I grew up, "mostly" in Baltimore and lived and worked in and around the Baltimore area most of my life. My family moved there when I was in the 4th grade. We lived in the Beechfield /Tremont area just off of Frederick Ave. for about a year. Back then this area was mixed but still pretty nice but also surrounded by some rough and "thug" (black) areas like Edmonson Village. And we then moved to the Brooklyn / Curtis Bay area which was even in the mid 70's, and although mostly white back then, it was a pretty rough area. How shall I say? - a lot of white trash types, but then also a lot of white middle class working families like mine too, and many of them of Polish ancestry. But the Brooklyn Holmes housing project was not far from where we lived and while that's where most of the black kids in my elementary and middle school lived, but most of those living "in the projects" were white - many white single parent households with an unmarried mom with many kids, nearly all with different and absent fathers, living on welfare.
I was fortunate to get into Western HS which was a great school back then and the only reason my parents stayed in Brooklyn as long as we did, but right after I graduated, we moved to out to Cockeysville.
I have to ask, not that it matters, but are you Jewish? I seem to recall that the areas you lived in Baltimore, especially Ashburton, Garrison Forrest and Liberty Heights, were once heavily Jewish before they fled to the suburbs. The Barry Levinson semi-autobiographical movie trilogies- Diner, Avalon and Liberty Heights were about these neighborhoods in the late 50's to early 60's. But Ashburton was mostly black even when I was a kid in the 70's, so I must assume when you lived that, it was long before then.
Charm City is now "Bloody Baltimore". So sad, yet so predictable.
It is sad. Baltimore, while it always had its rough areas, predominately black and high crime areas – places you knew to stay out of; it was once a great city to live in, especially under the "Willie Don Schaefer" years and it saddens me greatly to see what Baltimore has become.
While he was in no way perfect or without controversies, Schaefer was in many ways, a Blue Dog Dem, and was IMO the last great Baltimore Mayor and he did a lot to revitalize the city, bring back some pride and really did a lot to make it "Charm City".
A true story about "Willie Don". My brother and SIL moved from MD to PA when Schaefer was MD State Comptroller. But they got several threatening letters from the MD State comptroller’s office stating that they owed back MD taxes on the income they had earned in and had paid taxes to PA AFTER they moved to PA. They also got threatening letters from the MD DMV saying that their vehicle had an insurance lapse, which they didn't as they'd turn in the MD tags and didn't cancel their MD insurance until afterwards. After months of going back and forth trying to get it straightened out, one day my SIL called the office of the Comptroller and much to her surprise, her phone call went to directly to Donald Schaefer and she spoke to him personally.
After getting the information from her and asking some questions, he told her that this was ridiculous, that this shouldn't ever had happen, and that he would personally get involved to straightened it out for them, and soon enough, the matter did get straightened out and they never got another letter, but for years, even well after Schaefer left office, every year they got a personally signed Christmas card with a hand written note from him, and my brother and SIL also sent Christmas cards to him until the day he died.
I also remember that when we lived in Brooklyn and Schaefer was first elected as mayor in around 1976: that my father and many other residents complained numerous times to the city sanitation department and to no avail, about the city trash pickup. The city trash collectors were only half emptying some of the trash cans, and some were not even being picked up at all and then they were, they were tossing some of the half empty trash cans and the empty ones back into the alleyway instead of putting them back, damaging them and in some cases running over them with their trash trucks and also spreading trash all over the alley.
One day my father got fed up and called the mayor's office and spoke to Mayor Schaefer about the problem and the lack of response he and others were getting from the Sanitation Department.
About a week later, Schaefer personally drove to our alley on trash day, parked his car and waited to observe firsthand what was happening. And what he saw disgusted him as he personally called my father and several others who had complained. I don't know what he did, but we never had a problem with the trash pickup after that.
Wow, an honorable democrat who actually served all the people of his city rather than pander to the special interests.
And extinct species today.
Yes I’m Jewish and lived in several largely Jewish neighborhoods from the time I was born during WW2 till my parents and sister moved out to Baltimore County for a safer school for her.
Re Barry Levinson. Here’s a few tidbits about my distant relationship with him.
Met him at the world premier of “Liberty Heights”, a not very good film though it did catch some of the flavor of anti-Semitism in the 50’s (Hampden and Hamilton, mainly).
I used to good to schools at Liberty Heights and Garrison, #64 Elementary, Garrison Jr. HS, Beth Tefilah synagogue, etc.) In fact, Levinson and I went to Beth Tefilah but he was older so I never really met him (and he lived in the real Forest Park area west of Forest Park Avenue.
The film “Diner” was based on the real diner at Reisterstown and Rogers Avenue, where the older “City” guys (classes of 1959 or so) ate, while we early 60’s City guys ate at Ameche’s Drive In up the road. Also ate at Mandel and Ballow’s great delicatesson restaurant. I went to school with their nephew Steve Mandel.
One of the characters in the movie Diner was “Boogie”, played by Mickey Rouke. I knew the real “Boogie”, Boogie Weinglass, who played on City’s basketball team. He was a wild as projected in the movie. I think that poor, beautiful blond “Gloria” is still blushing, or did she actually like what he said to her on the bus home from City/Eastern?
The actor who played “Bagels” in Diner is Michael Tucker, a very distant cousin of mine, and we played football together for the Lancers Boys Club as well as went to Garrison and City.
Knockos’ pool-hall really did exist at Ayredale and Liberty Heights Avenues, just below Garrison Avenue.
I saw some of the old 50’s cars used in the movie “Tin Men” lined up near the city jail in between takes. Like a museum on wheels.
In the movie “Liberty Heights”, they merged Meadowbrook swimming pool with Milford Mill pool/quarry for the anti-segregation protest scene (really happened at Milford but films at Meadowbrook).
In it, you can see the young lead actor swinging on a pulley cable line that actually went from a 25 ft platform out over the quarry. You dropped off before the cable got too low to the water and swam to a nearby wooden raft or back to the walking ramp.
When this scene came up in the premier, and the actor grabbed the pulley rope, I said out loud, “I broke that rope”, not knowing that Levinson was sitting a couple rows behind me.
A girl I was with jumped at the rope about a half second after I did and it snapped the rope. I said “Oh shit” as it snapped and I fell to the water below, but when I emerged with the rope in my hand, those watching applauded me.
Then I quickly looked around and found my friend was safe, not hitting any of the rocks under the platform. We all had a good laugh. Wish I had saved the knotted end of that rope.
PS: I also was on the Buddy Dean Show twice as a student guest. It was fun to be on tv and actually dance with a national singer, Linda Scott.
A lot of what you see in the movie “Hairspray” by Baltimore film-producer John Waters, was accurate about the desegration efforts there, esp. against “Black Thursday”.
Life was a lot simpler in those days, and a lot more peaceful until 1968 when Nancy Pelosi’s ahole brother Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro III sold out white businessmen/women, esp. the Jewish owners of small businesses, to the black rioters after the death of Dr. King.
That marked the moment Baltimore began its continuing slide into the cesspool of crime and Democrat corruption and cronyism.
Yes, Mayor Schaeffer was a great guy and tried his best to save the city, but he was undercut and betrayed all through his two terms. My mother was on one of his cultural commissions and could talk to him whenever she needed to.
The last of the oldtime Democrat gentlemen.
Now I almost never go back to Baltimore. Hard to find a decent deli except on Lombard Street (I’m not impressed with Attman’s at all. I knew grandpa Attman and Seymour, his son, before and after he got his ears fixed).
As for the Harbor, it is nice and my family enjoyed shows at Pier 6, the USS Torsk sub (I was also on the USS Pike back in the late 50’s when it was in harbor), and the USS Constellation. Today we would never go down there for many reasons, physical health problems being a key one. Safety is another.
It was a great city while I was growing up, but there has been so much leftist-liberal damage done to it that it will take two generations of concentrated effort to bring it back to even a 2nd rate city.
I do miss Price’s hamburgers, boatload of fries, and their incredible strawberry milkshakes.
As for Chinese food, when to school with Benny Dur’s daughter May Ling (a lovely young girl) who, I think took over his restaurant on Reisterstown Road and Jimmy Wu’s, the good Chinese restaurant downtown on Charles? below North Avenue.
For chocolate eclairs and Napoleons, it was Nat’s and Leon’s on North Avenue. None better. Also had Stone’s and Silver’s bakeries down on Lombard Street and Garrison Ave between Forest Park Ave and Liberty Heights. Best Danish in town.
So much for a “back to the past” trip down memory lane. At least I have some good photos to show my kids and grandchildren.
Signing off singing “The Way It Was” and “Those Were the Days”.
Yes I’m Jewish and lived in several largely Jewish neighborhoods from the time I was born during WW2 till my parents and sister moved out to Baltimore County for a safer school for her.
Re Barry Levinson. Here’s a few tidbits about my distant relationship with him.
Met him at the world premier of “Liberty Heights”, a not very good film though it did catch some of the flavor of anti-Semitism in the 50’s (Hampden and Hamilton, mainly).
I used to good to schools at Liberty Heights and Garrison, #64 Elementary, Garrison Jr. HS, Beth Tefilah synagogue, etc.) In fact, Levinson and I went to Beth Tefilah but he was older so I never really met him (and he lived in the real Forest Park area west of Forest Park Avenue.
The film “Diner” was based on the real diner at Reisterstown and Rogers Avenue, where the older “City” guys (classes of 1959 or so) ate, while we early 60’s City guys ate at Ameche’s Drive In up the road. Also ate at Mandel and Ballow’s great delicatesson restaurant. I went to school with their nephew Steve Mandel.
One of the characters in the movie Diner was “Boogie”, played by Mickey Rouke. I knew the real “Boogie”, Boogie Weinglass, who played on City’s basketball team. He was a wild as projected in the movie. I think that poor, beautiful blond “Gloria” is still blushing, or did she actually like what he said to her on the bus home from City/Eastern?
The actor who played “Bagels” in Diner is Michael Tucker, a very distant cousin of mine, and we played football together for the Lancers Boys Club as well as went to Garrison and City.
Knockos’ pool-hall really did exist at Ayredale and Liberty Heights Avenues, just below Garrison Avenue.
I saw some of the old 50’s cars used in the movie “Tin Men” lined up near the city jail in between takes. Like a museum on wheels.
In the movie “Liberty Heights”, they merged Meadowbrook swimming pool with Milford Mill pool/quarry for the anti-segregation protest scene (really happened at Milford but films at Meadowbrook).
In it, you can see the young lead actor swinging on a pulley cable line that actually went from a 25 ft platform out over the quarry. You dropped off before the cable got too low to the water and swam to a nearby wooden raft or back to the walking ramp.
When this scene came up in the premier, and the actor grabbed the pulley rope, I said out loud, “I broke that rope”, not knowing that Levinson was sitting a couple rows behind me.
A girl I was with jumped at the rope about a half second after I did and it snapped the rope. I said “Oh shit” as it snapped and I fell to the water below, but when I emerged with the rope in my hand, those watching applauded me.
Then I quickly looked around and found my friend was safe, not hitting any of the rocks under the platform. We all had a good laugh. Wish I had saved the knotted end of that rope.
PS: I also was on the Buddy Dean Show twice as a student guest. It was fun to be on tv and actually dance with a national singer, Linda Scott.
A lot of what you see in the movie “Hairspray” by Baltimore film-producer John Waters, was accurate about the desegration efforts there, esp. against “Black Thursday”.
Life was a lot simpler in those days, and a lot more peaceful until 1968 when Nancy Pelosi’s ahole brother Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro III sold out white businessmen/women, esp. the Jewish owners of small businesses, to the black rioters after the death of Dr. King.
That marked the moment Baltimore began its continuing slide into the cesspool of crime and Democrat corruption and cronyism.
Yes, Mayor Schaeffer was a great guy and tried his best to save the city, but he was undercut and betrayed all through his two terms. My mother was on one of his cultural commissions and could talk to him whenever she needed to.
The last of the oldtime Democrat gentlemen.
Now I almost never go back to Baltimore. Hard to find a decent deli except on Lombard Street (I’m not impressed with Attman’s at all. I knew grandpa Attman and Seymour, his son, before and after he got his ears fixed).
As for the Harbor, it is nice and my family enjoyed shows at Pier 6, the USS Torsk sub (I was also on the USS Pike back in the late 50’s when it was in harbor), and the USS Constellation. Today we would never go down there for many reasons, physical health problems being a key one. Safety is another.
It was a great city while I was growing up, but there has been so much leftist-liberal damage done to it that it will take two generations of concentrated effort to bring it back to even a 2nd rate city.
I do miss Price’s hamburgers, boatload of fries, and their incredible strawberry milkshakes.
As for Chinese food, when to school with Benny Dur’s daughter May Ling (a lovely young girl) who, I think took over his restaurant on Reisterstown Road and Jimmy Wu’s, the good Chinese restaurant downtown on Charles? below North Avenue.
For chocolate eclairs and Napoleons, it was Nat’s and Leon’s on North Avenue. None better. Also had Stone’s and Silver’s bakeries down on Lombard Street and Garrison Ave between Forest Park Ave and Liberty Heights. Best Danish in town.
So much for a “back to the past” trip down memory lane. At least I have some good photos to show my kids and grandchildren.
Signing off singing “The Way It Was” and “Those Were the Days”.