In Providence: Plenty

“She’s a real piece of work, I’ll tell you that. A real witch if ever there was one.”

On the South Side of Providence, there’s a woman who likes to be prepared.

“I’d see her coming home from the store sometimes with her car all loaded up and whenever I’d joke with her about it, she’d swear up a storm. Nobody can walk on her grass. No kids go to the house for Halloween. The whole neighborhood hates her. She’s lived here forever and she’s the bane of everybody’s existence. And she’s got that garage.”

Her garage is filled with everything you could imagine — canned food, cleaning supplies, toilet paper — all the things that have gone way up in value over the past few weeks. Even as stores manage to restock, hoarders are still a problem.

That’s why the neighbors were feeling some extra animosity knowing that they had one in their midst. Her tactics were no surprise. The garage full of miscellaneous items is visible from the street, and on warm summer days, she’d leave the door to it open while she’d go around with a clipboard, seeming to take stock of her supplies.

She did have one friend on the street. Their houses are next to each other, and this was the person who contacted me to tell me about what happened this weekend.

“We’ve both lived here for over– I’ve been here 46 years, she’s been here a little less than that. Her husband and her lived in the house, and when he passed away, that was when she started shopping a lot. Buying up all these things. It’s not just the garage. Her whole basement is full. Rooms in her house. I’ve only been in there once, and it wasn’t like on the television — filthy, it wasn’t like that. Very clean and organized, but she was more like one of the preppers you see on that other show. But everything in its place. I think she was worried without her husband or not having enough, so she started buying up different things and buying in bulk. When they started closing everything down, I thought she’d be in good shape. Nobody was more prepared than her.”

But that made her a target for some nasty comments.

“You can understand it. People can’t get what they need. They know she’s got the whole garage and they don’t even know about the rest of it. I called her to tell her and she didn’t even know. She keeps to herself. She knew what was going on, but she didn’t know how upset everybody was — not just at her, but with everything. So she goes, ‘What does everybody need?’ I said, ‘How am I supposed to know?’ It’s not like you talk to your neighbors like you used to. I just know what I hear when I go for my walk and people are outside getting some air. I hear things and some people have asked me about her, so I told her there are people upset, and the next thing I know, she’s putting up signs.”

The signs went up on Friday on a few poles on the street, and on her front door. They said that on Saturday, the neighborhood prepper was going to share her stash. The garage would be left open and anybody could come and take what they need as long as they came one at a time.

Her friend was stunned.

“You think people that aren’t good at sharing. I called her and told her I couldn’t believe she would do something like that, and she didn’t think anything of it. To her, this was why you load up on all this, so you can help out if you need to — for an emergency. She told me she’s going to do it every Saturday — just keep bringing stuff out from the house to the garage as long as people need her to. Do you believe that?”

All day and into the night on Saturday, neighbors came by to grab things, only to be chastised from one of the back windows for not taking enough.

“She must have known people would feel bad. Nobody likes taking charity. She got in the window and told them– ‘Take some more! What am I going to do with all this?’ like they were doing her a favor. I got in my window too to help her, so these poor people had two old ladies yelling at them from either end of the driveway until they grabbed some more. Some of them got to talking, and I think that was the first time she’s talked to some of them. It was the first time I’ve talked to some of them too. She told them to bring friends from other neighborhoods if they needed to — that she has plenty. Now everybody thinks she’s so nice. I told them she’s still a bitch, don’t let her fool you. But I do think she’s doing a good thing. I’m very impressed by it, because she didn’t have to do it and when I try to tell her how nice she’s being, she doesn’t want to hear it. That’s how you know what kind of person she really is.”

When I ask her if she plans on grabbing anything from the garage, I hear her chuckle a little bit.

“No, but I’m going to put some things in there. I’m from the same generation as her so I have a full pantry and a basement you can’t even walk around in. I may not have as much as her, but I’ll give what I have. That’s what we have to do. My husband makes fun of me for it, but who’s laughing now?”

There’s a neighborhood in Providence with a cranky woman who has an open garage and an open heart that nobody knew about until they needed it the most.

I guess that’s how I could have opened the story, but I thought I’d save the nicest part for last — when you’d need it the most.