Kennedy Plaza can't hide Providence Center crowd

I am a regular at the Kennedy Plaza bus terminal -soon to be terminated. I just read " Riders give mixed reviews to reconfigured RIPTA bus stop ( July 14 ). I can  only applaud any improvement in the location - worthy of the imagination of the famous French writer Zola. So numerous are the scenes of drunken, drug crazed decadence and public squalor. But  do they expect the  mentally troubled denizens of the area to conveniently disappear ?

          Yesterday  near Providence City Hall I was approached by a toothless, alcoholic , drug- burn out hag. She needed two dollars- hardly enough for a cup of coffee these days. But  she quickly remembered me - and both my first and last name- from Washington Park, Providence some four decades ago. And I remembered her as JM - a young woman with a certain Irish prettiness - before her adolescent crack up.  Within a few minutes we chatted about all the dead people we knew from the 70s. So many blue collar- wasted lives . She said she was still with the Providence Center.  And living alone somewhere in South Providence.   For a while JM was underselling the regular street prostitutes. Her price went as low as two dollars for oral sex.

             Poor  wasted JM, I reflected. And I also wondered : why does the Providence Center pay so little attention to a mental patient's body including her dental health ? Would it not help JM to have good dentures ? I  did give her two dollars but  hesitated to buy her a steak sandwich  at the nearby Subway. They will accept my EBT card. JM is ten years younger than I. " You're still just a kid ", I told her.

                             ( Of course, you will never print this . But Zola would understand )