Myrtle the Turtle or The Profile of a Bag Lady This story goes back to July 13, 1917, in a little two-story row home located in Kensington, a blue collar neighborhood of East Philadelphia. The time is 4:30 a.m. and Mrs. Smalley has just delivered a fourteen-and-a-half pound baby girl whom she immediately names Ruth after her mother. Her husband, Harry, had wanted a boy, but being a good man, doesn't take more than ten seconds to adjust. Life is very pleasant for Ruthy in her early years. There are alot of kids on the block and family life is good. Harry, her dad, works for a local bakery. He drives a horse and wagon to deliver bread on a company route. He gets up early to go to work and comes home before the other men on the block. From time to time, he brings home cakes and pastries left over on his route. On special days, he drives his horse and wagon right up to the house and takes little Ruthy for a ride. One day her dad drives his wagon up to the house and a neighbor takes a picture with her new "Brownie" camera of Harry in his company uniform standing next to his wagon with Ruthy (who is then five) sitting on his shoulder, and his wife standing next to him. When Ruthy is eight years old her mom tries to give birth to a second child. The doctor has warned her not to because she isn't well, but things don't always work the way they're suppose to. Unfortunately, Mrs. Smalley dies trying to deliver Ruthy's brother, "Little Harry." Ruthy has heard of "dying" before but she doesn't understands what it means. When her mother dies she still doesn't understand it; all she understands is that her mom went away, and she misses her very, very much. In the years that follow, things get worse. Her dad starts drinking and, in time, loses his job at the bakery. Then the bank forecloses on the house they're living in and they start living in cheap rented rooms. There's never enough money and what little her daddy makes goes towards his booze. Ruthy is always hungry and Harry is too drunk to realize it. After many despairing days and nights and countless evictions, Ruthy decides to do something about it. It is 1930 and Ruthy is thirteen when she starts stealing. The next three years she is in and out of detention houses. By the time she reaches sixteen she is an expert at stealing and sex. She has lost track of her father and doesn't know if he is alive or dead. She thinks about her mother from time to time but doesn't know where she or "baby Harry" were buried. She is all alone. Ruthy gets a job working in a hosiery mill for twelve-and-a-half cents an hour. It is what is called a "Sweat Shop" in those days and you have to be real nice to the boss to get the job. She has a little third-floor room in a private home for which she pays two dollars a week. When things get slow at the mill, they send her home. At times she walks the two miles to the mill, only to find out there is no work available. To supplement her small income she allows physical favors to men for a meal or a night out, always under the pretext of being sociable. Things start becoming a little easier, some of her male friends even give her small gifts. By being nice to her landlord, a foul-smelling, portly man with no teeth, in his late sixties, she is able to cut her rent in half. Ruthy is twenty-three years old when World War II starts; she is working in a whorehouse in Kensington at the time. A lot has happened since the days when she was working at the mill. One of the meany men she was seeing has gotten her pregnant; the authorities had taken the child away because she couldn't prove who the father was. She was seventeen at the time. It was after this experience that she decided to go professional. She thinks of her early childhood less and less. When the war comes, the city fills up with servicemen and factory workers. Economically, it is the best time in Ruthy's existence. There are a lot of young girls giving it away for nothing to help keep up the morale of the boys, but there is still plenty of trade left over for the whores. Since Ruthy never has had a tomorrow to look forward to, she never saves for it. She indulges her every whim and desire. She buys clothes, wears them, and then gives them away. She will go to a restaurant, order a banana split and a sundae only to follow it up with a champagne steak dinner. She is out of control. By the late 1950's Ruthy can't work in any of the whorehouses anymore. She's picked up some venereal disease along the way and a touch of consumption. The word is out and nobody wants her so she takes to street walking. To make things more desperate, she looks flaccid, unkempt and has a drug habit to go with it. The police get tired of picking her up and letting her go. Finally, she tries to commit suicide by putting herself on fire and they put her away. It's June 1975 when Ruthy gets out of the Norristown Mental Hospital. They have just passed a new law giving inmates more rights, so Ruthy signs herself out and they have to let her go. She makes her way back down to Philadelphia again and starts panhandling. She finds a little spot under an old freight line bridge and makes a home there. There is a hole in the wall supporting the bridge which is on the side of a hill. She digs the hole bigger and crawls into it. When the cops in the district discover her there, they tag her with the name, "Myrtle the Turtle." They leave her along, because she isn't bothering anyone. In time, she becomes so unfamiliar a sight in the area that she's hardly noticed anymore. She scavenges and panhandles during the day and crawls into her hole at night. She isn't a fashion plate; she wears everything she owns, layer upon layer. Someone may have worn one of the things she has on to a formal ball and on top of that there's a burlap wrap that was once an onion sack. In the area, people have no idea who Myrtle is or where she came from nor do they care. She is old bent up remains of a woman carved out of desolation and despair. She is now part of the fiber in the fabric of life that exists in that area. Workers in the freight yard leave parts of their eaten sandwiches and things from their lunches, knowing "Myrtle the Turtle" will pick it up. One rainy October morning, Myrtle is walking along with her bag when she sees a dog with its tail drooping and shivering in the cold. Not out of feeling, because she is beyond feeling, but more out of instinct, Myrtle reaches into her bag and pulls out a part of an old sandwich she had found yesterday and gives it to the starving animal. The poor beast looks at her in astonished concern, as if in wonder of how someone so destitute could have compassion. In any case, it gratefully eats the offering, and thereafter, Myrtle and the dog become inseparable. Where "Myrtle the Turtle" goes, the dog follows. At night they huddle up in the hole together to keep warm. Besides being a companion, the dog looks after her. There isn't a waking or sleeping moment that the dog isn't with her. Myrtle has never been happier. She has more bounce when she walks, and some even suspect she's smiling, but it's hard to tell since she avoids looking at people. It is January 6, 1981 when Myrtle dies. No one knows the exact time it happened. Someone saw the dog standing near the entrance to Myrtle's place. She wasn't seen walking around that morning. Well, as it turns out, someone calls the police who immediately dispatch a car to Myrtle's cave. At first, the dog growls and won't let anyone near the hole, but one of the men who works in the railyard throws a brick at the dog and injures it. When the police look inside, Myrtle's dead. The police report establishes Myrtle's real identity through the remains of a faded birth certificate they find in her bag. They also find a crumpled snapshot of a man in a delivery uniform with a pretty little girl perched on his shoulders; there is a handsome woman standing next to him and a bakery wagon behind them. They look happy in the picture but who's to know who they could have been or where Myrtle got the picture. Tragedies don't always happen suddenly. Joseph Vosbikian