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D. Watkins is a college professor and writer who grew up in Baltimore. A hometown friend who worked in Baltimore for several years sent me a New York Times piece published yesterday in which Watkins minces no words about the history of bad relations between the police and black communities there.

It is an important article to read, but what really struck home with me was what Watkins says about the make-up of a Baltimore police force he believes is simply out of control: “…many Baltimore police officers don’t live in Baltimore City; some don’t even live in Maryland. Many don’t know or care about the citizens of the communities they police, which is why they can come in, beat us and kill us without a sign of grief or empathy.”

When I read that statement memories of my own home neighborhood flooded my mind.

I have previously written about the gratitude I feel for where I grew up, but in all honesty I have to say I am also grateful that it is where I am from, not where I am. Not because of what it is today, but what it was then.

Plain and simple, my neighborhood was poor, uneducated, as blue collar as blue collar can be.

It was also almost all white, significant because back then (and also today) whites got better treatment from everybody, especially the police, than blacks did. That’s a fact.

Not that the police were friendly toward us. They weren’t. They didn’t like coming across the railroad tracks into our area to patrol anymore than we did.

In those days every neighborhood had a gathering place for kids. Ours was “the Wall,” a literal cement wall on the main drag that ran for an entire block in front of the biggest church in the neighborhood. The Wall ended at the intersection of the main drag and the street where I live, and that is where everybody hung out.

Any Friday or Saturday night, and week nights during the summer, kids of all ages, and even some veteran Wall sitters, would come and go back and forth between the Wall and Pic’s Cafe across the street until late into the night.

It’s true that a few kids got into serious trouble through the years, but most of us were just nuisances, yelling at cars going by, playing pranks, laughing, telling stories, smoking, and a few of the older ones doing some beer drinking on the sly.

As I read what D. Watkins said I thought of two policemen I remember among all the ones who patrolled the neighborhood. They were brothers, actually. We called them Big Smith and Little Smith (not their real name).

Big Smith was big, for sure very big in the eyes of a kid, but I have no memory of anyone really being afraid of Big Smith. If anything, kids in my neighborhood liked him.

I remember that he didn’t act aggressive toward us, seemingly more interested in keeping the peace than showing his authority. My middle brother who was a Wall leader of sorts because he was afraid of nothing, especially getting into fights, made it a point to talk to Big Smith whenever and wherever he saw him. Turned out he liked him, and Big Smith seemed to like my brother, but, then, so did everyone else, but that’s a different story.

Little Smith couldn’t have been more different, in size or personality. To be honest, nobody liked Little Smith.

If someone yelled “Little Smith” when they saw a patrol car approaching, the wall would empty and kids would scatter. It was no secret that he didn’t seem to like us, or our neighborhood. We were sure he wouldn’t hesitate a minute to throw us in the car and take us to jail.

I don’t know if our Wall behavior was different when one or the other was patrolling, but I have no doubt that had something serious erupted, as is always possible in those situations, it would have been better for Big Smith to be the one handling it rather than Little Smith.

It’s obvious why. It was all about the relationship we had with one brother and not the other. It was about having some trust with one and not the other. It was about kids like my brother being able to talk to one and not the other.

My neighborhood was certainly not like many of those in Baltimore, and we didn’t live in the conditions many people are facing there today, but D. Watkins seems to have been saying the same thing I learned in my neighborhood, that there is no situation where relationships don’t matter.

At this point the relationship between the police and black neighborhoods in Baltimore may be beyond hope, but if anything is redeemable, I would say it will need to be grounded in the realization that the quality of the relationship between the two will determine the future.