3/5/97  My tenant's garbage cart was found 'full' in Buster's rear yard next door.  Called for a new one, which arrived the next day and never saw the old one again.  It may be in their basement for whatever purpose.  The original two carts were neatly painted by previous tenants and myself.  They survived from 1990 to 1995, when kept in the locked yard.  Two carts not kept in a locked yard will survive almost 12 months in the alley, which has been the case for both properties when time wasn't taken to move them between the locked yard and alley each garbage collection day.

3/??/97  A 6 foot long cardboard cylinder laying in the alley was thrown at and broke my fancy side garage window.  Covered it with a piece of 'recycled' plywood.

4/??/97  Saw two kids throwing rocks at what remains of the unbroken portion of the same side garage window.  Upon seeing/hearing me come out the rear door, they ran through the unfenced yard directly across the alley to the next block.  Upon following them to investigate, the car borrower's grandmother was discovered standing with him and Buster.  When asked if they'd seen two boys run through, she said, "No.  Ain' been nobody run through here." An obvious lie but not confirmed after placing my hand over Buster's heart.  He had too many layers of clothing on to tell if it was racing.  I left, figuring those two had thrown the rocks and that the 59 year old grandmother had lied on their behalf. 4+/??/97  Caught a 7 year old, along with his little bother and sister running away from my yard after throwing rocks at the squirrels sitting on the umbrella'd picnic table in the side yard patio.  Went around to the next block and talked with their mom.  She, seeing them coming around the corner, believed me.  Haven't had those problems since.  Last year their oldest boy actually came into the yard and chased the squirrels through the yard - using sticks to get at them.  Didn't have those problems with him since then.  Were Buster and his friends' parents as concerned as this one, and the vast majority of others, this would be a much less damaged neighborhood.

4/19/97 pictureX1 The car borrower, his two sisters and their pre-schooler cousin are treated by me to Chuck E Cheese's for the youngest sister's 11th birthday.  That's my first visit to a Chuck E Cheese's restaurant since 1976.  They had a good time and could have stayed far beyond my boredom threshold.  The car borrower was an expert racing game driver.

5/17/97  The car borrower, his sisters and their new neighbor-friend became my crew for the annual   "Paint-It-Out".  We painted gang graffitied garages ten blocks away from ours.  The neighbor boy and youngest sister worked best.  The car borrower, working with the other boy, did a moderately good job; this being the first time since coming to know him 10 years ago that he'd ever volunteered to do any work.  Usually, he showed up just when the rest of us, his brother and sisters, were finishing the street or alley cleaning or other work, expecting to get sodas, apples or granola bars just like them.  He never did but never stopped trying, either.

The oldest sister spent most of the time whining about "do we need to do all this" and taking shortcuts - a sloppy, half-hearted job.  They all met and were introduced to our local Alderman back at the main office staging point after we'd finished and were partaking of the snacks and food thereat.  He didn't shake any hands.  Having just eaten, we returned to our neighborhood with them promised an 'owed trip' to MacDonald's later.

The younger sister, especially, is a self-starting helper who's helped clean-up spills or put away chairs and tables after meetings held by local politicians and other groups.  The youngest in her family, now aged 11, she started helping me clean alleys and streets around here eight years ago.  Until she reached school age (6), she rode on the front basket of my 3 speed bicycle while we rode around the block for fun or the neighborhood for cans and treasure boxes.  She also received the most 'Uncle Ben' hugs given to any child in this neighborhood until I was attacked in 1993.  Quite a few times, she would jump into my hugging arms from the top of a Treasure Box (City dumpster) or front steps six feet away.  That is a level of trust few "inner city" kids ever develop - thanks to the fact that most inner city residents treat anyone who cares about kids, especially those of another race, as a pariah if not a child molester.  What especially hurts someone like me, with a couple dozen nieces and nephews who've thrived with the help of my 'care', is for people to think that public displays of such care, through hugging, can be associated with the despicable behavior of child abusers/molesters.  Though my influence hasn't been enough to offset that of a much larger and more constantly negative home, family and neighborhood environment, what little sociability she does have can largely be attributed to the 'care' I've shown her over the past 8 years.

5/19/97  Four more small pieces of green shingle found in my back yard were bagged and saved.

6:40 pm Sunday (last part of 60 minutes was on TV)  Buster, trespassing on the lower front porch of my rental duplex across the street, next door to his house, broke the right-most of three glass window panels in the storm door insert.  He was beating on it with a stick to get at the 16 year old boy living there and standing just inside the door.  DA's charging conference was 6/20/97.  Court appearance supposedly was in July.  I don't know anything more - not having the time to chase down the """"one"""" person in our city who knows the secret combination of procedures required for me to obtain information regarding it.  I gave up after calling the local police and the city attorney's office - not knowing Buster's last name at the time.  (Nor did I know his first name until he was killed in 1998.)

While Buster sat in the squad car of the two police officers who responded to this incident, his older brother told me that if I "called the police" on "him" (the older brother), he'd start doing what Buster was doing - indicating that the campaign of harassment by Buster against my property and me was a family enterprise.  This is fairly typical in the Inner City.

Criminals, drug dealers and other miscreants do not like people who stand up to them - especially those courageous enough to withstand their threats and retaliatory actions to actually call the police.  Apart from ALL White residents, the other neighborhood residents usually harassed are those African American (and other) residents who do call the police, too, when circumstances warrant.  The reason all White residents are harassed is not necessarily due to Black on White racism - it's simply because most White residents have been in the neighborhood longer, usually from times when it was all White, and are used to calling and getting responses from the police.  And, encouraging the harassment as an effective tool of the miscreants, most of those White (and other) residents do eventually move out - usually after discovering that the police department no longer responds as effectively as in the past in their "integrating" neighborhood.

I had a two hour conversation with another White resident on the next block back in September of 1993.  He had called to sell me one of his security systems and express his concerns about the deterioration of the neighborhood.  Although he lived in a duplex, he didn't rent out his upper flat.  (Another behavior typical of White residents who do not want to learn to get along with people of another race - especially, apparently, African Americans.)  His closing comment was that "us White people" had to stick together - a fortress mentality that too often scares otherwise concerned residents away from finding common solutions to their common problems.

By 1999, his block became notorious for local "gang organized" drug dealing and prostitution - leading us back full circle to the reason miscreants harass those who call the police -- in order to have whole blocks where they can ply their trades without being harassed themselves!

5/26/97  Tree branches broken off the tree in front of my house were laying across the sidewalk until I moved them the next morning.  A police squad car was parked next to them for at least an hour around 11:00 pm, possibly investigating someone having fallen out of the tree, but I've never heard anything about this one.  It could have been associated with one of the boys 'visiting' the girls in the group home next door.  They do so on an almost casual basis even though the director tells me that that's not supposed to happen AND DOESN'T.  It's amazing how many people who hardly ever visit this block know more about what does and doesn't happen here than me.  I wish I had their visual acuity!  Once, a boy and girl were just inside the door of the upper rear porch giggling - apparently necking or making love.)

Found another piece of green upper front porch shingle.

At this time, I was in the final phases of developing the mouse driven BZH.BAT DOS Desktop Operating System and other freeware files.  Needless to say, wasting a lot of time trying to get laws enforced, in the face of neighbors who didn't care or weren't ready to get involved, wasn't a high priority.  So, I just bagged and saved what was significant - still not losing hope that something could be done about it at some later date.  [ 10/4/02:  Am active again and still looking for even one other person to become involved with kids on our block. ]

6/4/97  Found a piece of roofing shingle on the asphalt carport.  It had probably come off in the wind from the highest part of the roof of the rental duplex across the street.  It was then carried by someone and thrown into my back yard from the alley.  The wind wasn't that strong!

6/8/97  Found another piece of the green shingle from the upper front porch of the rental duplex across the street.  It was in my back yard.

6/11/97  Began rebuilding the wooden front steps at my rental duplex across the street.  Whoever built the first steps didn't lay a proper foundation with adequate drainage to prevent water rot.  And, the half-dozen or so hand rails I already had were inadequate to withstand the 'monkey bar' activity of kids always visiting or trespassing on the porch.  So, creative solutions and recycled material for the handrail and support posts were used.  (This decision proved itself valid exactly seven years, one month and one week later when a couple 3 year old girls were photographed hanging and climbing all over the 'still' completely undamaged handrail.)

But, regardless of the numerous attempts to befriend Buster over the past three years, his campaign of terror against my property continued unabated - primarily because it has nothing to do with liking me or not and everything to do with chasing out of the neighborhood someone who's well known to call the police and otherwise prevent wide open drug dealing from occurring on 'my' block.  That's also why he spreads the viciously false rumors regarding my sexuality or other perversion to anyone who'll listen - especially those dysfunctional families constantly moving in and out of the equally dysfunctional flats who're the primary customers for his drug dealing family.

In the distant past, the kids would tell every new arrival that this was "Ben's block".  I used to greet newly arriving kids the day they moved in, especially those with rocks in their hands ready to continue throwing, and introduce them to the kids also playing outside immediately adjacent to them. On leaving, I'd ask for the rocks and would never see them thrown again.  In those 1988 ~ 1990 days, some absentee owned flats had new tenants every couple months, almost always with rock throwing pre-schoolers.

6/??/97  Five garbage cart fires occur in the alleys behind our block - two in the eastern alley and three in the other.  The 5th and last is of a blue recycling cart at the corner of the garage diagonal from mine - one which was fire damaged previously from the overheated abandoned car and now rehabilitated.  The 2nd fire is the 3rd or 4th over the past six months of one of the carts across the alley behind my house.  I've always kept all my carts inside the locked rear yard for obvious reasons.  It's a pain having to place them every garbage collection day but less burdensome than having to constantly clean up the fire mess left after they're burned, toppled or set to destroy the garage, too.

The fire department has never talked to me about the dozens of fires in our neighborhood - even by telephone - even though I'm still listed as the Block Captain.  Their attitude seems to be the same as the police - so long as it's not their neighborhood, who cares.  I used to care, but after 10 years, that "DON'T CARE" virus must have invaded my system, too.

During the conversation with the three girls, they in the alley, me in my yard - across the back fence, so to speak, I indicated that knowing who was starting the fires wasn't as important as stopping them.  It made me so depressed that I no longer wanted to have anything to do with children in the neighborhood.  I didn't want to take them with me to community meetings at local chruches or other political townhalls and, MOST IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, to MacDonalds for hamburgers, french fries and sodas.  (I have videos of these kids shaking the Mayor's and ex-Police Chief's hands, at a kids softball league kickoff back in 1992.  They've also shaken hands with area Aldermen, our senior Senator, Congressman, county Supervisor, state Representative and, most recently, new police Chief, among other notables I've gone out of my way to have them meet.  My Aunt did the same for me as a kid, so I'm just passing it along hoping it does something for them, too.)

Anyway, we went almost a month without any fires.  I did witness another girl, aged 13, starting a piece of newspaper on fire between two garbage carts at the infamously popular locale across the alley from me, while her tiny tot brother and very cute tiny tot sister watched.  Another neighbor drove into the alley, scared them away, parked and stomped the fire out with his foot.  By the time I came down from my workplace on the upper rear porch, he had it out.  Again, securing my house, I walked around the corner to this girl's house and talked with her concerned mom about what the other neighbor and I had just witnessed, along with some other information passed along to me about her premature sexual behavior in some abandoned cars nearby.  She denied it and began cussing both her mother and me out, especially using the shop-worn "you're believing a White honky instead of me" phrase picked up when so many gang bangers become the sole role models in high turn-over, constantly changing neighborhoods such as this.

Her father disciplined her when he came home.  That's why I didn't call the police in this instance, and haven't in dozens of others - because these children have parents who do take action, much more effective action than the police will ever be capable of.  Police are only called by me when the 'official' guardians take no action and are also belligerent - conditions priming that child for extreme dysfunction as an adult.  Too bad the police never seem to do anything, either.  Maybe that's why we're building more jails than colleges these days!

1998 update:  This girl has reverted to her more normally respectful and decent behavior since the negative role models left the hood.  Ten years previously, when she and her younger sister were cute little toddlers, we used to walk around the block holding hands.  A couple years later, her little sister sat me down on her front step and told me the entire story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears from memory.  On another occasion, after she started bussing away to school in an all White neighborhood, she told me she no longer liked White people because some kids at school had called her a nigger.  I asked if they were smiling or not when they said it and pointed out that she and her friends used that term on each other all the time.  I also commented that actions speak louder than words and to not let herself be controlled by other people's mere words - regardless of how hurtful.  She and her sister are most intelligent of all the 'street' kids in this neighborhood.  • Ben'sBlock
BROKEN:  Branches  • garageWindow  • porchWindow
GARBAGEcartFIRES:  x5!  • cleanup  • discussion
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 • HandRail-KidProof!  • KidFunActivities  • KidsMomCares  • lyingGrandmother  • PaintItOut  • policeExcuses  • porchStepsRebuilt  • roofShinglesTornOff  • shingles  • ThreatByOlderBrother  • TinyTots  • wholesaleDrugHouse |hood

Website link/location/URL: http://www.KidsRiot.com/kids97.htm or http://www.Jamrent.com/ic/kids97.htm