In writing the novelette Buzz Bunny, about a bullied boy who finds refuge at an old crime scene at a city park, I used Baltimore’s Herring Run Park as the model for the fictional Stoner Park.
Tattoo Rick’s Lord of the Fleas story from the 1950s, happened there. [This will be featured on the site this autumn.]
I ducked into that park on three occasions while being pursued by pairs of hood rats, so I could use my nine-inch gravity blade out of sight of witnesses. After the second time I carved a spear from a sapling and cached it there in the Y of a tree by the pumping station.
My cousin Suzy was knocked down and robbed by two black guys there over a decade ago.
This past July 8th a young woman was raped on the street by a knife-armed black man twenty yards from the park.
Gun shots ring out every night from Herring Run Park and many other city parks, as they serve as training grounds for the teenage and twenty-something criminals who buy and sell politicians in Baltimore with the fortunes they glean from the War on Drugs.
Yesterday, on the other end of the park, near U.S. Route 40, a cyclist on one of the bike trails found a badly beaten body, so mangled that it could only be identified as male.
A father in the adjoining neighborhood of Armistead Gardens said there have been so many gunshots there at night that he has trained his kids to duck below the windows.
The hipsters moving into Harm City at a 1-4 ratio to those escaping to the suburbs to rent or leaving the state [including five close friends and relatives of mine since April] think that these parks are for their enjoyment, manmade paradises for their gourmet dogs.
But, if we did not have parks, then our corrupt mayor would have to arrange for her sponsors to us police gun ranges and training facilities, and that might be a hard sell even in a city bought and paid for by the drug gangs.*
*The City recently expanded outreach programs operated by gang members and affiliates, which serve as grapevines for the criminal underworld, and fewer gang members have been charged with crimes committed during the late April Purge than police officers charged with crimes against gang members in the same time span.
In light of these facts, I think that leaving City parks to the drug gangs was a wise move on the part of the BPD. It’s what they are for in this brave new world.
Life imitating art? Indeed so. In fact our social satires, no matter how outrageous they are intended to be, are steadily becoming uncomfortably close to the truth.
"Federal Government Adds 600,000 Acres To National Forbidden Zone"
theonion.com/article/federal-government-adds-600000-acres-national-forb-51446
Dude, I loved Planet of the Apes. Now, thanks to you, I can feel a little more Like Chuck Heston.