"Gettin Outta Dodge": A Twisted Truth from Dodge View, Maryland in the 1970s

The Twisted Truth Podcast discusses various types of trauma and exposes the layers of invisible and ignored trauma. It emphasizes the experiences of everyday people surviving difficult circumstances and the lasting effects of trauma on individuals, families, and communities. The podcast highlights the need for trauma-informed care and provides tips on how to help someone who has experienced trauma. The podcast also delves into the history and challenges faced by the DMV area, particularly Prince George's County, Maryland, which was once referred to as the murder capital. The host shares personal experiences and explores topics such as medical trauma, spiritual trauma, and disability within the context of the environment. Welcome to the Twisted Truth Podcast, Horrors from the Murder Capital of the United States and Beyond, brought to you by MC Lovey Moore. This podcast contains references to trauma triggers of all kinds, generational trauma, systemic trauma, medical and health trauma, intentional and accidental trauma, environmental trauma, social trauma, natural disaster trauma, spiritual trauma, even compassion trauma, to name a few. These twisted truths include graphic violence, soul-crushing injustice, supreme oppression, and insurmountable grief. It identifies and exposes layers of invisible and ignored trauma. The Twisted Truths podcast exemplifies everyday people surviving every damn day, memento mori, fully expecting deathly experiences. People waking up with wonder and often dread. Is today the day? Is this how it ends? Will I be pleading, dear God, no, not like this. I'm not going down like this. Or will it be flat acceptance? Well, this really could be it for me. If you think these stories are about you, they aren't. You're so vain. I speak in booby-trapped, synesthetic riddles and third definitions. But if there's one similar story, there are probably a hundred behind it dressed in sheep's clothing. The generations living in the DMV grapple with a spirographic four-way relational Venn diagram of environmental exposure to major cataclysmic experiences that grapple in torrents and recover in a mirage of eddies. This podcast affords only small, stolen stares of exposed layers viewed through a keyhole. I'd like to start with a few words about trauma-informed care. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA's Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative, trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening, and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. Trauma can affect individuals, families, groups, communities, specific cultures, and generations. Everyone experiences trauma before their first breath of life. Birth is traumatic, even if it's quick and easy. Death is traumatic, even if it's quiet and painless. Work can be traumatic, even if it's rewarding and enjoyable. Usually people are resilient enough to overcome their trauma symptoms without professional help, but others endure long-lasting, often invisible effects from their trauma. Some people experience emotional, physical, mental, social, and spiritual problems from their trauma. About 8% of trauma survivors experience post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a severe and disabling form of anxiety. Even fewer people get the support they need to recover properly. If you believe you are experiencing long-lasting effects from a traumatic event, find professional help. A first responder or witness to an event may also experience secondary trauma. This podcast is definitely not a solution, and it may be triggering. Trauma can be invisible or delayed. Trauma-informed care is critical to societal health. If you're involved in a traumatic incident, start by asking yourself or another, are you okay? Ask first. Don't make it worse. Do you need help? You look shocked after seeing that accident. What do you need? Personal space? A quiet area? A chair? Medical attention? Can I help? Call for assistance? Wait beside you? Get you some water? How can I help? Can I dial a number? Can I speak for you? Can I offer crowd control? And go from there. It's not complete or even enough, but it is a start. Don't re-traumatize. Ask a doctor, guidance counselor, therapist, teacher, nurse, preacher, neighbor, or friend for help. Find out if your area has a mental health hotline and call it. The national hotline number is 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357. In Maryland, where this was recorded, the hotline number is 988. My lived perspective begins in the swell of the civil rights movement and keeps right on marching through the crack epidemic, the AIDS epidemic, nuclear threat, terrorism, starvation, fuel shortages, greenhouse gases, and acid rain, to name a few. People tromped in and out of the DMV from all over the world to speak out, to rage out, to cry out, to lash out, and to fade out. Let's at least remember what they said. Now I'm going to start with a little story called Getting Out of Dodge. This is THE Twisted Truth Podcast, brought to you by MC Loveymore, born and recirculated through one of the bloodiest chambers of America's heartland, Prince George's County, Maryland. Being one of the most severely traumatized areas of Prince George's County, Maryland, Dodgeview was once nicknamed the murder capital, the biggest open-air drug market, or the utterly offensive Dodge City, where the word city was substituted for the words view and park, and was intended to convey its steep, uncontrolled descent into societal degradation. I think the word city is a pretty weak insult for the caliber of the neighborhood. If you're not from the DMV, you might not know. Even the new arrivals here were confused when they relocated from neighboring areas. Disguised with names like park, hill, view, and pleasant, the area was neither safe for play nor fun to watch, and it certainly wasn't pleasant. The trip down whatever hill we tumbled always ended in the fire swamp. We'll talk about a class action suit for false advertising another time. I've got a lot of material to cover before then. Between the mid-70s and early 80s, the expansive network of crime within the area erupted into an aneurysm of violence, drugs, and hairspray. Dodge City lost its esteemed status as a livable place, as effortlessly as losing its car keys. By then, the heart roots of my family tree extended for miles. Seated in 1939, they trailed beneath fences, nudging the ground beneath and beyond the Capitol Beltway loops, and drank frightening amounts of runoff water on its way to the Anacostia River. The first house my family owned had land of a road for a front yard and a wild, prohibited alley for a backyard. The house was protected for some time by a pair of geese. Nobody could come or go with those things around. Teeth like a serrated, knit-comb, jigsaw blade. Jaws that snapped shut like clothespins on your fingers. Necks that outran your feet. Don't try this security system at home. Zero stars. You will lose a knuckle or an Achilles. It will take a professional to relocate them, or an amateur who doesn't know better. I was the amateur. Eventually, my family got tired of dodging, bobbing, and weaving. We got the hell out of Dodge. We didn't get very far, though. I think my parents must have been carrying their furniture on their backs, and just got tired of walking uphill, both ways, without shoes in a snowstorm. But we were attached. Hook, line, and sinker. There was no backing the barb out. Better to push it through. So they hunkered down and built a house. We became accustomed and acclimated to the environment. In fact, over time, we became the environment by multiple generations. My grandparents lived here. My parents lived here. My sister lived here. My sister's baby daddy and his whole family lived here. My aunt lived here. My uncles lived here, and their parents and their wives lived here. My nieces and nephews lived here. My nephew's kids lived here. My cousins and stepcousins lived here. My baby lived here. Even my baby daddy lived here with his two families. A number of people died here. We made relationships. We built homes. We worked. We delivered meals. We volunteered. We ran for local government. We nursed health, educated children, kept the water running, and advocated for people living with disabilities, the largest collective minority group in the country. Now that you know a little bit about me and my background, hold on to the edge of your seat. We'll be taking a wild ride through the murder capital and beyond. Stay tuned for a different twist on the story of The Exorcist, which was based in Prince George's County, Maryland, Washington, DC, and St. Louis, Missouri. I'll be exploring the environmental context of medical trauma, spiritual trauma, and disability.