More on Baltimore & Eminent Domain

Baltimore is or was a neat place for me. Our family home was on the east side in what is now the very trendy Canton. At that time, back in the 50's & 60's, Canton had train tracks running down the middle of Boston Street. Many times, we'd be driving down Boston on one side or t'other of a train. The train cars held a variety of stuff but, primarily, they were either coal hoppers or iron ore hoppers, and they were usually headed east bound, towards the Point.

Mom told me various stories about the trains. One was about how she & her siblings used to steal coal off the cars and pick up coal that had been dropped into the street. Grandma Struhar told them to only bring home "blue coal" (anthracite) as it burned hotter & longer. If they brought hom anything else, they were usually swatted across the bum. Soft coal burned dirty and grandma already had her hands full with 12 kids occupying the house! BTW, this story has been verified by a couple of my aunts & uncles at various times.

The old homestead was located in the 1200 block of Decker Ave. Back in the 1960's, we lost our home to the City of Baltimore through "eminent domain". The mayor was Thomas D'Alesandro, father of Nancy Pelosi. He condemned many houses on the premise of putting an interstate through Canton & parts of Highlandtown. The interstate never materialized and the city sold all those properties at many hundreds of thousands of dollars profit. On the site of lost family homes, condos and nursing homes were built. Industry had to relocate as those buildings were also condemned, but never torn down. Now, those building are home to condos such as: The Anchorage, Condeco Wharf, etc. In my little pea brain, governments utilizing eminent domain, the taking of privately owned property supposedly for the greater good, are doing nothing but abusing their power. It is nothing more than legalized thievery. It destroys lives, ruins businesses, and harms families. Many of the people, who at one time had a home, wound up living in public housing because they could not afford to purchase another home. The businesses which were displaced left and never returned. People lost jobs. Families broke up. Why? So the city could sell that acreage to developers, who build condos & shopping areas. Where is the public good? Anyway, in case you cannot tell, I'm not for eminent domain. Eminent domain is wrong when good people are hurt by it.

More to come...