Central Square, Central Scare

Years ago, YL told me the nickname for Central Square, Cambridge. "Central Scare! Yes! It's getting better now, but it used to be really unsafe before. Drug dealers used to do their business there at night. Don't walk alone at night. Roll up your windows when you drive through."

It sounded really scary. I carefully followed his suggestions and never walked alone at night. Central Square is a nice place during the day: I especially like the Pearl, the art and craft store; the Harvest, the local grocery co-op where you can get exotic spices in bulk for low prices; and lots of restaurants, and clubs. Maybe it would be better without those clubs. Over the years we've heard about fights, and one time a gunfight where someone got killed not far from D's purple house. I mean, that was really scary. But it was never really close to me.

Not until last night, or very early this morning, did I feel the scare. After staying late to set up a second plate of real-time polymerase chain reaction (yeah! I've finally advanced to the 21st century!), I took off around 1:30am (yes, I am still in the Mountain Time). I stopped at the red light on Mass Ave. at the fire station. I felt lucky that I didn't run the yellow light because a cop car was stopped in front of me on the right. The cops pulled over one car. The young driver was ordered to stand behind the car, with his hands on the trunk. The two cops were searching the inside, one of them shining a flash light at the passenger, the other holding a baseball bat. He looked at it for a while, and then went back to the cop car, and threw the bat to the back seat. What was going on here? Suddenly I felt really scared. What if those kids had a gun in the car? What if they just started shooting? I was too close to them. Oh I was in danger! Now I really understood why it was Central Scare. Those scary kids!

It seemed to me to take forever for the light to become green again. I drove as fast as I could without any residual curiosity at what was really going on with those kids in that car. Not far away, on Western Ave. I encountered another three cop cars and some cops outside talking. Oh my, it must be a block party for cops late at night. Again I was lucky that I didn't speed above the posted limit of 25mi/h when I approached those cops.