Forever Haunted....

 So it happened again! I get the morning copy of the Baltimore Sun on e-mail. I read about something happening on  street called Reisterstown Road. And then the memories come. Why Reisterstown Road? When I arrived at Hopkins in 1960, I made friends with several other freshmen, all of whom actually lived in Baltimore. These friendships led to visits and often double dates,  usually --with young women who were friends of the women these guys were dating.  Reisterstown Road at that time cut right through the Jewish community--on just about every idate, we would go through it to pick up the girls. The streets tat surrounded Reisterstwon roadworld existed in tremendous contrast to the Bronx of apartment houses where I was brought up.Here erveryone lived in  private house--the houses on the streets were low lying-gentle, though it never happened, I longed for a girl friend from those streets. 

In the winter of my senior year, 1964, after much pleading with my parents, they finally bought me a car, and  I was able to take it down to Baltimore. That city, at that time was incredibly car driven---the buses stopped running around six so without a car, one could simply go nowhere.  I was restless that spring---restless and hungry--I ws living through my final  term at Hopkins and often to get some steam off, to forget that i was incapable of studying,  I would get in the  car and ride around Baltimore--I had a freind named David, he was a freshman, he would often join me on what we referred to as "midnight rides". Did we go to Reisterstown Road a lot? Not sure, but once on that road, or on the streets adjacent to it, I could almost sense the possible closeness--the adventure of  first or second date---that was possible.

Fifty seven years later, that neighborhood is considered one of the most dangerous in Baltimore---it changed, as far as I know, in the late sixties--a mirror of what happened in the Bronx or parts of Brooklyn, as Jewish families left for a variety of reasons---their children needed more space for their achievements, and the parents were aging.  Those of us who reached our twenties by the middle sixties could go anywhere---the idea of returning to the neighborhoods that had been our homes as children seemed stifling. Those young women of Reisterstown Road and its evirons--those whose lives I may have dreamed of being a part of---are now in their seventies---do they even remember the days and nights of double dating, of making out in cars before going home of.....It does not matter---as soon as I see the story in the paper, I remain hopelessly behind in that world.