A homeless, toothless woman named Charlene, who always begs for a cigarette on Main Street, has been homeless in the land of the American Industrial Revoluation. About 40 people every day stagger from under the Main Street and the Route 95 bridges and hover around the bus stop near the Old Slater Mill. All wait for Ernie Marot's soup kitchen to open to start serving dinner at 3 p.m.
''Come on, you look like you have money, ''Charlene said to me in a local diner, recently. I get tired of Charlene begging for cigarettes. Another homeless man named Tom comes into the diner to get some fast black coffee from an 18 year old waitress named Heather.
''Poor Tom,'' Heather said after he bicycled away, ''He has money fro breakfast but something is wrong with his mouth so he cannot eat.''
Heather knows about tough times. For a teenager, she knows the people on the streets too well. Heather knows about tattoos, men, artists, and restraining orders.
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the home of the first mechanized factory in the United States, the Old Slater Mill on Roosevelt Avenue, is in the Blackstone Valley, a museum symbol of the decayed, outsourced American Dream.
Even entrepreneur Sam Slater, coming over from England in the 1780's to set up the first mill, never respected the poor in Pawtucket. ''Pawtucket is nothing but a ''bang town'''', Slater said about the local prostitutes. Slater gave children, ages 7 to 14, a chance to work 60 hours of work for one dollar per week. A good tour guide at Slater Mill can show a visitor the five different ways children could be killed on the machinery.
Pawtucket, a city that has been divided by the Blackstone River, once housed over several hundred small textile mills since the early 1800's. However, since the early 1950's, with textile mills moving South and overseas, Pawtucket workers in the population of 72,500, now adjust to living of service industry jobs.
Young Pawtucket workers now depend on two or three part-time jobs for a ''living wage'' by working at Stop & Shop, fast food restaurants, or Rhode Island's largest employer, Seekonk or Attleboro, Massachusetts.
The magnet of commerce in Pawtucket, Main Street, is an empty shell of the shopping and manufacturing district that existed until the mid 1980's. One homeless vet named Dave remembers the days before he was homeless when working in the textile mills.
''I remember getting out of Vietnam and at least getting a job in the textile mills,'' Dave said. ''Now, I don't even have that.''
Hundreds of Charlenes, Toms, Heathers, and Daves exist on the fringes of downtown Pawtucket.
The solution to the profile of poverty in Pawtucket? More mercy and less cynicism? More food pantries and soup kitchens? More homeless shelters?
In the meantime, the story of poverty in Pawtucket is based on the ability of the poor to survive as do Charlene, Tom,Heather, and Dave manage to do everyday.
''Come on, you look like you have money, ''Charlene said to me in a local diner, recently. I get tired of Charlene begging for cigarettes. Another homeless man named Tom comes into the diner to get some fast black coffee from an 18 year old waitress named Heather.
''Poor Tom,'' Heather said after he bicycled away, ''He has money fro breakfast but something is wrong with his mouth so he cannot eat.''
Heather knows about tough times. For a teenager, she knows the people on the streets too well. Heather knows about tattoos, men, artists, and restraining orders.
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the home of the first mechanized factory in the United States, the Old Slater Mill on Roosevelt Avenue, is in the Blackstone Valley, a museum symbol of the decayed, outsourced American Dream.
Even entrepreneur Sam Slater, coming over from England in the 1780's to set up the first mill, never respected the poor in Pawtucket. ''Pawtucket is nothing but a ''bang town'''', Slater said about the local prostitutes. Slater gave children, ages 7 to 14, a chance to work 60 hours of work for one dollar per week. A good tour guide at Slater Mill can show a visitor the five different ways children could be killed on the machinery.
Pawtucket, a city that has been divided by the Blackstone River, once housed over several hundred small textile mills since the early 1800's. However, since the early 1950's, with textile mills moving South and overseas, Pawtucket workers in the population of 72,500, now adjust to living of service industry jobs.
Young Pawtucket workers now depend on two or three part-time jobs for a ''living wage'' by working at Stop & Shop, fast food restaurants, or Rhode Island's largest employer, Seekonk or Attleboro, Massachusetts.
The magnet of commerce in Pawtucket, Main Street, is an empty shell of the shopping and manufacturing district that existed until the mid 1980's. One homeless vet named Dave remembers the days before he was homeless when working in the textile mills.
''I remember getting out of Vietnam and at least getting a job in the textile mills,'' Dave said. ''Now, I don't even have that.''
Hundreds of Charlenes, Toms, Heathers, and Daves exist on the fringes of downtown Pawtucket.
The solution to the profile of poverty in Pawtucket? More mercy and less cynicism? More food pantries and soup kitchens? More homeless shelters?
In the meantime, the story of poverty in Pawtucket is based on the ability of the poor to survive as do Charlene, Tom,Heather, and Dave manage to do everyday.
