Tensed times. I lived 10 miles away at the time of the riots.
Although our home was in Whittier, about 15 miles away, we were more than 5,000 miles away, in Darmstadt, Germany, and first learned about the riot in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, where it made the leading headline. Even that far away, I heard someone on the corner of Moosberg Street and Heidelberg Street yell in English, "burn, baby, burn!"--the rioters' slogan.