I was in my early twenties. Your father and I had just gotten married and you were still on the horizon. Back then Uncle Joe had the place on the river beyond Curtis Bay on Stoney Creek. Before we had a car we took the street car down to Curtis Bay and Uncle Joe would pick us up in his car and then drive us home at night. It was only 1962, but you had to be careful in the city, especially at night, especially as a young woman. It wasn’t crazy like now with the drugs and shootings every day, but they [blacks] were usually drunk.

Speaking of drunk your father was passed out drunk from drinking with Uncle Joe, and of course your great-grandmother Quaid was also passed out drunk. I got lost—this was before you had highway access into the heart of the city. There was no I-83. You had to drive through the neighborhood. Well, anyway, I ended up on Pennington Avenue at some industrial park and there was a mob of twenty to thirty black people in the middle of the street drinking. It was four in the morning and I was terrified. There were no cell phones back then. I made a right and turned down some alley and began zigzagging, avoiding knots of drunk people on the street and eventually got home, though I could not describe how.

It was only a few years later that we had the riots. I cringe to think of what would have happened had we been stopped. No wonder it’s never been difficult to get them riled up and rioting when you have a ready supply of them already drunk and in the street on any given night.