There was still an earnest snobbery about doings on Spring Street. There were so many who lived two, three blocks east or west who’d have to wait another generation before they could say, “Well, you know, my daughter stays over there, you know, by Spring Street.” Now, even though Liliane’s papa, as she was wont to say sometime, was the only criminal court judge, colored, in the state, didn’t nobody want to live out there where she did: ’mong a bunch of crackers thought Princeton was Mecca, reformed Jews who celebrated Easter, and them real colored over to “The Crossing.” Now The Crossing had a name, but nobody used it. Wasn’t no need. All you have to do is go straight on out Princeton Avenue, past Five Points, can’t miss that. Big ol’ pillar with George Washington standing a top of it and a pile of colored men dealin’, talkin’, drinkin’, gamin’, and eatin’ fresh fried porgies from the shrimp boat cross the way. Well, go on by that and you’ll see some projects. Now there’s Negroes in there and a street callt Calhoun, but it had nothing to do with Calhoun the lawyer, who was a friend of Amos and Andy’s. Well, past the projects you hit Rigidity Village. I mean, little prefab rowhouses puttin theyselves forward like make-believe white folks who worked in factories didn’t live there. Everybody knew better than that. There’s no signs for homemade kielbasa in Kingston, New Jersey. Anyway, all these make-believe white folks’ names ended with vowels and quite often were assembled from a dumbfounding sequence of consonants, like Bryzinski, Scalia, etc. Once you got past this little feat of desperation, you’ll hit Harney’s Corner. It’ll say that. Bear to your left and when you hit a sign that says there’s traffic coming out from your left, but not from your right, then you turn left and you’re at The Crossing. You’ll know that cause no matter how often you drive down this little old unself-conscious street, you won’t see any more Negroes, unless you run across Liliane and them. All the rest the way out there, past the Lawrenceville Prep School, the Toddy Shop and Bentley’s Market, the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church and cemetery, there’s real white people with pedigrees from wars and ships, and Episcopalian Bible Date of Birth entries. Anyway, nobody wanted to live out there by The Crossing, though there was two bars that was a hoppin’ and a boppin’ over that way. Oh and if ya had decided to bear right at Harney’s Corner, you’d have missed The Crossing, but you’d have gone by a house that freed Negroes have owned with their own land too, since before the War. Around here when they say “before the War,” you really gotta catch yourself, cause they are referring to the Revolutionary War and not hardly all the colored or the make-believe white folks had set foot on this side of the earth yet. So, be vigilant in your dealings with these folks. Especially if you are Negro and don’t know the differences tween the real white people and the make-believe ones. See, they may be imaginin’ that cause they speak English as best they can, that they are real white people. That doesn’t even hold water. But, lemme tell ya, brass knuckles, swingin’ chains, zip guns, and tire irons done swayed many an arrogant young Negro’s head about who be white and how and when he be it and if he be it good. Now, that’s enough of that.