To Maryland and back, lickety-split.
23 July 2009
My husband has a nice job now with the Social Security Administration. He’s their Regional Attorney and supervises 27 attorneys in four states. The federal offices for Social Security are in Woodlawn, Maryland. This has worked out well for us because now he goes there several times a year and I go along and see everyone from my youth. My brother Leo still lives in Maryland, so I get to visit with him as well. I have, without a doubt, the nicest brother on the planet Earth. Sibling relationships don’t get any better this.
This last week we went to Hunt Valley, MD and stayed at the Embassy Suites. I flew Delta and assumed they would provide food for purchase on the flight, that is of course also after I paid an additional $15 to check my bag. Sitting in the back of a plane is not a good thing because they run out of things. My dinner was two packets of dry roasted peanuts and some M & M peanut candies.
David is there to assist in interviewing candidates for promotions into the Senior Executive Corps. Social Security rented out several rooms at this hotel to conduct their interviews. Normally David gets up at five in the morning and commutes to Seattle on the bus. But for the next couple of weeks, his day won’t start until nine a.m. and his commute is from Room 824 to Room 825, something we found rather amusing.
Over the weekend we decided to get out of town and drove to York, PA. York is, without a doubt, terminally comatose. Every good business in the center of town seems to have shuttered up and closed down for good. I don’t know who the city planners are around those parts, but they seemed to have missed some golden opportunities to make their city a tourist driven economy.
We did, however, manage to see their old eighteenth century Tavern, something that was destined for demolition but was salvaged by some historically minded, well grounded citizens. Now it is their pride and joy. We took a tour and were pleasantly entertained by a young man who had a good sense of history for that period of time. I came away with new knowledge about the nursery rhyme “All Around the Mulberry Bush”. The weasel the monkey pops is actually a wheel, which spun flax is wrapped around. After forty spins, it pops and the weaver knows that’s forty yards.
I didn’t know that.
After visiting their wonderful old tavern and re-constructed Court House, we walked down the street to their Heritage Trust Museum, which was top notch. The exhibits were really insightful and no doubt every school group for miles around will enjoy and learn from their careful re-construction of the history of York, PA.
An additional tour is attached to your base admission and that is for the Bonham House. Since we paid for it, of course we went. Walking out of their historical museum, the first thing you see are tar marks from some tennis shoes printed on the sidewalk leading to this house. Personally I found that to be rather tacky, but it’s there now, I suppose for ever and ever, or at least until they tear up the sidewalks.
Our tour guide was a young woman who apparently was pretty new to her job. The Bonham House is a block away and tucked between several old buildings with empty store fronts. She mentioned she needed to enter the building first and turn off the alarm system. That part of the tour took about twenty minutes. A very LONG twenty minutes with everyone looking at one another wondering what the problem might be.
The home, itself is just another Victorian home complete with all of the original furnishings that belonged to Elizabeth Bonham’s parents when they moved into this house in 1875. She never married, her sisters married but didn’t have any kids, and so at the end of her life she needed to leave it to someone in her will. She chose the Heritage Trust on the condition that it be turned into a museum. That means this house was continually occupied by someone in her family for nearly a hundred years.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that she never really did anything with her life. Her father was briefly a lawyer and then settled into being a pretty good artist, his art is hanging all over the house. But Elizabeth really wasn’t much of a character. In her later years, she never left her home. She just sat by the upstairs window and tapped when she noticed someone on the sidewalk walking by that she knew.
There. I just took you on the entire tour and you never had to leave the comfort of your chair by the computer.
Given the tour guide was new at her job, she relied on her cheat sheet that advised her on everyone’s names in that family. Noone really was highlighted, other than Elizabeth who was usually sitting by the window. My conclusion is that Elizabeth decided at the end of her life to leave a lasting memorial to herself in the form of her house and everything she never threw away.
The tour guide was so painfully shy she would say something and then pause for long stretches staring at all of us. I suppose she was waiting for questions, but we all quickly concluded she couldn’t answer many questions because she didn’t really know anything. We just stood there and stared back at her and one another.
By the time we left, my husband and I were both were so frustrated we just wanted to scream. The poor girl couldn’t get the front door to open and we worried we would be trapped in a life staring at one another forever and ever, or perhaps upstairs at the bay window tapping at passerby people hoping to be released.
What a pointless tour.
That night we had dinner with my brother and his wife at a lovely restaurant on Shawan Road called “The Oregon Grill”. We chuckled at the name because this was, after all, Maryland and on the east coast of America, but I guess they just wanted something to call themselves that sounded kind of different, even exotic. Hence, Oregon Grill with Oregon Ridge behind it. Oregon Ridge was this failed experiment in bringing world class skiing to Baltimore County by using snow machines. They went bankrupt of course.
But the Oregon Grill is there in an old stone farm house converted into a restaurant. It was, without a doubt, the best food we had in the area. Sean, our waiter was absolutely hilarious. The night began with him telling us about his failed adventures driving a car with California tags and expired tabs into New Jersey and getting nailed by the state troopers. All he wanted to do was see his girlfriend in New York City, he never bargained for such a prolonged journey into nowhere. It turned out to be a very expensive mistake he made and we all shared a good laugh with his stories.
He was a good waiter, full of fun and such a wry wit. At the end of the meal he asked if I wanted some coffee, but I asked for tea, mint tea to be specific. He brought to me some Yardley’s tea, but I declined because the leaves were just basically black tea with a mint flavor. Black tea has caffeine and this would keep me awake at night. Jet lag was already a problem, so I told him it had to be herbal. The next thing I knew Sean was over on the little bridge with a tiny creek below, fishing out some mint for me that grew there. Finally I was able to brew some organic herbal tea.
I also went to The Manor Tavern, which is, of course, on My Lady’s Manor, not far from my old home. I remember with fondness the man at the other table who was dressed in a Civil War uniform, complete with a sword swinging at his waist. His steed was tied to a fence rail in the parking lot and he was having lunch with some buddies. Of course I asked him what was up and he said he had just done some living history for the kids at St. James Academy up the road. This was something I am sure they found unforgettable, just like I thought his presence at the restaurant with his horse in the parking lot was for me. As he left, he waved his hat and rode his horse to his farm in the country.
We also went one night to The Milton Inn on York Rd. This is another historical property. It used to be a boys boarding school where John Wilkes Booth attended for a time. The Milton Inn has always been a mysterious place for me because as a kid, my parents always said it was way too over priced and never took us there. So after forty years I finally went there for dinner.
The interior is decorated very lovely with colonial inspired wallpaper and elegant window coverings. The tables, of course, were covered in linen with small flower arrangements on top. But guess what? Their reputation proceeds them. I ordered pheasant and it was cold, and tough. It was dried out too, no doubt from sitting too long in a warming oven. When I complained, they graciously gave me dessert on the house. Still I don’t think this would be my first choice for dining in the future. They need to break from tradition and make food more affordable, but if they must charge so much, then it needs to be absolutely flawless, which it was not.
Sunday we drove to Ellicott City. This town reminded me of villages in Europe. The colonial and Victorian buildings hugged the valley as it descended down the road to the river. That’s the good news. The bad news is that river at the bottom has flooded twice in the town’s history and destroyed everything in its path.
The old railway station has been recovered and restored as an historical sight. We visited it and enjoyed their exhibits. I was talking to this man in historical clothing, a mourning coat with vest, watch and keychain. I quickly found out he dated Holly Shaw, who lived at the farm across the road from ours in White Hall, MD. In fact, I briefly dated her younger brother, Charlie. He, by the way, went on to commit suicide by hanging himself in the woods a year after being rebuffed by me. I remember I was fourteen years old. I didn’t have any particular issue with him as a person, but I felt I was too young for a serious relationship and should cool things off. I was convinced this was the correct thing to do after my brother told me his strategy for imminent hanky panky, a little joke on me. I wasn’t about to let him try anything like that on me. However, he did not take rejection well. I did not want to reveal my reasons for ending things and the rest is history I guess.
Ellicott City is full of antique shops that are trying to hold on in these miserable times and we did our best to find things we liked to help their economy. Our lunch was at a German brewery at the top of the hill. That beer was really good, whatever it was, I forget, but it didn’t have any sour after taste.
When I flew back to Maryland, I began my travel plans at BWI, which is the regional airport for Baltimore. I watched in the sitting area as this woman was wheeled into the area in a wheel chair. She begrudgingly gave the attendant a buck for his efforts, even made him wait forever while she searched her purse for some money. I guess she wanted him to earn that part too. Once he was out of sight, she got up, faked a limp and went to the gate airline representatives and talked to them. Then she came back and put her feet up on the chair. Another attendant came along and asked if she needed it any more, but she insisted she did. She just made things harder for someone in that airport who really was handicapped to get around.
All I have to say is “Liar liar, pants on fire!!!”
When I gingerly got up to board my plane, I made sure she noticed how it really is when you have a handicap. I suppose she just took notes.
My flight first took me to New York City’s Kennedy International Airport. It was such a small plane, so cramped inside that I banged my head on the overhead bin when I rose from my seat. It was a quick 40 minute flight with a flight attendant whose only purpose was to demonstrate “the safety features of this plane” and close the door. I have never come to terms with the fact that flight attendants make more money than teachers.
Kennedy International Airport seemed more like a train station than an airport, It’s run down, nobody queues at the gate, it’s a crush and the loud speaker sounds like the one in those trains stations in Europe announcing tracks.
I found someone’s ticket for our flight on the floor and took it to the gate representative, who seemed to care less that someone lost their ticket, even though their name was clearly printed at the top.
Now I know they won’t be helpful to me if that ever should happen, God forbid.
When I finally boarded at the gate, the woman told me to “Wait.” Then she handed me an upgrade to first class, which came as a very welcomed surprise, given that I was going to be in the middle seat of a 757 jetliner, the 36th row.
There is this growing problem on all jetliners and that’s their potties. Even in first class it smells like a Jiffy Can in there. When you can smell germs, that’s not a good thing. This can’t be healthy in a sealed environment like that.
After arriving in my own home, I promptly took a shower and sent all my clothes to the washer. Then I sat down and wrote my senator. Something needs to be done about this as the airlines are not about to take the lead on their own. Bleach would go a long ways towards making things sanitary once again in there.
When our plane arrived in Seattle, another airline representative was sent to the gate to wheel this very fat woman up the ramp in a wheel chair. The poor guy was busting a gut getting up that incline and we all chuckled as she apologized for “being so fat.”
Now that I am back to my home and my husband is still in Hunt Valley. I can pursue with enthusiasm two paintings I have begun. He doesn’t like it when I paint because I take over the kitchen and make a colossal mess.
It’s just that I NEED to do this. I need to get those feelings of good will out of my system. Painting is how I do that….
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