Some seasons ago, being a youngster still and having no money in my pockets, I thought I would walk about and see other parts of Lowell. The people with whom I was living had moved away and left me on the curb. At first I thought that they were gone for the morning, then for the day. Next I figured they were taking an overnight away. But when another and another and another overnight passed, I knew they were not coming back for me. It was spring–I drank from puddles. I toppled trash cans behind green and blue tenements, nosed out one stranger’s sandwich crusts, another’s supper scraps. I would like to be able to say I found solace in someone’s garden, on someone’s swing, but I did not. I would like to be able to say that a neighbor fed me kibble to supplement my trash can pickings, but no neighbor did–not then, not in that neighborhood. And thus I set off for the mills.
