Baltimore
All Aboard to
BAL-TEE-MORE!
Anna Deavere
Smith is an
award-winning
actress, author,
teacher and
playwright.
Thanksgiving was a favorite holiday for us when we
were children. As was typical in those days, we lived
in an all-Negro neighborhood. Up and down Bentalou
Street women were boiling turkey necks and giblets,
blending chopped bread with herbs and adding secret
amounts of butter to make customized stu;ngs.
With cooking under control, we would pile into my
father’s DeSoto, Studebaker or Chrysler, according
to the year, and head downtown to the Thanksgiving
Day parade. The parade was usually a freezing a;air,
and an integrated one. Whites and Negroes alike
lined Howard Street to watch the marching bands.
We came bearing Christmas lists in envelopes to put
in Santa’s mailbox.
Our spot was just outside the Greyhound bus
station, just across from Western High School,
where I would eventually go to school. Each year,
when the drum majorettes passed, my mother
would express her concern.
“It’s so cold that their little legs are red,” she
would observe as long-legged marchers swept by in
short skirts and no stockings.
There were bagpipes in the parade. As ethnically
diverse and separated as the town was, I was not aware
of where the Scots lived, worshipped or ate. We knew
the neighborhoods that camped—respectively—the
Italians, the Poles, the Jews, the Catholics and the
financially fortunate. ( We’d driven through Guilford
from time to time, to marvel at where the rich folks
lived.) But Scotsmen? Yet kilts and drums and drone
swept down Howard Street with all the rest.
Before going home, the pièce de résistance was
a trip to Pennsylvania train station. Though we had
no one to pick up at the
station, our father would take us down to the
platform. People dressed up to go on the train
in those days, and so the arrivals were as much a
fashion show as anything else. The kind of thrill
that only a child can have surged through us as we
watched strangers being greeted by friends and
family members.
I never boarded a train with my father, and only
once greeted him as he got o; one. Years later, he
and my mother came by Amtrak to visit me in Boston. I was stunned when I saw him from the door
at South Station the first time, walking with a cane.
A sudden sadness grabbed me. I remembered him
carrying the smallest one of us (five total) down
those steps of PENNSYLVAN-I-AH STAT-SHEE-UNNN, BAL-TEE-MORE!
Wherever I travel in the world, I look forward
to watching arrivals. Whether I’m heading to a taxi
stand in Paris, collecting my luggage from a small
carousel in Kigali, Rwanda, or looking for the sign
of a car service at Kennedy airport in New York, I
glimpse out of the corner of my eye to watch arriv-
als and rendezvous. I love the craned necks, the
anticipatory smiles, the flying balloons and toys, the
pointed hands and letters scrawled on cardboard.
It triggers the same racing in my heart that I felt at
Pennsylvania Station, Baltimore, when our father
took us down the cement steps to watch strangers
of all races stepping o; the train to visit or return to
our city, a slow Southern town in some ways,
an elegant Northern one in others.
—Anna Deavere Smith
DAVID SIMON, TV series
creator: “Fells Point and Canton
are really one of the last, great
ethnic places still going strong in
Baltimore. ... I love to go there and
watch those old industrial cranes working out of the marine terminals. They’re
so big and gothic. They’re symbolic of
the city’s working-class roots.”
t atn
MICHAEL PHELPS, Olympic
swimmer: “Whether you’re a
baseball fan or not, Camden
Yards is one of the nicest
stadiums I’ve ever been
to. The atmosphere is just
amazing, and Baltimore is
a huge sports town so
catching a game there
is always memorable.”
swimmer: “Whether you’re a
e
SIMON/COLIN MCPHERSON/CORBIS
PHELPS/ASSOCIA TED PRESS
