My mother has been an antique dealer since the mid 1980s. So, her Mother’s Day present is to be escorted by her adult children to the eclectic proto-hipster collective of antique dealers who set up their squatter’s camp at Fells Point, a raised brick-paved court surrounded by Old Baltimore Architecture, the ground floor windows barred against the New Baltimore Septitecture.

Mom takes joy in my discovery of antique books of value to my disturbing inquires.

There are many old hippies among the dealers.

There are some old black power folks among the dealers.

The books for sale range from fascinating to banal.

Only one dealer is under 50.

A black man plays electric guitar, softly, in a Claptonesque style calibrated for the largely privileged shoppers.

I find a book on Jungian archetypes and human symbology at the pinch-faced hippie’s table.

Two cops, a small black female and athletic white male, obviously lovers, walk away from the tables where they made their purchase to their respective cars.

Some upscale Asian and Latino couples peruse the offerings.

The local whites are mostly tanned, thirty-something athletic, fellows who look like they belong on a Brazilian soccer field, with athletic model-quality wives, all of them seeming dressed according to some science-fiction wardrobe ordinance, with moisture wicking fabric molded to their very Hellenic bodies.

Jimmy’s Diner is packed, still sporting the glamour photo of the mulattress mayor, who has raked in record federal and state subsidies due to her decision to let Baltimore burn—and people thought she was making a mistake. As federal agents become more involved in Baltimore policing in the wake of the Sacred Unrest of 2015, it will be interesting to see what federal post she is rewarded with.

A mated pair of mallards inspect the wares and waddle on by the unruly apes gathering their baubles.

Then, as we leave, a symbol of Evil Yesteryear rises up rudely before our eyes. Those who read the carnival coin-toss board out loud did so in hushed tones, or a murmured whisper.

For $15 stands a five dollar game board that would pay out a prize to any who scored $5 worth of hits on the ship icons [25-cents], the air base icons [50-cents], and the factories [75-cents].

The title of this crudity of some past racist age declared, in bold red letters:

My mother looked carefully around, the new ethnic standard that places whites at the bottom of the moral social hierarchy having been etched into her mind by the constant drumbeat of news paper, work place and TV programming, and whispered to the seller—another older woman—as if discussing The Satanic Verses in an Iranian Mosque, “You know, this might seem shocking, but I just read Unbroken, and the Japanese really had it coming with what they did to our men. Now I know why my older brother used to say, every time he cut open his fried egg and the yolk spilled out, ‘This is Jap blood.’”

As a writer and crackpot historian, I derive endless fascination from walking quietly through such a vociferous—yet heavily edited—play, rooting with unseemly curiosity under the stage for the unedited script which was surely discarded by accident.