re: #51 Decatur Deb

The two sides of the family really hated each other. I never heard a term for “serb” from them, because they never spoke of them.

Strangely, most of the grief from our Irish neighborhood fell on Lithuanians—“Litvaks”. They had arrived recently in flight from the Russian expansion. Germans, of course, were hated pro-forma because of the recent war.

As preschoolers, we had the run of the Bluff neighborhood— turned out in the morning, given food at lunch, and called in at dark. That changed once or twice a year when the Gypsies camped in some empty lots. Our parents actually believed there was a market for stolen children.

Interesting!

Growing up, I remember that as a teenage male, there were certain neighborhoods that unless I was looking for a fight with that neighborhood’s teenagers, it was generally a bad idea to enter. There was neutral ground within a block of schools, but that was it.

I remember hearing occasional discussions about local ‘Gypsies’. But for some reason, I thought of them as a group of poor outsider transients rather than as a specific ethnic group. Not sure where my interpretation came from.

We still were supposed to avoid them. But mostly because they were ‘outsiders’ with unknown trustworthiness. Not because they were presumed criminals and sociopaths. But that was just my understanding. Not sure how I got that view.