I was recently, on New Year’s Eve 2013, discussing city life with my Uncle Fred, my mother’s older brother, a man who has been a father to me in many ways. We were discussing life in Northeast Baltimore, and how it had changed between the time of his youth in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the present time, during my residence in this same—though very different—place. The conversation had continued to shift back to football analysis, as he had been a college coach and we were watching the Duke versus Texas A&M bowl game. I suppose the context of the conversation that inspired this article had some bearing on the title that came to mind. I expect Hell’s Home Team to run to at least three installments.

After our conversation I thought back to 1983, the year after I had taken out a mortgage on a house in Northeast Baltimore. I recall well the many older white people poking their heads out of the brownstones to look at us, I noted, with some apprehension. The realtor was a tall deep-voiced man with brown hair, who looked like Pat Boone with a five o’clock shadow. He said, in answer to my silent query, “If you were black, I would never sell another house in this neighborhood again.”

I was the last white man to buy a house in that immediate neighborhood [as a resident] over the next 17 years.

My wife was older than I and could not have children. We wanted a sibling for my step son and decided to adopt. I only made $17,000 that year, so could not afford an adoption agency. We went to whatever State agency handled adoptions and inquired. We were initially interviewed by a social worker who insisted that we could only adopt if I first adopted Vance, which we all thought was a great idea, and remains the only good thing that came of this, and something that I am still glad for having done, every time I see my Grandchildren.

There was something darker that came out of this effort to adopt a parentless child in Baltimore Maryland, that, I have come to realize, helped solidify my adult antipathy toward this city, this state, and this nation. The native—perhaps feral animosity—I had felt as a youth toward the greater society had melted away in the face of my familial and work responsibilities. I had gone from a guy who wanted to hike through South America two short years earlier, to a cog in a local business. What happened with our attempted adoption brought those old realizations that something was really wrong with the people who ran the world, back to the forefront of my mind.

Vance was 8 and had been adopted by Faye when he was six-days old. He was real keen on getting a little brother or little sister, and of being adopted by the guy that played cars and army men with him every day.

I was 20 and thrilled to be on the verge of having a full blown family, having discovered my earning potential in the work place. I was still only making just above minimum wage, so had to work over 60 hours per week to make ends meet. But, I was two to four times as productive as my coworkers and had turned out to be a fast learner when I had my hands on something, unlike school, where I had been a total moron. I was now the lead on the grocery crew, in line for another raise if I ‘worked out’, which I was confident I would.

Faye had always told me that her dream was to have a house full of children to take care of and a husband to take care of her. As much as a rebel as I had been as a teen, I was quickly falling into the lifestyle of my grandfathers, not that of my father, and certainly not some new model of a postmodern family man.

Before I could adopt Vance we all had to be interviewed separately by a social worker, a woman closer to Faye’s age of 27, than my 20. The social worker’s conclusions were gone over with us by our lawyer, who made more in an hour than I made in a week. He did offer defenses that he said he would bring up to the family court judge against this person’s reasons for declaring me an unfit father; unfit to adopt Vance, and unfit to adopt one of the numerous ‘orphans of circumstance’ that we were told were available.

I was too young.

I worked too much. [The lawyer laughed at this.]

Faye stayed at home and did not work outside the house. [This was the strongest objection.]

Vance was not enrolled in a day care or after school program.

Vance spent more time reading with his mother and playing with his stepfather than he spent engaged with his peers in crucial socializing activities.

Faye was not pursuing a career or a university degree. [Faye thought the ‘skinny mini’ social worker was just jealous that ‘a big girl’ had ‘a man that went out and worked.’]

The judge based his entire decision on an interview with Vance, the fact that I had no criminal history, and that I had a job, and granted the adoption.

After adopting Vance and celebrating with a pizza I think, Faye and I journeyed back down town to the ‘social engineering service’ as I was beginning to call whatever this godforsaken agency was.

The few parentless children available for adoption, who were white, all had extensive histories of child abuse, or had terminal illnesses. We were encouraged to take one of these children into our care and accept financial aid. All of these children were older than Vance. I declined on the following counts: we would not bring in an older sibling. I would not adopt a child that was going to require state funding, as I refused to be subject to state oversight.

Faye and I then looked through the huge bulging binder of available black children. I remember being so happy for this one six-year old kid with no siblings or parents, that he was going to get a mother and a father and a big brother all at once. I recall the lady that was showing us the binder being happy as well. Then, when she took the binder to her supervisor to announce the choice, it was denied, because we were white, and that agency did not permit interracial adoptions.

That is the moment in my life when I became a radical anarchist.

Faye and I would eventually split after 17 years. But we were both excellent parents. We would have given that kid a chance. The man that would have been his older brother has a good job, a wife, a suburban house, and two kids. The man that would have been his younger brother is finishing university with ‘a 4.0’, whatever the hell that means. The lady at the desk told us that very few of these children were ever adopted. But, I thought, as I stalked angrily out of the social engineering center, “Why would you give up a soldier in the race war to the enemy?”

From that day I’ve know in my gut what this government, over the people, against the people, and despite the people, was about—keeping us apart. Those social workers were employed by The People’s Republic of Maryland to cultivate the same hate that Mister V, the old neo-Nazi from rural Pennsylvania, had attempted to instill in me when he reminded me at age 15 never to date a Jewish girl or befriend a black man, because they were the enemy. At least Mister V. was honest about his hateful mission.