Talk:Perkins Homes, Baltimore

My life in Perkins Projects

Mason Court is where we lived. We moved there in 1951, my mother, my brother, and me; my mom left my father, and her only choice was to move to subsidizted housing. This was new to many families that moved there, mostly single moms raising kids for what ever reason. The demographics was white for the most part. The neighborhood outside Perkins was Little Italy to the west, Fells point to the east, north was mostly blacks, and the south was harbor, residential, bars, commercial. After moving in, my brother and I had many new friends, all ages, it was a lot of fun. We played tin can alley almost every night, we felt safe, believe or not, we slept outside in the summer, the community center had many activities, and the kids were united!

I have many fond memories of Perkins, staying up all night, dreaming and wishing of another life outside. We walked freely and without fear. Go to the movies on Broadway, The Leader and The Broadway all day on Saturdays, take our own food, even though candy out of the machines was only $0.05. we would walk to the Broadway Market on Saturdays to get milkshakes 2 for .25, it was shaken, on a machine that had a two-sided shaker that was cranked by hand and of course without ice cream. We didn't care, it was cold and tasted good. Even after becoming teenagers, we were still happy and had fun. We had dreams, but we lived for the day. As teens we would go up on the roof to tan and get as dark as we could. We identified with tan was good, made us look healthy, skinny, and as if we left the projects to vacation at the beach. Even today when I drive the projects nothing but good memories come to mind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.250.186.22 (talk) 02:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)