As I finish writing Banjo: Timejack, I have traversed the very places in which the story is set, places I have frequented due to work, to include coaching, and for habitation. I have noted some changes.
Homeless Crackers
Baltimore has long been too dangerous for homeless people of any race to live outside of dense camps: Morrel Park, where they had to battle the hoodrat packs by night, and on the porch of the post office under I-83 at City Center. The homeless generally had to live in wooded areas in the county. The dynamic here was that when hood rats attacked and failed they called the cops and the cops prevailed. People do not realize that the Knockout Game was not just a way of KOing unsuspecting white hipsters, but of getting low down crackers arrested for fighting back. Now, one sees lone crackers camping in the shelter of city eves, bothering no one. Our traditional enemies no longer bother calling the PIGz in, as the defund the police ended that.
A month ago, Big Ron saw a scrawny cracker beating the piss out of some black man a Hamilton and Harford, in front of the bar where I was refused service for failure to tan last year. In the past, before 2008, blacks would have piled on and kept coming until they won, whites doing nothing. Since 2008, the cops would have been called to arrest the cracker for failure to recognize his Kang. Since 2022 cops have left us scum to our own devices, ghosts versus shadows.
Bus Passengers
These were 95%+ shadow my entire life. Now, crackers, low down folk to be sure, with crappy jobs, and sometimes none, are taking the buses again. There are dot heads, Squatamalens, some sissy light skinned kangs, black women with good medical jobs and Africans. There are a couple white bus drivers! They were extinct as the buffalo once was and have been brought back with the expansion of the bus service, which has been routed to serve the newly constructed condos now packed with African refugees. The Africans are well dressed, have smart phones, are polite, travel in pairs and don’t know how buses work. The female Afro-American bus drivers are constantly yelling at the Africans. Where once about a third of black bus drivers would decline to stop if there were not a black with me at the stop, now they must stop according to the semi-automated routing system. The men are mostly cool and half of them wave me on, declining my cash payment, indicating my white beard with a nod. Yesterday an Africa was holding onto the stop bell cord like it was a handle and the queanly driver was screaming at him.
The day before yesterday a young black fellow dropped his smart phone under my seat and I returned it. He said, “Thank you, sir,” very polite, unusual from a man of his demographic before 2020. Most of the people taking the buses are headed to work, and do not know the way well and ask for directions from this old crumb.
The Rap Battle
Behind me, on the back deck of the bus, a couple weeks ago a fellow voiced about 20 was rapping into his phone, recording. A fellow with a voice of about 30 began speaking with him. They were both rappers with social media followings “on all platforms.” They then engaged in a rap battle, the younger man being much better to the point that the veteran of rap battles submitted and declared him a “prodigy.” When they got off, I noted the young fellow was a pale-ass cracker with red hair and beard, like an Irish silverware thief. The older fellow, crest fallen, actually looked like a 1990s gangster in his black attire, but minus the menace.
How far some have fallen
Last Thursday Night
After boxing with Leo, a 12-year-old karate student, for 50 minutes straight, I toweled off and crossed the street to the The Raven Inn. At the jukebox was a woman about my age, a pretty woman with a good figure, who, back in the day would have never given me the time, being the best of her crop. She said, “Hello,” as I walked past and said nothing, so surprised I was.
At the bar, Sean served me a draft, so I could hydrate before drinking alcohol. I drank that and noted that there were more women then men here, including the looker with her two sisters, obviously of the same brood. She looked at me and asked them for their support in placing a slave collar upon my bearded neck. I drank and she asked across the bar if I and the sloppy drunk next to me liked her music selection. It was country, so I gave her a thumbs up. She smiled. I would have, should have, stayed to get to know her and write for her a sorrowful country song. But Jason was waiting for me to help clean up his cafe and speak about writing in return for him driving me home—my host the Brickmouse and The Operator both insisting that I not walk back into the city from this worse county hood at night. The drunk was telling her he did not like country music and wished she would play some metal, as I cashed out with my pint of whiskey and left, to Sean’s, “Be safe, Brother.”
This was the scene of our two Fight Brain dinners. On Friday night they have kareoke, mostly attended by women and their children!
I walked out back, up the alley, where a funeral cross has been placed where the stray cat used to live in the house made by bar patrons, West on Joppa, and north on Orchard. I passed the American Boxing Academy, which was packed, finding a supply of sparring partners for my local guys. Jason and I stayed up until 2:00, four hours past closing, discussing books and writing. He had been so exited to sit down and crack a book that he had forgotten to lock the front door. In walked a 6’ 6” 320 pound Gro, demanding food, water, shelter, not threatening yet. Jason spoke with him in the doorway, trying to convince him that the cafe was not open. I walked up behind him with my hand on the hilt of the sheath Kabar claw knife Big Ron gave me. The big fella looked at me over Jason’s head, raised his brows, his eyes swimming in worry beneath, turned on his heels, and shambled off into the night.
Yesterday
As I waited for the bus from Essex down into Colgate, a pair of shady crackers slouched on by. These guys are about 21. The big man stands 6’ 2” and 220 pounds, a smug face under blond hair, wearing faded jeans and a wife beater in the warm November sun, smoking a cig. His partner, has dark hair, a narrow face and beaked nose, and stands about 4’ 10” in jeans and sneakers.
They walked past us south, than back north, then east, with the attitude of patrol. Oh, yes, big boy was holding an aluminum T-ball bat with leather wrapped handle, and his runt partner, a gulf club, a putting iron. Not a pig was in sight to permit the feral foes that drove my entire extended family out of our home town between 1968 and 2022, to turn day into night.
