My grandmothers parents had thought she was too good for my grandfather. They were Irish, shipworkers who had gotten the hell out of Locust Point and moved uptown, to Charles Village, where the houses were much bigger. They looked down on my grandfather just because he was where they once were. It killed them, the idea that their precious youngest daughter might move back to the neighborhood and live with an Italian, to boot. Everybodys got to look down on somebody. If theres not somebody below you, how do you know youve traveled any distance at all in your life? For my dads generation, it was all about the blacks. Im not saying it was right, just that it was, and it hung on because it was such a stark, visible difference. And now the rules have changed again, and its the young people with money and ambition who are buying the houses in Locust Point, and the people in places like Linthicum and Catonsville and Arbutus are the ones to be pitied and condescended to. Its hard to keep up.("Easy As A-B-C")
