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9. The Pats Family: Oral History
- Temple University Press
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9 the Pats family Oral History i n 1968 Sidney and Ida Pats were resident owners of Downes Brothers Pharmacy, located in the 800 block of West North Avenue, an area hard hit by the Baltimore riot. When the Patses purchased the pharmacy in 1950, their neighbors and customers were primarily white; by 1968 most white residents had either died or moved away and, in a typical pattern of racial succession, African Americans had came to dominate the neighborhood. In this interview, Ida Pats and her daughters Sharon Pats Singer, who was sixteen at the time of the riot, and Betty Pats Katzenelson, who was thirteen, recall living and working in an urban neighborhood, the looting and burning of their pharmacy during the riot, and family members’ subsequent efforts to rebuild their lives. Ida Pats is a retired accountant. Sharon and Betty raised their families in Baltimore’s northwest suburbs, where they continue to live. Their outrage at the profound losses they suffered still lingers after forty years; their sense of personal violation remains palpable. Valerie Wiggins conducted the interview, and Bashi Rose recorded it, on February 20, 2007; both were University of Baltimore students at the time. Also present at the interview were an elderly North Avenue neighbor who wished to remain unnamed; the historian Eric Singer, Sharon Singer’s son; Baltimore ’68 oral history project director Elizabeth Nix of the University of Baltimore history faculty; and Gadi Dechter, a reporter for the Baltimore sun. 146 / Linda Shopes Sharon Singer: my parents got the pharmacy in 1950. And in 1950 the area, north Avenue, was a white area. the store was in the middle of the block. it was owned by someone else when they bought it, and, in fact, the woman who worked behind the counter, miss Davis, continued to work there. We lived upstairs. that’s all we knew, north Avenue. that was our home. the store itself was on the first level. At that time it had in it a fountain. the fountain had ice cream and sodas and things like that, really fun kind of things. And then the store had patent goods and medicine; and in the back, the pharmacy was in the back, like an old-time pharmacy. And then as the years went on, the neighborhood did change and it became a mixed neighborhood, let’s say. And at some point the fountain became something that was more of a hindrance, and they took it out. And they put in liquor because of the neighborhood change, it was an adaptation to the neighborhood. it was beer in the coolers, and so they took out all the ice cream, like bars and cones and things like that. the store was a multipurpose kind of place and the people who came in, most of them were regular customers. there was no rite Aid [pharmacy], there were no big-box stores at that time. this was the place where they could get their prescription drugs, and they could get their toiletries, and it was a place also—even though there was a bank on the corner, which was union trust—where they could get their checks cashed, because they did not have accounts at the bank. my mother did the taxes for people during tax season, right in the middle of the store. she would sit there at the little desk, and everybody’d be waiting in line to get their income taxes done. Betty Katzenelson: And the line would be out the door on check day. Sharon Singer: What she means by check day is when the people in the neighborhood got welfare checks—not all the people, but whoever did. i mean the line would be out the door to cash the checks. Why they didn’t use the bank, i don’t really know. Ida Pats: the banks didn’t accept them, and they didn’t accept the banks. Sharon Singer: And they had a trust in my parents, in fact so much so that my parents had a little file box, and in the file box were file cards with people’s names on them, and if they didn’t have enough money toward the end of the month to buy their toiletries or to get whatever they needed, my parents would write their names down and they would get it on account, and okay, you’re good for it. no interest or anything like that; it was just a very...