Iris Soares is one of the regulars on Bus 19, as it rumbles across a broad swath of Boston — poor and prosperous, but mostly poor. Her day takes her from food pantry to food pantry, as she struggles to feed her family. Disability took her from the workforce years ago; getting by remains her full-time job.
---
Soares is headed for a door that is a half-hour ride across Dorchester and Roxbury, past weedy lots, well-kept shops, storefront churches. When at last the bus turns onto Warren Street and heads toward Dudley Square, her movements gain purpose. She reaches up and hits the yellow call strip.
She is already on her feet, hands gripped firmly to the cart handle, when the bus snorts and hisses to a stop at the stone facade of the Twelfth Baptist Church. As soon as the door snaps open, she is out with a clatter of her wire cart, huffing as fast as she can across the church parking lot toward a lone squat building and the door.
That door leads to the church’s food pantry, one stop on a circuit of pantries Soares visits each week to find enough to feed herself, one of her grown sons, and a grandson. It doesn’t open until 10, and food won’t be distributed until noon. But crowds at food pantries have gotten larger in the last year, and more unruly. The church has tried to assure the two hundred or so who show up each week that they do not need to come so early, to wait so long. But they do not listen. For Soares, it is a chance she cannot take. This is not just a food pantry. It is an everyday emergency.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/17/pantries_bus_19_help_give_woman_a_lifeline/Hope she doesn't use coupons....
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
