The modern day wanderers…

There was a sixties song by Dion and the Belmonts called The Wanderer, also an ancient English poem called the Wanderer and a 1979 greaser film called The Wanderers based on the novel by Richard Price written in 1974. Now in many towns and villages across America there are modern versions of wanderers – in this case people who spend their days just wandering around, sometimes keeping to themselves and sometimes talking to themselves or to no one in particular.

A great deal of this was caused by the budget cuts of the 70’s and 80’s that resulted in the shutdown of most psychiatric care facilities and resulted in patients being sent back to their communities to live. There are literally hundreds of people wandering the streets of local towns who otherwise would have been under care in one of those facilities. These are not the stereotypical "street people" who actually live on the streets, most have nice quarters in groups homes; nor are they bums or beggars, they just have no where else to go and nothing else to do, so they wander about.

Most of these wanderers are harmless albeit maybe a bit scary to kids and mothers who might encounter them on the streets. The majorities in my little village tend to be middle-aged men who spend their days walking about the town in conversation with themselves or speaking to no one. While generally harmless, their behavior nonetheless evokes fear in some and derision in others. In our little town kids, as they are want to do, sometimes taunt these wanderers, which occasionally provokes a response that requires intervention. Many of these people are on medications for various issues and one can generally tell if one of them has missed his meds.

There is certainly nothing wrong with trying to reintegrate these people back into their communities; however, one has to ask if the system wasn’t too thoroughly dismantled and maybe much too quickly. There is very little left in the way of care to offer these people; nowhere to have them get the help that they may need. The state decided that it was going to get out of the business of providing that care and so it did, with little thought to where these folks would end up. And so they have become the wanderers, seeking something on the streets of our towns that they will never find – help.

I’m not sure that there is an answer to this issue, just as there is no easy answer to the homeless people who might also be wandering the streets and sleeping in doorways. As a society we have failed these people as we have failed the homeless, the hungry and the uninsured ill. It is easy to turn the other way and mutter a “tsk-tsk” under our breath when we see these wanderers on our streets. It is way harder to think about what we can do as individuals and as a community and society to take better care of these less fortunate people. What does your community do to provide care for its wanderers?