Robert Earls pulls his van along the curb, climbs down to the street, hobbles up the walk toward No. 521.
Hidden beneath Mr. Earls' pants, just above his knobby left knee, bright green lines crawl on his skin like roads on a map. Strips of clear tape cover the marks so they won't wash off in the shower.
This is where they aim the radiation when Mr. Earls goes to the hospital. Like this morning.
Fresh back from treatment, he limps slowly up the stairs to Apartment 4, leans his cane against a cluttered coffee table and sinks into a chair.
Does Mr. Earls have a dream? I ask.
Socks dangle down the front of an open dresser drawer.
''I'd like to be able to afford to buy me a mobile home and just travel,'' he says.
The 12th Street bridge in Covington sails over the railroad tracks between Russell Street and Madison Avenue, the city's main drag.
Built in 1984, it remains a fine, strong structure, capable of holding up under a great burden. The state highway department rates it at 80,000 pounds. The dream it carries is much weightier.
It's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, his vision of racial harmony, of bridging the gap.
''I have a dream,'' the great orator said.
Here in this Northern Kentucky city, at the end of a dark century for race relations, the 12th Street bridge has become a symbol of that dream.
Local ministers have proposed renaming 12th Street for the slain civil-rights leader, and a city councilwoman has taken up the cause.
The street runs east-west between modest narrow houses and old, family-run businesses. The bridge connects a stretch of the road that's predominantly white with one in which blacks and whites live and work and shop side by side.
This is a blue-collar neighborhood. Some cars are more than one color. Trash cans contain empty Budweiser boxes.
''A lot of people say it's a tough neighborhood,'' dry-cleaner owner Paul K. Landrum says. ''But I've never had any problems.''
The brewpub at the end of the street, a yuppie hangout with a humidor and a list of beer longer than a man's forearm, doesn't get any clientele on foot. The people of this neighborhood, a neighborhood that could come to symbolize one of America's grandest dreams, dream only at night.
Afternoon on 12th Street.
The press hisses inside L&L Dry Cleaners at 115 E. 12th St., a business that's been in the same family for 50 years. Owner Paul Landrum, 55, peels a pair of men's pants off the machine and holds them up, all stretched out.
Do you have a dream? I ask.
''Stay right where I'm at,'' he says, grinning. ''I started working here when I was 16, and I'll retire here, God willing. I'm happy here.''
In the house at 516 W. 12th St., Bernadette Berberich is sewing piping on a quilt. It's the last one she'll ever do. She's 92 now, and the arthritis in her hands is getting too bad. It's all she can do to keep the house clean these days.
Does she have a dream? I ask.
''To get the hell out of here,'' she says.
Mrs. Berberich wants to get a condo in Erlanger, but the developer of the brewpub hasn't yet bought up her house to make way for expansion the way she thought he would.
''I was built up to a big letdown,'' she says.
Across 12th Street, Elizabeth Creamer sits quietly in a dark house, missing her husband. Jim Creamer died two years ago. The sign from his television-repair business still stands in the yard.
Do you have a dream? I ask.
No answer.
Mrs. Creamer stands silent, tapping the sill of her front door with her fingers.
The nails on the middle fingers of her left hand are short. She breaks them lifting grocery bags down at the IGA. Her husband, Jim, used to do the shopping.
I ask again, uncertain she's heard me.
Do you have a dream?
''My mind's a blank,'' she says softly, staring out at the street.
''I have a dream,'' Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ''that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its true creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal.'
''I have a dream that one day in the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
''I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
''I have a dream today.''
Dusk on 12th Street.
Howard Thompson, 53, gets into his Dodge with a package from Brown's House of Liquors on East 12th Street.
Do you have a dream? I ask.
''You know what?'' he says, grinning. ''I got a dream.
''I want to get that lottery so I can retire young.''
And he drives off, southbound.
Toward a new morning.