Valuable lesson

My Nintendo was similar to the one seen here.

My first lesson in economics, in the end, was worth $75.50.

Or $125.35 if I wanted store credit from 2nd & Charles in Hagerstown, Md.

Let me bring you up to speed. Jen and I have been consolidating boxes we've moved from the garage of our old house in Clarks Summit to a storage locker in the Chambersburg area.

In the process, I came across my old Nintendo. You know, the 8-bit. Up, down, up, down, B, A, Select, Start.

My Dominator was similar to the one seen here.

Along with it and the original controllers and gun, I also found about 50 games, plus "The Dominator" — a large joystick-equipped controller that worked using infrared.

The hours Nick, Stephen and I would spend playing these games. A lot of brotherly bonding… and fighting. Still, that Nintendo entertained us through much of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Despite pangs of guilt, I knew it was time the old NES and I parted ways.

To be fair, I had tried to do that once before. I offered to give the unit to a coworker in Scranton when Jen and I moved up there. I even brought it into the office. But for one reason or another, Big Jim never took full ownership. The system languished in a file-cabinet drawer for months after the sports department got its fill of playing Bases Loaded and Tecmo Bowl.

When I departed The Times-Tribune, I pulled the equipment and games from the file cabinet and put them in a milk crate in our garage.

There they sat.

Through two floods.

Now, they were off the ground. And the NES itself was not near any of the water. But some of the games were sprinkled. All of mine, however, retained their black plastic sleeve and thus were protected. Because I took care of my Nintendo games and system.

Because it was mine.

It was, indeed, the very first thing I ever bought with my own money.

As a boy, I begged my parents for a Nintendo, one just like all my apparently spoiled friends had received from their apparently rich parents who were apparently growing money on trees.

Seeing the opportunity to teach me the value of a dollar, Mom and Dad said I could get a Nintendo, but that I had to buy it. They drove me over to Chesapeake Federal Savings and Loan on Joppa Road and set me up with a passbook savings account. 

I don't recall the interest rate, but I know it was better than the passbook savings account Jen and I set up for Sophie last year.

I stashed away nearly every nickel and dime I came across, either through the exchange of services (I mowed a lot of lawns) or found on the sidewalk. 

Every few weeks, I'd pedal my bike through the neighborhood, up and down hills, dodging the dangers of Old Harford Road to deposit my spoils.

I'd wait anxiously as the bank teller would slide my passbook into her printer, the piercing DOT Matrix whine updating my growing financial empire.

TMNT II arcade version.

Meanwhile, I searched every circular put out by Toys R Us, Montgomery Ward and Circuit City for a unit that was less than $99.99 in hopes I might reach my conquest sooner. (A few years later, I received a coupon from Nintendo of America Inc. to make up for the price-fixing scheme.) 

But once that unit came into our lives, my brothers and I felt like normal kids. We could talk with the other kids at school about the secret mushroom extra lives on Super Mario, or how you could throw a bullet pass from Jim McMahon to Ron Morris in Tecmo Bowl if you ran McMahon back to his own end zone, switched the receiver to Morris, then passed. 

Original TMNT game.

I was too cool for school when I eventually received the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II Arcade game. I also had the original, less fancy TMNT game.

Through it all, though, the experience taught me the valuable lesson: If I work hard and save my money, I can get what I want.

In today's dollars, that lesson's value had depreciated to $75.50.

But in my heart, it's one of the most valuable ones my parents ever taught me.

Charm City

Flag of the City of Baltimore

As a kid, I used to sit on the living room floor when my grandfather and grandmother would come over Sunday evenings after they'd had their dinner at the restaurant down the street.

Poppy would tell stories about growing up in East Baltimore, about the "way things used to be" in the city. Baba would nod her head in agreement, recalling a time gone by when things were simpler, pristine and gentile. My parents, who grew up in that neighborhood and were teenagers when the 1968 riots convinced their families to move to the county, would also chime in.

I'd listen to those tales about the neighborhood that used to be called "Little Bohemia" because of it's heavy concentration of Czech families with names like Cvach and Dolivka and Bocek and Kotesovec and Pinkas.

Street names would be thrown about. Places like Ashland, Madison and Monument. My mother grew up on North Montford Avenue, next door to my great-grandparents and great aunt. My father grew up a few blocks away on North Kenwood Avenue, just a couple blocks south of the railroad tracks.

St. Wenceslaus Church, Baltimore

And you'd hear about the trials and tribulations of being an altar boy at St. Wenceslaus. The beautiful old church was built, partly, by members of my family on both sides, too.

And my grandfather, grandmother, great aunt, mother, father, aunts and uncles all went to grade school at St. Wenceslaus. The youth would go to the school's Lyceum on weekends, where they'd play basketball, bowl or dance on the rooftop dance floor.

And all was so great and so grand and so wonderful back then.

Then I asked what happened to change it. Why wasn't I going to St. Wenceslaus for church and school? Why wasn't I living blocks away from where my parents grew up?

The riots, they'd tell me.

"The neighborhood changed," they'd say. "It wasn't safe there anymore."

Ten-year-old me accepted this.

Now, I'm 36. I've read up on the sociological history of America and Baltimore, in particular. First off, I know that things in those years gone by weren't so pristine and wonderful. And I also know that, despite the tone behind what they had to say, it's more than just "riots" and "change" and "safety" that was at play back then.

Maryland state flag

Those factors definitely were a part, but so was the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs in America's industrial towns, like Baltimore.

There are other factors that would take an entire doctoral thesis to even begin scratching the surface of.

Exhibit A: Addiction.

In short, it's more complicated than just "riots" and "race" and "safety" and even "jobs" and "addiction."

Charm City, despite its recent attempts at believing in itself, is still struggling with hopelessness. It's sort of like Pagliacci: Smiling on the outside with its Inner Harbor and historic sites and great eateries, but crying on the inside with its drugs and poverty and despair.

The investigation into the death of Freddie Gray, and the resulting public protests and riots are the manifestation of that.

Lord knows the prozac the city and region needs to settle its manic depression won't take effect overnight. It doesn't seem like anyone can even find the prescription pad.

But I know it won't come by marginalizing people, or by destroying property.

I've not lived in the state, let alone the metro area, for more than 15 years, but I still consider Baltimore my home.

And I hope the "way things used to be" does, in fact, become real life one day for the city I love.