Frozen Bag Lady

"The wind came off the Hudson River and through the trees in Central Park and it was so cold that it felt like a knife. Rebecca Smith was 61 years old and she lived in a cardboard box in a doorway on West 74th Street. She had lived there for a long time, and everybody in the neighbourhood knew her, and nobody knew her at all."

Rebecca died in that doorway. Jimmy Breslin reported her life and death and accompanied her for the last stage of her journey to the morgue and then Potter’s Field. Jimmy and the gravedigger were the only one’s present.

"The pine box was number 404 for the year. It was a plain box, made of wood that was thin and unfinished, and it had the name Rebecca Smith written on the top in black magic marker. There was no velvet, there were no flowers, and there was nobody to cry. In the city of New York, when you die with nothing, you are taken to the edge of the sky and the end of the world."

Her death and his columns caused an outrage and a change in NYC laws regarding homeless people.

Breslin, along with Pete Hamill, Murray Kempton and others highlighted the alarming number of homeless people in NYC. That was 1982 and the figure stood at 13,000 men, women and children.

The city was forced to act. And it did.

Newspapers are now almost dead with their newsrooms devastated by big tech and today the number of homeless in NYC is 103,000 people and of those 34,000 are children. It gets worse every year.

This is not a NYC problem, it is the same the world over.

There is barely a mention of it on Instagram or Facebook.

Thanks Mark.

This one’s for Jimmy ……. and Rebecca and the 103,000.

The Way of Breslin

Dad’s gone for smokes

For boy of six, a ghost

Life spent in pub, to boast

In hell to roast

Mother hit the bottle

Full foot on throttle

An English teacher scalding

A Harlem welfare officer balling

Bug eyed boy

Learning

Discerning

Grammar and kindness

Often with a black eye

But never blindness

Roaming streets alone

Stage set for tone

Childhood carved in pain

That left a terrible stain

That then became

Stick to beat all who shame

Banging typewriters

In the newspaper game

Find the guys to blame

Anger and talent

Cocktail of the street

Where nothing is neat

Always ready for a beat

Jimmy turned up the heat

Trudging through sleet

And snow

And rain

And roaring temperatures

And roaring residents

In tenements tall

Those lying in the gutters

Littered his columns

With what they uttered

And spluttered

From the bottom up

The losers corner

Was the best for this scorner

Pain in the pavement

From drug enslavement

Cracked sidewalks

Cracked heads

Crack for sale

Pipes glowing

City snowing

White powder town

Mayor’s a clown

Party boy

Rupert’s first US toy

Near Times Square

People stare

As baby thrown from window

Skeletal people

Puffin’ on pipes

Baseball bats are weapons

For death will beckon

The war is surviving

Only dealers thriving

Mobster’s rule

Nobody hears the screams

Jimmy’s on the beat

Copy sings like hymn sheet

Cops happy to drink and meet

Two fingers banging

On his words readers hanging

Mafia heads

Break his legs

Jimmy keeps on typing

Ugly truths

Beautiful sentences

Joy and pain

In the south Bronx

The leather soled

Courtroom genius

Plies his trade

Corner kids wave

Forgotten tales

Forgotten people

These are stories

From top of stairs

Where others

Can’t be bothered to go

But he would show

Walking the city

Talking the city

Writing the city

His city

His playground

For terror and hope

Loved the city

Loved the people

Hated the schemers

Defended the dreamers

His like never to be seen again

And after 50 years

Banging keyboards

And pavements

No big goodbye

Just these simple words

Thanks for the loan of the hall.