Over the Ghetto and Through the Hood
The neighborhood I grew up in, while it wasn’t the most dangerous place to live, it certainly wasn’t the safest. I recall being four years old and falling asleep to the sound and lights of police helicopters hovering overhead. Our clothes were stolen twice from the laundromat across the street. I was ten when my best friend moved into the neighborhood. “Did you know there are three gangs in this neighborhood?” she asked within five minutes of meeting me. I honestly didn’t, but I mentioned to her that I was not impressed by a group of self-proclaimed “thugs” who robbed the hardworking lower-to middle-class people in my neighborhood and those in the apartment complexes down the street. I would be impressed if they regularly hit up Highland Park, but their actions in my neighborhood could only be categorized as sissy.
The biggest problem our neighborhood suffered was robbery. After the first time our house was robbed, my parents got crafty about protecting our valuables. My mom kept her jewelry in an empty paint can in the laundry room. My dad kept his father’s pocket watch inside a pair of socks in his sock drawer. I kept my money in a cookie tin in the cupboard. Where do you hide the checkbook? Why, behind some books on the bookshelf, of course.
I feared for our family car. I would peak out my bedroom window each morning just after sunrise to see our car sitting at the end of the sidewalk, looking so cold and sad, as if to say, “How could you leave me here all night by myself?”
Our second family car was my dad’s 1980s red Volkswagen Jetta. It was a very simple car - no power locks or power windows. It had a manual transmission. The fanciest thing about it was the radio with a tape player. Regardless of the monetary value of the vehicle parked in front of our house, it inevitably became the victim of the neighborhood’s petty thieves.
Within the same year, the Jetta’s radio was stolen three times. The first time it was stolen, the burglar broke the lock on the driver’s side door and used a screwdriver to rip the radio from the dashboard. It was a shocking sight: Pieces of cardboard and foam on the floor, and wires worming their way out of a hole in the dashboard. My dad filed a claim with the insurance company and had the lock and radio replaced. He proudly invited us outside to show us the new radio. As I approached the car, he motioned me into the car with a big smile on his face. He knew I was scared to climb inside, as I feared someone would snatch me the way the radio was snatched. My mom watched us fearfully from the porch, as her suspicions about our neighborhood were confirmed. Shortly thereafter, the radio was stolen a second time.
Ignoring my mom’s pleas to move away from our crime-ridden neighborhood, my dad filed a second claim to have the lock and radio replaced. We were not invited into the car to get a look at our second new radio. Instead, my dad resigned to not locking the car doors at night.
“If they want the radio, they’re going to steal the radio. Best that we leave the doors unlocked so that we don’t have to pay for a new lock, too,” he said.
So new radio number three was installed. Six months later, with radio and driver’s side door lock in tact, we concluded the thief had been arrested. He had not.
With radio number three gone, my dad had had enough. He didn’t need a radio in the car - it was a luxury item, but he didn’t want to give up on the chance to catch this thief. He went to a junkyard and pulled the face off of a tape deck similar to his, glued it into the hole in the dashboard, and waited. Maybe he was determined to catch this guy, or maybe he was tired of listening to my mother swoon and complain about the house and how we should “leave this neighborhood!” He spent a few nights pacing in front of the window, peeking outside at the helpless Jetta. There was our family car - a 2 ton piece of bait - and my dad, ready to dial the police at any moment he saw someone lingering near the car.
My dad was not the one to catch this thief in the end. It was our neighbor, who had stepped outside at 2:00am to smoke a cigarette, who noticed someone rummaging around inside our car. My dad was relieved, but he never replaced the radio.
From then on, we left our car doors unlocked. Over the course of eight years, items stolen from our cars included:
-A radio
-A battery (from under the hood)
-A backpack
-A calculator
-A binder of CDs
-About $4.00 in change
-A tank of gasoline
Our house was robbed two or three times over our time there. They took a television, a guitar, a lawnmower, a telephone… all of those things that have a place in the home, and those things that, when you return home to find them moved from their spots, it stuns you and freezes you in your place.
My mom’s complaints came in regular intervals - every month or so - and my dad either ignored her or tried his best to assure her that we were safe in our neighborhood. He made the best out of a scary situation, as we locked ourselves in a four bedroom house that was once apart of a bustling and happy neighborhood.
I bought my first jewelry box at the age of 24. Three years later, I’m still thinking about trading it in for a cookie tin, just for old time’s sake.
