother. She stands nearby, wearing pajama bottoms, a jacket, and a tiny pink Dora the Explorer backpack. Her eyes are vacant and glassy as she holds a cardboard sign, written in crayon, that reads, "Homeless Hungry / Anything Helps."
James tells me that they've been homeless for a year and a half after getting evicted for nonpayment. Right now they're staying in a shed behind the house of an old friend. "We have a cord ran out to the shed; it has been warm the last three nights, so that's good," he says.
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Επτακόσια μέτρα από τα McDonald's, στην είσοδο του Burger King, δύο βρώμικα παιδιά κάθονται σε ένα καλάθι αγορών γεμάτο κουτάκια, παιδικά παιχνίδια και κουβέρτες που μυρίζουν μύρι. Ο πατέρας τους ακουμπάει στο κάρο και το δίχρονο κορίτσι και το τρίχρονο αγόρι με κοιτούν με κενές εκφράσεις. Το κορίτσι κρατά μια τσαλακωμένη σακούλα πατατάκια, το αγόρι ένα άδειο μπουκάλι Mountain Dew. Μια βρώμικη κούκλα Barbie κάθεται μπερδεμένη σε βρώ
Has anyone traveled from Dayton to Portsmouth recently? I'm wondering if there is construction that will make the trip take longer than 2 hours. Trying to plan a funeral internment.
