Baltimore

I grew up in Baltimore. I lived inside the city limits until I was almost four, and then again during my last three years of college, and for three years in my twenties. I left in January 1978, and have only been back to visit.

People don't believe me when I say Baltimore was as segregated in the fifties and early sixties as any place in the South. African-Americans did not attend movie theaters or Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, or dance on The Buddy Deane Show, except on specific days when the white kids didn't come. Someone once told me "Hairspray" was a "nice fantasy" but except for the happy ending, John Waters perfectly captured Baltimore in 1963.

Baltimore's schools integrated in 1954, and that, coupled with inexpensive new houses in the suburbs, led to an exodus from the city to Baltimore County, which surrounds Baltimore on three sides. African-Americans couldn't buy houses in the suburbs. The county schools I attended had  only a handful of African-American kids, and then only beginning in 1959, when Baltimore County closed the separate schools. They came from formerly rural neighborhoods older than the suburbs.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened up public accommodations for people who had money, but those who didn't were often excluded from good jobs and the deindustrialization which was already happening. There were riots in many American cities throughout the sixties, but not in Baltimore, where home ownership was more widespread and there were still jobs. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, the city exploded. I was in college; my parents and sister left the day of the shooting for spring break with my grandparents in Miami. I was home with my uncle, trying to finish my coursework for my freshman year in college. The city and then the county were placed under curfew. Among my friends, many had parents who owned stores in the inner city that were looted and firebombed. Friendships were tested when this group of friends, angry at the rioters, confronted friends who were sympathetic to the rioters.

Baltimore today is very different than it was. The formerly white working-class neighborhoods are being gentrified at a fast clip; the African-American neighborhoods have been hollowed out by losing the middle class to the now-integrated suburbs. The once segregated and largely Jewish neighborhood where I grew up in Baltimore County is now mostly African-American.

I don't remember anyone ever being fond of the Baltimore Police Department. When I was in college, in long hair and bell bottomed jeans, the police always seemed just plain mean. There was a police riot at the downtown Flower Mart held the first week in May in 1968. The press said it was disrupted by thugs, but the truth was, it was peaceful until the police moved in. Nationwide in the last year especially, there has been a focus on police brutality and the killing of young Black men, with no action taken against the officers. I read on AOL this morning that a police report states that another inmate in the same patrol car heard Gray banging against the fence in the car, trying to injure himself. That seems self-serving from the police. A report from a group called "The Fourth Estate" says that Gray had back surgery before this incident. Even the police don't believe that story.

Like in Ferguson, it's time to blame the victim. Friends on Facebook posted Gray's long rap sheet. I had to tell one friend to say one hundred times "THE POLICE DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXECUTE ANYONE." Others have complained that Jeopardy was preempted or the baseball game was canceled, or it took a long time to get home from work.

Back in the day, when I protested the war in Vietnam by helping to block major streets in Baltimore during rush hour, people were ready to kill us for the inconvenience we caused. As opposed to the inconvenience of having your house burned by napalm, or your son killed in action or coming back a broken drug addict.

That's how I feel about this current unrest. People were inconvenienced. The ghetto in West Baltimore hasn't been a good place to live in a long time. There are blocks of empty houses, not many stores. It's bleak. And the police still apparently have the reputation for sheer nastiness they had in the 1970s.

I saw the looters in online videos (we don't have a working television). They were carrying rolls of toilet paper and boxes of diapers. As my late grandmother would say "It's a pity on them, they should have to live like that."

I lived through the Baltimore riot of 1968, safely  out in the suburbs. Same with Miami's riots in 1980, only then I was laid up with hepatitis and couldn't go anywhere anyway.  I lived off Vermont Avenue and Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1992, when the police were acquitted in the Rodney King case. I was in the middle of it then, but even before that, there was anger when a Korean store owner got probation after shooting a fourteen year old girl in the back. The local bus service had also been cut that year.

Los Angeles in 1992 was a terrible place. In Baltimore this week, neighbors came out after one night of looting to help clean up. Most of the protests were peaceful, although that wasn't entirely clear from the news broadcasts. I think Baltimore's mayor was right to delay asking the Governor for help. And I think bringing in the National Guard in full combat gear is excessive. It's not Iraq out there, it's just people frustrated and angry that the system is rigged against them.

I pray for the peace of Baltimore, as I do for Jerusalem, another deeply divided city.

This is a picture I took last June of a street in the "Old West Baltimore Historic District" near where the rioting occurred.

Berks County

At the CCAR convention in Philadelphia last month, I met the rabbi from Reading, Pennsylvania, the city in Berks County. I had read that Reading was the poorest city in America. He said "We've moved up to second or third poorest." He told me his synagogue, Oheb Shalom, is located outside of Reading's city limits.

I got into this with him because Reading was the next place I planned to visit on my monthly trips away from Morgantown, and Berks County is the largest in population I plan to visit in Year Three.

I felt guilty about leaving Joe. We close on our new house May 11, and we are trying to get all our stuff packed. His administrative assistant at temple has been out sick for a few weeks now, making his work life more difficult. Still, I left him alone for three days partly because of my own obsessiveness about this travel project, and partly to take a break from my own stress about moving.

We've had some good weather, unfortunately not for this trip. There were a few drops of rain as I left, but before I had even gotten out of Morgantown there was a storm of driving rain, hail, and sleet. That continued across the mountains into Maryland where it was only windy and rainy.The weather has remained cool for late April. Today's high in Reading was only about 47, overcast and windy. The trees are all in bloom, just a few days behind Morgantown.

Downtown Reading isn't much of a walk-around place. There is some attempt to restore older storefronts, and I notice just a hint of gentrification downtown, old houses with cleaned-up brick, new shutters and planters outside. The hipsters live across the railroad tracks and the Schuylkill River in West Reading. Beyond that is Wyomissing, half old-money big stone houses and half suburban. Oheb Shalom is in the suburban part of Wyomissing, as well as Berkshire Mall, the better of the two indoor malls I found. There is a lovely park along a stream with an ominous sign warning that the park is for "residents and guests only." I suppose I could have been arrested for taking a picture. I had mall food court fast Chinese for dinner Wednesday. They had baked fish, asparagus and fried plantains, so I took advantage of those options.

 I thought I would have time to find thirty historic sites from the National Register. Normally, I only look for ten. Of the first thirty on the list,  five were in Reading. I looked for those before sunset Wednesday. I found one, partly because I didn't know where I was going, partly because construction blocked some streets, and partly because sunset is twenty minutes earlier at 76 West longitude than at 80. I did find an old school building in a residential and industrial neighborhood before going back to my hotel.

Thursday, I planned to  find ten places in the morning, another ten in the afternoon, and the last nine in the evening. That was too ambitious. The morning went well enough. Lunch at an all-you can-eat pizza place slowed down my afternoon, and I couldn't get phone service for directions. Altogether, I found fourteen places on the National Register, and got pictures of  eleven of them. It's interesting being in a county where European settlement took place before the American revolution. There are lots of semi-forgotten places out in the countryside going back to our earliest era in this country.

Berks County is only an hour drive from Philadelphia if the traffic is moving. I noted new houses in that direction for under $300,000. Probably a good deal compared to being closer in. Reading looks like Philadelphia, with blocks of row houses. It reminds me more of Baltimore, at least the way it was when I was growing up. Many of the row houses are tiny, like in East Baltimore, and there are small stores on many corners. To the north and southeast, there are larger row houses, like those near Druid Hill Park in Baltimore or in West Philadelphia, but not nearly as grand. Southeast of downtown is a mountain of sorts with a grand park. I might have explored more had the weather been better. At the foot of the park on the main road are two synagogues - one is the former home of Oheb Shalom; the other is a Conservative synagogue, Kesher Zion, in a classical brick-and-columns building with "Happy Are They Who Dwell In Your House" written on the lintel. That synagogue is still in operation. Reading has a Chabad, just north of town, in an urban neighborhood close to where I stayed.

The city population is largely Puerto Rican. At the mall, I saw them and Mexicans (different look and different accent in Spanish), Asians, well-dressed and also less elegant Caucasians and African-Americans. I didn't see any real tension. I also didn't speak to too many people on this trip. I'm not an extrovert.

I had suggestions from friends on Facebook about outlet stores, a theater, an artist exhibition space, and Daniel Boone's original homestead. Only the Boone homestead was on my list. It was one of the ones I didn't get to. I was feeling schvach ( Joe and I are taking an intro Yiddish class at OLLI) when I got back to the motel to rest at 4:30. I didn't think I could eat anything, but managed to get out to the Chinese buffet across the street from the pizza place where I had lunch. I ate only healthy stuff, except for the desserts. A little tea and sugar fixed me right up.

I'm considering different routes for the trip home tomorrow. I promised to be back for Shabbat. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is the fastest way, but it costs $15 in tolls and the food options are not great. We'll see.

Here are some pics:

The park in Wyomissing

Cotton and Maple Streets School, Reading

Dreibelbis Station Bridge, Greenwich Township

Dreibelbis Mill, Perry Township

Boyer- Mertz Farm, Maxatawny Township

Bethel A.M.E. Church, Reading

City Hall, Reading

Askew Bridge, Reading

Bahr Mill Complex, Colebrookdale Township

Bellman's Union Church, Centre Township

Shopping

I joined a new gym the first of the year, and I've been going regularly. My old gym was for people over sixty, and most of the men wore jeans and tee shirts to work out. The new gym is open to anyone, and I am in the top one percent by age. People wear gym clothes: Under Armour or Adidas. The younger and more built, men and women both, wear short shorts and tank tops. Many show off tattoos on their bulging muscles. I've been going in wearing ten year old shorts that I use for bicycling. They are tattered. I pair them with plain cotton workout shirts I bought over a year ago.

Since I am often unshaven when I work out in the morning, and I don't really know the people I see at the gym, it occurred to me last week that they probably think I'm some old homeless guy. I had to fix this.

I visited T. J. Maxx, a chain of discount leftover clothes at greatly reduced prices. It is at University Town Center, northeast of Morgantown, off I-79. The center has big-box stores: Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, Petco, Dick's, Giant Eagle. There are chain restaurants like Cheddar's and Olive Garden. There is a Best Buy, a Barnes & Noble and a Regal multiplex. The center is spread out and up a hill. It's almost impossible to walk from one store to another. When we moved here, temple members told us they never go there. Of course, it's mobbed, and traffic going in and out the one entrance is always backed up.

At T.J. Maxx, I found three mesh work-out shirts, three pairs of workout shorts, three casual shorts, three pairs of semi-dress slacks and three short-sleeve shirts. The work out clothes were from Adidas and Reebok, the other clothes Geoffrey Beene, Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, Levi's and other designers. I paid $280. List price for the clothes I bought would have been over $800.

Back home, I went through drawers and closets looking for clothes to get rid of. Five bags. Mostly raggedy, but some I just don't want to wear any longer. I decided if I could find a picture of myself wearing an item in Los Angeles, so at least five and a half years ago, I should give it away. I made exceptions. We are moving next month (if all goes well). It's appalling how much stuff, including old clothes, we have. We are much better off than we think we are.

Last night (Wednesday) Rabbi Joe conducted a funeral in Fairmont, about fifteen miles south of here, for Jack Golden,  the co-owner of Golden Brothers Department Store in downtown Fairmont, started by his father and uncle. He and a first cousin were the second generation owners. Jack's five children live near Washington or in Florida; three spoke at the funeral, in addition to Joe. The store was several stories tall. Jack was usually on the second floor. They gave credit before credit cards, gave discounts to people on welfare, clothed coal miners and dancers in their day. Jack asked customers what they needed, and made periodic trips to New York to buy what his customers told him they needed. He knew many of his clients by name. One daughter reported that Jack said "You don't have to wear designer clothes to be stylish." Golden's  closed in 1979.

Fairmont has an elegant bridge leading into town across the Monongahela River. There is a beaux-arts domed courthouse. Downtown is beautiful, but mostly empty. Madison Street, the main street for merchants, is more parking lots than anything else. The synagogue in town closed and was torn down. South of town, a few exits on I-79, is a mall and some "Town Center"-style shopping areas. University Town Center, where I shopped at T.J.Maxx, is maybe twenty miles north of Fairmont.

Jack Golden's funeral was at an old-fashioned funeral home around the corner from where Golden's used to be. His Elks Lodge performed a beautiful short ceremony before the actual funeral, and the Lodge hosted a reception in their historic building, a short walk from the funeral home. Being there was a taste of what Fairmont once was.

I have an early memory of getting dressed up and riding a streetcar with my mother to downtown Baltimore. The last streetcar in Baltimore ran when I was six, so before that. Baltimore had four department stores on one corner: Hutzler's, The Hecht Company, Stewart's and Hochschild-Kohn. I don't think any of them exist anymore, certainly not downtown. Reisterstown Road Plaza, the suburban center on the Baltimore City-County line, near where I grew up, had a Hecht Company and Stewart's, both beautiful stores in their day. Both gone. There were a variety of clothing stores, like Hamburger's and Calby's, that had all the clothes we bought for school. I got to know some of the salespeople, and the grandson of the original Hutzler was my counselor at day camp when I was nine. My father helped create clothes for Joseph Banks, London Fog, and other companies that used to actually make their clothes in Baltimore.

 I'm just exercising an old person's right to wax nostalgic about how things used to be.  It doesn't do any good to complain about how times have changed, or to feel guilty about shopping at a national discount chain in a poorly sited and designed impersonal shopping area outside of town. It's just the way it is now.

 Still, I like my new clothes, and as I was walking into the gym in my new threads yesterday, a pretty young girl smiled at me and said "Hi."

Three Short Pieces: The House, The Legislature, The Lecture

1. The House

 The inspector found all kinds of problems: a leak in the addition, rigged up wiring, possible asbestos on the floor in the basement. We also got an estimate of closing costs from the bank. It seemed a lot higher than we talked about.  We are to close on May 11, but the tenant is a student and graduation is May 15. We were ready to back out of the whole deal.

We met with Jonathan, the agent. He tried to calm me down. They hired a contractor to make repairs; then there will be another inspection. He explained some of the expenses, and said he would speak to the bank and get back to me about some of the others. The tenant is to move out on May 9.

So I'm feeling a little better. We have packed nothing, and we still haven't had the reinspection. I took thirty books to a charity book sale. I tried to recycle probably a hundred magazines, mostly New Yorker, The Economist ( Joe's) and Rolling Stone (mine). Mon County has recycling only every other Saturday at  Walmart south of town. During the week, the City of Westover (five miles from our house, west over the Monongahela River) has recycling. I took our magazines there Monday, but they were closed to repave the parking lot. The magazines went out with the trash yesterday morning.
Where we are moving, in the City of Morgantown, there is curbside recycling.

Joe went out and bought boxes yesterday, and our friends Dan and Daya have given us used boxes from their recent move.

I arranged for homeowner's insurance yesterday.

Somehow, this is going to happen.

II. The Legislature

I haven't been shy about hating on our state legislators. They eliminated penalties for mine owners who flout safety regulations, made it nearly impossible for miners who are injured on the job to sue, proposed many anti-gay bills, tried to fight Federal air-quality regulations, and tried to make it possible for anyone over eighteen to carry a concealed weapon with no training or permit.

OLLI, the Osher Life-Long Learning Institute, cosponsored a "wrap-up" of the last legislative session with the Democratic and Republican Central Committees and the League of Women Voters. All delegates and senators were invited.  Four of our five legislators, one of our two Senators and two from neighboring districts showed up. I couldn't wait to ask some pointed questions. I wrote out five or six cards. A woman I know from The League of Women Voters was to pick from the questions submitted those she would ask the legislators.

I wanted to know from Joe Statler and Cindy Frich (who didn't come) why they endorsed Resolution 99 which called for a national constitutional convention to disallow any recognition of same-gender relationships. All three of the Senators sponsored a "religious freedom" bill almost identical to Indiana's controversial bill. It didn't pass. I asked if they have had a change of heart from the fallout in Indiana. Delegate Amanda Pasdon opposed Common Core standards for schools because they don't reflect "West Virginia values." I asked which values she was talking about. Delegate Brian Kurcaba offered a voter ID bill, requiring a driver license or military ID to vote. We live in a college town, but Kurcaba didn't include student IDs as acceptable. I wrote a question about that.

Cindy O'Brien, who picked the questions to be asked, didn't ask any of my questions. She asked one gay rights question- "Why do we not have a state-wide nondiscrimination bill?" Ms. Pasdon and Mr Statler said they couldn't get a majority to vote for it. Mr. Statler said "I don't believe anyone should be discriminated against."  A lie. We were not given an opportunity to contradict our delegates. The three senators who came, Roman Prezioso from our district and a Democrat, Kent Leonhardt and Dave Sypolt, Republicans from adjoining districts, were upset that Governor Tomblin vetoed the bill to allow concealed carry by anyone, without training or a permit. Barbara Fleishauer, the one liberal Democratic legislator from our district was polite, but disagreed about the gun law.

That was it. O'Brien asked them a question about a bottle bill, allowing the officials to talk about when they were poor and collected bottles for the deposit, or brag about their recycling habits.

I was livid. Seems to happen often now. I did confront Brian Kurcaba about the voter ID after the formal program. He acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. He's the one who said about not allowing exceptions for rape to the 20-week abortion ban, which passed, that at least a woman who was raped would be left with a beautiful baby.

Joe was with me. He thought I should write to all the parties involved and complain. I apologized to him for wasting his time.

III. The Holocaust Speaker

I was invited to dinner with Rabbi Joe at the home of E. Gordon Gee, West Virginia University's president, before the last "Festival of Ideas" speaker, Marcel Drimer, a child survivor of The Holocaust. Drimer volunteers for The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was proud that Joe was invited, and better, that we were invited as a couple. The other guests were the professor who teaches Slavic and Eastern European History,who arranged this lecture, and her boyfriend, who chairs the creative writing department at WVU. I've met both of them before.

We mostly asked The Drimers about their lives. Marcel often said "I'm covering that in my talk." Mrs. Drimer was born during World War II. Both of them were educated in post-war Poland, came to the United States in the early 1960s, and live in Northern Virginia.

At the program, Mr. Drimer spoke about his experience as a child in the Holocaust. Where he was born in Poland was invaded by Russia in 1939, then by the Germans in 1941. I won't go into the details, but he, his sister, mother and father survived because of his father's persistence, the aid of a Christian family, and luck (or as I would say, blessings). His family went through unspeakable cruelty and horror. That he came out of it as a cheerful, well-adjusted man is amazing.

 My pride went away during this lecture. We all sit around and gripe about our childhoods, or a pizza parlor that doesn't want to cater a same-gender wedding. None of us have any idea what a bad childhood is, or how real hatred as a government policy can affect us. Mr. Drimer shares his story, but he is not bitter and angry. I could take lessons.

Mr. Drimer had difficulty with words. He was in his late twenties when he came to the United States, knowing very little English (three hundred words, he said). He confessed at dinner, that at 81, he is having trouble remembering English words. He was only eleven at the end of World War II. There are fewer and fewer people to speak to us about their experience in those years.