I deviated the route slightly this morning, taking Vermont all the way down to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which I stayed on across to Leimert Park.
At MLK I rolled to a stop before the red light at Normandie and from the sidewalk behind me at my four o’clock walked a petite woman perhaps somewhere in her 40s directly towards me who when I turned to look at her responded to my attention with a very kindly smile that I returned with a head nod as she passed alongside me and then into the crosswalk across my bow.
As she advanced to the other side of MLK my smile disappeared when I saw that strapped behind her to her belt was a sheath that held a long fixed-blade knife, its carved handle sticking straight up and next to it a two-way radio.
It left me realizing how different a world it is down in that area where one would chose not to walk its streets at 8:30 in the morning without someone on the other end of a walkie-talkie and a ready-to-filet Bowie-type knife on display.
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