Did you go back home after serving? Was it the same?

http://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2016/06/04/baltimore-mayor-stephanie-rawlingsblake-visits-cuba-for-advice-on-economic-development-n2173126?utm_content=buffer136be&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Home wasn't really there any more when I returned from Vietnam. It was gone. A lost memory. Today, it seems even more distant, forgotten.

The Baltimore I left was a bedroom community tucked between the major metropolises of the East Coast. I well-remember the vendors with their pony carts wandering cobblestone streets hawking their wares. Gas street lamps and the lamplighter coming back each morning with his ladder to turn off the lights and clean those that needed it. I remember climbing from boat to boat as Eastern Shore fisherman sold produce from the Eastern Shore during months when crabbing an oystering were prohibited. I remember stores closing no later than 9 each night and closed all day on Sundays. I remember black and white communities coexisting peacefully (I envied the solidarity of their families inasmuch as mine was dysfunctional). I remember the Bay - That's the Chesapeake Bay, Land of Pleasant Living according to a local brewery advertisements, a protein factory according to H.L. Mencken, a world-famous journalist who made his home in my city.

It was all gone when I came home. Storefronts were shuttered and barred. The riots accompanying the Civil Rights movement had come and went. The black families were fractured by government meddling, welfare making dad's irrelevant and mom's encouraged with payments for children born without fathers. White families had fled.

I didn't hang around...