Word On The Street: Keep On Truckin’

Alfonse Purcell took a bus from Farren Avenue across town to Whalley Avenue early Monday in search of independence, in the form of four wheels he could call his own.

Purcell checked out the trucks for sale outside Dynamic Auto at 271 Whalley. He discovered he wants to reemerge from retirement. But he needs a vehicle to do so.

“I need something to work,” he said during a conversation on the ​“Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s ​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. ​“I want to clean basements. I do painting. Sheetrock. Move garbage.” He does landscaping, too, as evidenced, he said, by the tulips outside his home.

Purcell came here from Jamaica in 1995 in search of ​“opportunity.” He belonged to a construction union for 17 years. He worked until taking early retirement at 61 years old.

Two years later, he finds the money doesn’t stretch as far as he needs it to. And he enjoys working. Though he doesn’t enjoy answering to a boss who tells him when he has to work.

“I don’t have money for independence,” he said. ​“I don’t want to be pushed around. I want to be independent.

“I don’t want a boss anymore. I want to be my own boss. 

He checked out a lot in West Haven the other day. He had his eye on a truck. It had 150,000 miles on it. They were asking $5,300. ​“Too high for that amount of money.”

He’d like a Chevy or a Ford, he said. Something in the $3,500 range.

Click on the video to watch the conversation with Alfonso Purcell on the​“Word on the Street” segment of WNHH’s​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program, including discussion of road rage and crashes on Edgewood and the impact of new bike lanes. Click here to subscribe to WNHH FM’s​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” and here to subscribe to other WNHH programs.