Memories of Baltimore

I remember the playground in South Baltimore where I used to spend my summer afternoons as a child. It sat at the top of an endless street of red brick row houses. And even though the walk from the street to the playground took only a few moments, once you were up there it felt as if you were on top of the world. The view encompassed the entire waterfront area of South Baltimore. Merely a chain-link fence separated me from the mysteriously shaped steel structures that made up the factories of Sparrow’s Point, Domino Sugar, Western Electric and Crown Cork & Seal.

I would curl my fingers around the chain-link, pressing my face tightly against the fence in an attempt to close the distance between me and the objects that evoked endless adventures in a child’s imagination. But eventually the playground always won my attention. It was one of those glorious old playgrounds from the 1960’s; a sea of awaiting splinters and tetanus shots now deemed unsafe by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Although at the time it didn't matter. Some of the greatest moments of my childhood took place on those chromate copper arsenate-treated sea-saws and lead paint-covered merry-go-rounds.

The intense heat of a Baltimore summer combined with the lack of trees warmed the metal of the merry-go-round to an almost intolerable temperature, leaving the crisscross pattern of the steel branded onto the backs of my legs. And in the moment of spinning there occurred a dangerous seduction between the speed and the blistering metal that heightened my awareness, as the rest of the world around me blurred into oblivion. When the blur finally slowed to a clarity I would stumble off, running to the edge of the playground in an attempt to continue the dizzying effect. Only to find stability once again as my fingers grasped onto the chain-link fence that separated me from the unknown world waiting below.