Just North of the City Line
The house faced north and was a block-and-a-half east of Pleasant Plains Road and a block-and-a-half west of Loch Raven Boulevard.
His earliest memory of home was looking out the front screen door, down over the porch at the street below.
Someone was coming.
He was two and holding his mother’s hand, where she towered over him to the right.
They lived in a nice brick row house about ten feet above the street, maybe 12 feet. The cars were parked on the street, the passenger side up against the curb. Between the curb and the nice even concrete sidewalks was a three foot wide patch of grass. Above the sidewalk was a grassy hillside, short and steep, that was cleft with, I think, eight concrete stairs.
The house itself sat on the earthen platform covered with deep green grass, about 15 feet back from the top of the stairs. At the top of those stairs were three more concrete steps which went up to the concrete porch, which was bordered in wrought iron railings, painted black.