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Correspondence from Grady McMurtry to Phyllis Seckler
[EXTRACT]
[3 January 1969]
. . . you can congratulate me on being alive today. You have heard about the 'crime wave' in DC. Last night shortly before 7 PM I was returning from the supermarket and the liquor store when a colored kind jumped on my back and threw his arms around my neck. [I] instinctively (from long combat training) fell flat on my ass, flipped backwards onto my shoulders, and drove both feet straight up like an uncoiling steel spring (all the time flailing my arms, cursing, yelling, swearing). It was over as fast. I looked for my glasses, found them, saw they hadn't been smashed, looked down the street and saw three shadows running past a street light at the other end of the block. They didn't even get my beer! Had I tried to lunge forward, get away etc. the one on either side would have had my arms behind my back while the one on top would have had my neck back choking me and then could have taken what little money I had easily and probably given me a good beating just for 'kicks'. As it was, by dropping straight down I broke the neck hold, and when I came straight up off the deck with my #10 brogans in their face they must have decided they had a karate expert on their hands. I am initiated in D.C.'s 'crime wave'.
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