Morning at Luke's

   The woods are my haven in Patapsco. For seventeen years, I have lived in the city, ever since my birth. Yet, in all that time, I've never spent the night outside under pure starlight. The lights of the city obscure the dim lights of faraway places.
   The farthest I've been is tenting in the backyard or sleeping on the porch glider to escape the heat of summer nights in Maryland.
   Never have I spent a week away from the continual press of the city and of the people in it. Always there are parents and sisters. And usually friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and sometimes enemies.
   My neighborhood, Patapsco, is an old working class area. Named after the small river that flows through it, it has two types of housing -- those fifty years old and those a hundred years old.
   The racetrack gives a uniqueness to life in Patapsco. I get to meet the jockeys and trainers who room at my grandmother's house when the track is in session.

 

   Several friends of mine have quit school to walk hots, horses heated from their early morning workouts.
   And then there's betting of the races -- at the track and in the little stores and taverns of Patapsco.
   Whenever the powers that be, whoever they might be, built the new grocery store I thought maybe things were changing. I could tell from the books and newspapers that I've been living in a social backwater of the 60's.
   Today, that doesn't bother me. The air is crisp and exhilarating. Inhaling deeply, I cross the large supermarket parking lot. This A&P is the first new store in all my memory of Patapsco.
   The tops of trees, twice as high as the row houses that flank Grandview Blvd., sway in the gentle breeze of late spring. The green leaves soften the hard look of my neighborhood. The peeling paint of the parking lot fence seemed less noticeable amid the fresh colors of late spring.
   My right hand clutched the thin tube of the cigar-shell rocket. In the pocket of my tan windbreaker, the metal of the carbon dioxide cartridges cooled my fingers.
   After school and delivering newspapers yesterday, I