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What About Helping Homeless in Wheeling?

Editor, News-Register:

As reported in your newspaper, it seems peculiar to me that the Wheeling mayor recently proudly takes a photo opportunity before the dog park that the city will spend big bucks $32,000 plus $20,000 to remove the glass from the grass, so that the privileged pooches can pee, poo, and paw the park. Bark for the Park! Another $25,000 winner! Total so far: $77,000.

Perhaps the mayor failed to notice the denizens within a stone’s throw of his smile; the homeless who roam Wheeling Creek and Ohio River banks and find refuge under the protective shadows of its bridges. Could it be they viewed the occasion? Their unwashed fingers clutching the chain-link fence, their disillusioned eyes taking in the happy event, their forsaken minds wondering where is our poverty park to pee, poo, and paw, Mr. Mayor? Who is holding umbrellas over our heads? Who is carrying us to a warm and secure home? Who is giving us a doggy bath? Where are our clean, cold-weather coats? Who is petting us?

Certainly no one in city hall.

Where are our dog houses? We cannot find where the city has constructed 12-foot by 16-foot bungalows on public land to give us shelter. From whom did the city solicit $32,000 for our poverty pee, poo, and paw park? Where is the parking lot for our vehicle-incarcerated vagrants?

Is it because we homeless vagabonds have no tails to wag? Is it because our noses are red and snotty instead of wet and cute? Is it because our coats are tattered instead of brushed? Is it because our faces are weary, weather-beaten, and unpleasant instead of energetic, content, and lovable? To the Bark for the Park, we are the Marks Living In No Parks — $00,000 — Losers!

Is it because we vagrants don’t vote?

It has been stated and codified in newspaper articles that many of us homeless have been discarded from their residence by unaffordable rents brought on by the gas-frackers moving into town. The imminent fracking out-of-staters who will flow into town, subsequently will swell our legions with new displaced cast-offs on the river banks and in the bridges’ protective shadows. Where are the parks to hold our numbers? Certainly not in Wheeling.

It seems to us, Mr. Mayor, that life is good for doggies and not so good for us wonkies in Wheeling.

Sonny Fair

Wheeling

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