This morning, at dawn I walked down out of Parkville from the Baynesville neighborhood of Towson, into Hamilton.

A half mile from the city line, where bars begin to grace front doors and for sale signs proliferate, there is a handsome single family home owned by a man who has his own business [which is my impression based on his truck] and has a full size flag pole on the lawn.

As I walked along the bend on the sidewalk I saw his wife, a very pretty woman in her late 20s, with auburn hair, a nose halfway between button and full, wearing little makeup and dressed to stay home for the day. She was nervously and hurriedly attaching the American flag to the cord to run it up the pole, afraid to look up at the single passerby, and displaying all of the paranoid body language of a woman breaking a sacred taboo. I made no eye contact and gave no courtesy, averting my eyes from her dogged humiliation as I passed.

Around the bend bars and for sale signs are thicker as the shopping center comes into sight across the wide highway. A home for the elderly—a small facility run by black staff—has its flag flying at half mast.

I make eye contact with the janitor as he and I come together. He glares at me defiantly and I maintain eye contact as I cross the street to gain access to the highway crossing to the shopping center.

It is 6:51 and the sun is just streaking the sky. The shopping center is beginning to bustle with two Latinos fueling a truck at the gas station across from the liquor store, which has its open light flashing but appears to be closed. A beauty supply store occupying a former supermarket property announces that one has passed into the ghetto.

I pass the last unit of the Dutch Village projects behind the shopping center and see a small, muscular young man the color of coal, sitting on the stairs in a purple Hawaiian shirt glaring at me and clenching is fists.

I pass and cut behind the projects between the last rows of real homes and the Marine Combat Engineer Battalion armory and the school for criminality. Wondering if Coal Boy has followed me, I set down my recyclable grocery bag containing my mask, gloves and cup, and switch my stick sheath to my left hand so I can draw the twenty-nine inch leg breaker as I look behind me. Coal Boy has followed me, and upon seeing me standing ready and arming myself, he ducks down behind an SUV and beats a retreat in a crouching run under cover of the parked cars.

As I pass the school to my right I notice that the BPD has raised a crime light on the baseball diamond!

To my left three different middle class blacks walk their dogs or let them into the yard, retreating behind barred doors as I pass, looking out at me like I’ve come to restore the Confederacy.

Then I cross Northern Parkway into Hamilton, where those folks long overrun by crime who I meet on the street greet me politely, a man on a bike, a black lady walking to work, and a young white prostitute who would like to make friends but whom I ignore.