So What Was Going On?

Is there a part 2 of this story, or is the reader supposed to figure out what was going on from what you've already told us? I surmise from the title that Tamara was some kind of scam artist, but I don't know exactly what she did to scam you. Did she take your money, give you a false lead, and then skip town, or what?

I looked up Hetty Green, and I agree that she was quite a character. I think it's unlikely, however, that she sold the Gage Park property during the 1920s since, according to Wiki, she died in 1916. Her son Ned had been managing her Chicago properties for her, so maybe he was the one who sold the land to the developers.

I also looked up some Chicago neighborhood maps and found that I had indeed lived in the Gage Park neighborhood, at least officially. Chicago is officially divided into 77 "community areas", which most people call "neighborhoods". There are also unofficial neighborhoods within these community areas, some of them spanning parts of two community areas. The Gage Park community area encompasses everything between 47th Street and 59th Street, and from just east of Western to the railroad tracks that I told you about. Those tracks are the eastern boundary of a community area called "West Elsdon". It seems then, that some of the land east of the tracks should be called "Elsdon" or "East Elsdon", but it isn't, at least not officially. The Elsdon Methodist Church was east of the tracks, so that area must have been called "Elsdon" at one time. What I don't know is the eastern boundary of this elusive Elsdon, so I don't know if our house was included in it or not. If it was Kedzie Avenue, then we weren't in Elsdon but, if it was California Avenue, then we were. Funny, I don't remember anybody calling our neighborhood anything but "the neighborhood". Somewhere east of that was the "old neighborhood". There were also "bad neighborhoods" and "questionable neighborhoods". The bad neighborhoods were generally Black, but the questionable neighborhoods could be anywhere my parents advised me to stay out of unless I had a good reason to go there, and "hanging out" was certainly not considered to be a good reason.

After I signed off last time, I got to thinking about the interracial social situation in Berlin when I was there. Looking back on it, it seems odd that the Blacks restricted their downtown activity to that one establishment. I assume it was voluntary on their part because we were never told of any army policy or German law or custom that would require it. The more I think about it, I think it might have had something to do with the White women. I don't think I ever saw a Black woman in Berlin, so our Black guys would have no choice but to fraternize with White women. This would have been  considered outrageous conduct in those days, at least in the States, especially the Southern states. I don't think the Berliners would have been upset by it, but I'm not sure because I don't think I ever saw a Black guy and a White woman walking hand in hand down the street in Berlin.

Anyway, this place where the Black guys went, the name of which I do not remember, was a large Victorian looking building, surrounded by landscaped grounds, and enclosed in some kind of wall or fence. I only caught a glimpse of it once through the gate, but it looked like a nice place to me. It was too big to be just a bar, so it must have also been a hotel and restaurant. It recently occurred to me that it was a place where a Black guy and a White girl could get together without being seen in public. I don't know why I didn't think of it at the time, but I always was pretty oblivious to social crap like that. Of course everybody knew what was going on but, by keeping it out of sight, I suppose they avoided antagonizing people who cared about stuff like that. As the Black population increased, the old home place must have been starting to get crowded, so I suppose our Black brothers tried to expand their territory, which may have been what led to the racial violence I heard about after I had come home.