Live dialogue from Little Italy

click sound graphic to listen, or read text below.

"I’m Ray Alcaraz in Little Italy, Baltimore. If you were born and raised here, you’re here, this is it, this is you. Little Italy becomes a part of you. And generations are raised here, where if you were within the nine square blocks of Little Italy, you were home, you were safe. If we were three or four blocks away from home as kids, and got into some sort of trouble, by the time we ran home, our mothers already knew. I still joke with my mother to this day that their system was faster than the Internet.

Ray's grandfather (white shirt), Romualdo "Romeo" Boggio, arrived through Ellis Island in 1912. His daughter, Ray's mother, Mary Ann (Boggio) Alcaraz, still lives in Little Italy in the house where she grew up.

Everyone was your mother. They all had the right to discipline you and had no problem doing that. So if you were on another block and someone saw you messing up, they were going to scold you before your mother or your parents even got to you.

I was born and raised here. My mother was born over 77 years ago in the house in Little Italy where she still lives. It was my grandfather’s house; he died in 1976 at the age of 80. He came over from Italy in 1912 and we lived with him in his house until he died. So we had three generations together.

My parents had one bathroom, one tub. I always tried to figure out … how did several families live in this one house? But you know they did it.

This is still my home. When people ask where you’re from, I don’t say Lutherville, Maryland … I say Little Italy."