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.

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."

Holiday Update: Washington and New York

I guess it's a symbol of how alienated I feel in West Virginia, that I was so happy to be in the Washington area Thanksgiving, and in New York for a week around Christmas. Part of it was being with our families. My nephew is now back with my sister for a short time, and I enjoyed his company. A highlight was playing "Cards Against Humanity" with my sister, my husband, my nephew and two of his cute 23-year-old friends. Hard to imagine my mother doing that, or Joe and I being able to do that as The Rabbi and His Spouse in Morgantown. My sister Robin, and Joe bonded over Scrabble, which I won't play. They are both too cutthroat for me. We also visited Baltimore, where I picked a bunch of historic sites to visit. I loved showing Joe parts of my original hometown.

Joe's siblings all showed up in New York City, and we were able to hang with his father's beautiful widow, Naomi. She treated us all to dinner at a restaurant with fine food, all recognizable and not food-porn stuff, and great service. Joe and I attended services at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah Friday night. We arrived via subway, and worshiped with probably two hundred other LGBT Jews. Joe caught up with friends from high school and college; I saw three of my cousins and a college classmate I still talk about all the time. I loved being around people who aren't thinking that we are less than they are because we are Jews or a same-gender couple. Good to be with people in our age group too.

We had each picked a play we wanted to see in New York. His had already closed, so I bought tickets online to my choice, "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical." I loved the dedication of the cast, the singers and dancers portraying The Shirelles, The Drifters and Little Eva. I understand that, at sixty-five, I am the target audience for this show. 

New York and Washington are both beautiful cities. People here in Morgantown will brag that they have never been to either. We walked around Central Park in unseasonably warm weather Christmas Eve, counting how many foreign languages we heard - lots. I imagine many of the people are tourists, as we were. I just loved being there.

Growing up in Maryland, with four grandparents living in New York, I feel close to both New York and Washington. It feels more "at home" than Morgantown ever will.

It's New Years Eve, about 11 A.M. as I write this. Joe and I are meeting with a friend from Tree of Life for lunch at a restaurant. It's sunny out, but about 22 F. and windy. We don't really care to go out tonight. We'll probably watch one of the screeners I have from SAG-AFTRA for the SAG awards and go to bed early.

For 2015, I hope to be more at peace with where we live. I was reminded this morning of how blessed  I am. In the comic strip Dilbert, he has gone online looking for a date. He said "Tall, with hair and a job" and got thousands of responses from women. When I met Joe, I was, as I am now, short and bald. I worked no more than seven hours per week when we met; I don't work at all now. Still, he stays with me, and we support each other. It's worth living here to be with him.

Joe, playing scrabble with Robin, Greenbelt, MD

In Baltimore, Thanksgiving weekend

With my first cousin Eric Polk in East Northport, NY

Dinner with the Hamples and partners at Pasha Turkish Restaurant in New York

Broadway in the 70s. Joe and his brother are walking away from me

With one of my college housemates, John Hnedak, at The Met

Joe with Steven Levine, his friend from school days, Scarsdale, NY

With my cousin Howie Rotblatt near Times Square

Joe by Central Park Reservoir