image poverty!

When someone says a word and instant image comes to your head of your own interpretations of what the word means and how u see it. When someone mentions the word poverty and certain image comes in my head no matter how worse poverty can get or what countries have poverty or in what neighborhoods or communities live in poverty. When I hear "poverty" I think of a child hood memory of my dad taking me to were he grew up, "the projects" in downtown St. Louis.

I can remember how everything was filthy and the hall ways were dirty and it always reeked with the smell of urine. I can also remember how tall all the apartment buildings were and how they looked like they were going to collapse in a tear or two. I saw a lot of things such as debre on the floor, broken beer bottles, 40 ounce cans of colt liquor, broken glass, dead grass, dirt. It just was not a good surrounding at all. I didn't mind going down there when I was younger, but looking back on it now makes me think "why would my dad take me down there?", " why would he want his youngest daughter to be in that type of surrounding?" I cant imagine living in a atmosphere like that. I realize that I was brought up good with all my necessities and wants.

I can also remember looking at the kids that used to play in the elevator, which also reeked of urine. They wore dirty clothes and didn't care about how they looked. Some of them had runny noses and broken shoes. But when your a kid you don't mind things like that cause your mind is not set on how someone looks all that mattered is that we had fun. The grown ups had synthetic hair or sometimes their hair wasn't done. I also recall a permanite smell. I cant really explain it but I know what it is when I smell it. The smell always triggers this memory. The memory of poverty.