Technical Writer

A Shoe Not Lost Forever

Perhaps it was left behind for a purpose.  Unlike a bicycle tire, a couch cushion, or a bag of mulch (it's easy to imagine how these items can come to be lost or left on the side of a busy highway) shoes are not normally separated from their owners except by deliberate purpose. 

But there it was, on the East St. extension near the intersection of Rts. 355, 85, 40 and 70, where unless you are paying attention it's so easy to take a wrong turn. Is the shoe pointing to the Barbara Fritchie restaurant way out on Rt. 40 west on the outskirts of town?  It could have been, although I suspect witches are less interested in dining at restaurants with a two-story candy cane out front than at one of the trendy restaurants where they would be lost in the crowds on Market or Patrick Streets. 

The shoe in question obviously fell off a foot whisking by on a broom by the light of last night's half moon, and it was upright at a jaunty angle.  How does a witch retrieve her shoe?  During the day, she will send forth her familiar to collect it--just picture a small, fuming furball dragging this shoe by his sharp little teeth just over there where the landscape of green grass by the roadside is unusually hazy in the spot toward which shoe is being hauled by the determined furball.  Watch as the little critter (Don't get out of the car to pet it--it's wild and will bite, and the traffic light is about to change.) reaches the spot and tips the shoe into the haze, and follows it in quick as a wink.  Did you just see that?  What was it?  Oh--the light just turned green and we must go.

Imagine how much legitimate inquiry is stifled in this world when the traffic light changes color.  

My Lunch at Volt Restaurant in Frederick; Plates by Picasso

Joe and I have dined at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Germany, where restrained and well groomed staff in their multiplicity of functions are devoted to one's dining experience; and we have eaten at Gallic bistros and Rhineland beer halls where the meat, held high overhead by waiters weaving through the crowd, arrives still smoking on the joint.  In these old world restaurants food is honored. To be a cook or waiter in a fine restaurant in Europe is a noble profession, and at a bistro, at the very least, it is a good job. To be a top chef is a rare honor that extends its beneficence to the entire town, now a destination stop in the world of gastronomy.

Frederick, Maryland has a destination restaurant, newly opened, and right around the corner from my house. Link to Volt Restaurant

Quiet Sunday Afternoon Interrupted

Occasionally I hear loud shrieks and curses of low order—the same word, over and over—lofted over the fenced garden retreats in my Frederick city neighborhood.  Within the expanse of the historic city center, where land holdings were laid out in long, narrow strips backing onto similar properties, all the houses were built cheek by jowl along brick sidewalks fronting the roads in the late 18th through early 19th centuries.  My own house on East 4th St. was built in 1885 where previously a blacksmith worked in a smithy adjacent to stables on the outskirts of town.  There are interesting private alleys that open into now blacktopped courtyards where present day householders and tenants park their cars, and these inner spaces are where the occasional loud arguments occur.

Polite Drivers on the East St. Extension in Frederick, Md.

We in Frederick, Md., are proud of our new roadways as we are of Barbara Fritchie restaurant pies.

The extension of East St. beyond the now 5-year-old train station opened about two months ago and now I can go from home to the Common Market and spare the historic city center the overload of my own car downtown.  The traffic pattern is new and we all have to look out for each other in the dicey traffic, as we did recently when the driver of an oncoming little Ford Focus came to a horrified stop surrounded by cars bearing the other way.   What happened?

I was at the vanguard of west-headed traffic when a solitary, east-bound vehicle surprisingly didn't hang a left-hand turn onto Rt. 40, possibly because the driver really wanted to go to the big-box Costco on the left you could have hit with a baseball, but he couldn't get there from here.  Perhaps he hoped that there was a suitable left turn ahead that would see as he crested the rise, but instead he found himself staring down the headlights of five lanes of oncoming traffic just getting the green light.

Vehicles politely edged away to give the driver room for a tight nearly full turn onto an exit that could lead to a comforting piece of coconut cream pie at the Barbara Fritchie Restaurant a mile or two down Rt. 40 on the other side of town.  I hope his heart stopped pounding by then because otherwise that cream pie would surely get him.

Neighbors Who Love, Love to Party

I have just erased this post because upon reflection, it is not good enough for my one reader.  Here are yesterday's flowers, instead.

On the kitchen table.

Saturday Flowers, July 11

These are the flowers that will refresh my sight whenever I look upon them on the kitchen table this week.  As the week progresses, I will change the water and trim the stems, and the flowers will remain beautiful. 

I took a morning walk a little later than usual today, and did not encounter the great blue heron.  I came upon smaller water fowl, such as this fine duck in Carroll Creek.  If I were a duck, I would pay careful attention to the inevitability of a meal swimming by, too.

I came upon other birds, too, out in a flock, running through Baker Park.  Scroll down to the earlier post to see.

Pain is Weakness, or Birds of a Different Feather

Combat Marines have been stationed at Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Md. for a few years, but I did not know that until our paths crossed this morning in Baker park, during my morning walk.  Marines do not walk. Marines hustle along at a steady jog trot, shouting loud Marine chants to increase their aerobic training. It's a fine sight, and here it is.  I had seen them exercising earlier on the green, and before long they were off for a run.  They cut across Bentz St. and hooked back into the park, where I stepped into the path to catch them. I admired them as they passed, and noted the sharp, taut jaw lines and indomitable bearing of their leaders. They've got brains, training, and stamina.

After seeing this, I could not stop at 6 miles, and clocked 7.25 miles for my morning walk before hitting the front door again.

The Great Blue Heron, Aloof Yet a Neighbor

The street lights had not timed off when I encountered the elegant great blue heron this morning.  I saw him a little earlier, downstream fishing. He is on his way now to Carroll Creek at the edge of the lawn.  At the far end of Culler Lake is the stand of trees that is home to the charming night herons, birds who have a great deal to say about life and the universe, day and night, and loudly.  They win the prize for their commitment to elocution training, repeating over and over every comment made by each other.  It is unlikely that any of them will ever forget their lines, so dedicated is their practice.

The Carroll Creek is especially pretty farther ahead and off the path.  I have mentioned the old sign along this stretch of the creek, advising that children and the blind may fish for trout, but no one else.  I hope this means there are trout in the stream, and the stream is clean.  I can tell you that there are fish enough for the birds who make their living by the creek. 

Here is a photo of an area where it is only a foot or so deep, and a very good fishing spot for a bird.

Along the stream bank I found flowers in full bloom: black-eyed susans, monarda (bee balm), and many species from the close-by herb garden at Schifferstadt.  Insects and birds had carried the seeds and dropped them on the bank, where they naturalized. 

This area is near Schifferstadt, the lovely, 250-year-old exemplar of German colonial architecture on the edge of town.

Rumor once had it that Jacob Bruner built a secret passage leading from the stone-walled cellar to the outside of his stone house. 

I had been told this by a man who as a child had played with his friends in the cellar, and I know the story was true, but from the perspective of a child.  On a tour of the house 15 years ago, I saw what those children saw.  The cellar is a complex space, and a stone archway connects its rooms.  The stone archway was the secret passage the children saw.

The society that has preserved the house ( http://www.frederickcountylandmarksfoundation.org/), possibly knowing the rumors butalso aware of architectural possibilities in such a historic building brought in specialists who studied and probed and after much effort concluded that there was no hidden passage.  It would have been easier to hand a few nine-year-old children lighted candles, send them to explore the old cellar and report their findings over snow cones and ice cream.  Perspective is everything.

Handsome Farmers

The farmers' market on Saturday morning in Frederick is one of two or three I visit each week because lettuce, cherries, and squash blossoms picked and bought on Saturday must be eaten soon.  

Letting them languish beyond 48 hours seems disrespectful, and it also means that I return to these pleasant markets to enjoy the company of fascinating people on the hunt for blueberries ($3.75 a pint this week, but they are organic), shelled peas ($6 a quart, enough for peas at every meal for three days) and the live herb plants I like to bring home to tuck into the odd bare spot in the numerous pots on the back porch, the only place in the garden with enough sunlight for herbs, the rest of the garden being in shade.

 

I observe that farmers are handsome people.  Notice this the next time you are among them.  They radiate health, or at least the effects on their lives of hard work, long hours, but a close relation to the earth.

Saturday Flowers, July 4; Great Uncle Frank

The flower shop owner decided to take a holiday on July 4, so I found some bonnie sunflowers at the farmers' market on Saturday to bring home with the produce.  Here they are upon the kitchen table, where they will preside over breakfast and supper, and the morning crossword puzzles all week long.  The sunflowers have independent ways.

I arranged them when I returned home from my new walking route through the cemetery at the south end of Frederick.  Mt. Olivet cemetery has a two mile loop around its perimeter, and it is one mile from my house.  I make the 4-mile round trip in just under an hour now. 

Dwelling on thoughts of flowers, and admiring the flowers on the graves of this very old cemetery, I thought about my great uncle Frank, whose memory is alive in my family.  Cpl. David Franklin Koogle died on October 2, 1918, of influenza at Camp Meade in Maryland. He was 21.

My mother was born a couple of years after her uncle's death, but in my family we do not forget our people.  My mother says that her mother, Hazel Rebecca Zimmerman, and her grandmother, Susan Charlotte Koogle, for whom she is named, hired a taxi to go see Frank, all the way from Middletown to Camp Meade about 60 miles away.  They were not allowed to bring him home with them, and my great grandmother believed all her life that if she could have cared for her boy at home, he would have lived.

The camp is where the first deaths occurred in this state, and it was the hardest hit place in the state.  According to the site http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/your_state/maryland.htm'

"As the death rate from influenza rose, military officials began equating influenza deaths with those on the battlefield. A memorial service for those who died during the pandemic at Camp Meade was held and the presiding officer read the names of each dead soldier. As each name was read, the Sergeant saluted and said "Died on the field of honor, sir."

The loop road around Mt. Olivet is quiet early in the morning.  The cemetery is peaceful, except for the bob-white who rushes me, tail feathers broadly displayed, and then disappears into the grass by the edge of the cemetery.  Frank is buried in the family plot in a graveyard closer to his family home, but I think all graveyards are the same country, for those interred.

A Farmers' Market in Frederick, Maryland

With $14 in single bills in my pocket, I set off for the farmers' market at Church and East streets this afternoon, just a few blocks from my house in Frederick, Maryland.  I took the big basket because I needed lettuce, beets, and eggs from free-range hens, which Wendy sells at her Persimmon Pond farm stall.  Wendy is trained as an economist, but she threw it all over and became a farmer, and I hope she has never looked back. 

To go with fish for supper, there will now be a salad of red leaf and Black-Seeded Simpson (an heirloom variety) lettuces, and red and golden beets with their greens.  I like to cook the beats themselves in a little broth, and saute the greens in a pan with about a teaspoon of olive oil. Over the cooked greens and beets, I will drizzle my best balsamic vinegar.  The vegetables were picked just this morning, and now await their moment on the kitchen counter.

$3  Eggs from free-range, organically raised (and presumably happy) hens who enjoy the company of a small flock of sheep in the field

$3 Two heads of lettuce

$4.20 Three kinds of baby beets with greens, one pound

$3.75 A pint of organically raised blueberries 

Next week, I'll take my camera.

Saturday Flowers June 27; Birds of Culler Lake

This immature night heron was fishing this morning by the edge of Culler Lake, about 20 feet from the security of his roost in the tall trees.  His siblings were spaced along the edge of the lake, those who weren't strolling nearby under their heronry.  They are wary city dwellers, but as long as I stay on the path and do not venture onto their territory, they seem content to fish and stroll, not too bothered by me.

Here is the great blue heron, which stabbed a small something a moment after I took this photo this morning.  He is fishing well downstream from Culler Lake, in Baker Park.  This must be a very good place for fishing, and I have shown photos of this handsome bird as well as an adult night heron fishing from this very spot.

Off the subject of birds, here is the bouquet of flowers I arranged yesterday on the kitchen table.  They will brighten the kitchen all week.

Night Heron Fishing

With all the hungry young at home high in the tangle of trees by Culler Lake in town, this night heron is getting a jump on the day by fishing downstream from the family brood.  The immature herons were too high in their trees this morning to capture on camera, but I found a parent, already at work on their behalf.  I hope the kids appreciate the fish.

Nine Herons Sitting in a Tree

My feet hit the floor at 4:21 this morning, and I felt a surge of gratitude toward the cat who acknowledged me with a low, specific purr, "Yes, I let you sleep in, but don't get used to it."  Leaving my husband sleeping quietly behind, I have come downstairs to begin the morning routine. I feed Miss Tammietta.  She examines her kibble, then goes to the kitchen door with another expectant purr and I let her out.  One minute later, she's back inside having breakfast.

I have a friend who gets up every morning at this time.  Her forebearers are from an old village settled in the early 1600s on the coast of Maine.  She is such that I can imagine her, leaving her family sleeping peacefully, beginning her day by thinking with intent on the day ahead.  Had she been born in an earlier century, she would have stood in her kitchen and turned her mind to binding the rugged Maine coast against any storm that could lash it asunder.  My friend is such that she could probably call up a strengthening, binding spell upon need.

The clock has struck 5 a.m., and in minutes, when it is light, I will hit the pavement and walk over to Culler Lake.  I walked through the park Sunday evening, when all of Frederick seemed gathered at Baker Park for a concert, those who were not walking their dogs, or jogging or picnicking with their families near the city swimming pools.  The town was alive with robust enjoyment of a perfect, near-Solstice evening.

I went to the trees at the end of Culler Lake and saw that people had gathered beneath them and were taking photos at eye level.  The young night herons were displaying themselves.  These charmers are still quite young, with immature feathering still, but for baby birds, they are sturdy little things, quite larger than footballs, and poised in the gnarled intertwined branches of the trees, perfectly safe from their many admirers.

My friend Nannette told me that her husband counted nine young birds this year, and she can hear their raucous calls from her own house near the lake. In a few minutes, I will return to the stand of trees to visit the birds.

Urban Birds

The stand of pines at the end of Culler Lake in town is the home of a preposterously noisy family of four immature night herons, one of which alighted in front of me at 5:30 this morning.  I have avoided this stand of trees because the birds were just fledglings, but now they are old enough to fly to safety.  This youngster left his siblings squabbling overhead and visited briefly.  Night herons are widely spread in the region, and the brown and speckled-white feathers of this stocky young one will be replaced by the white, grey, and black mature plumage of his parents. The living must be good, and I have seen one parent fishing nearby.

I walked back to the herb garden at Schifferstadt, opened the gate, and went in the fenced-in garden.  There is a no-trespassing sign on the garden gate, but surely in a reasonable world, that did not apply to me.  (My criminal life is confined to this order of behavior, but my rational is shared, I believe, by more egregious criminals.  For them, however, there may be no compensatory belief in the exceptions a reasonable person may justify in an orderly society and yet maintain the society for the good of all.) 

I examined the herbs, pinched a tip of tarragon and savored its aroma. This is an admirable herb garden, being true to its time.

Behind Schifferstadt, a fine example of German Colonial architecture, now more than 250 years old, the stretch of Carroll Creek is less tame than in the city center. 

Here is an old willow by the creek, and the town has left it alone, which means that knowledgeable gardeners and arborists work for the city of Frederick.

On my way home, I stepped into the street to see what was holding up a few vehicles, which began moving slowly through the intersection.  Look to the left side of the street in this photo and you can see what had stopped traffic.  What a great town.

In the Wilds of the City

I didn't see the tall, lanky fellow and his bounding black dog on my walk.  I set out in the cool damp at 5:30 this Sunday morning, when the few joggers and dogs with their people I meet on most mornings were still abed.  I imagine an extra dog bone later for Spot, and a mug of hot coffee for the skinny guy who runs by me most mornings and gives me a thumbs up. They'll be out later, but I think that they'll stick to the paved paths and sidewalks, and that is not were I was bound this morning. It was a perfect day to explore the creek bank by Schifferstadt.

Frederick may have been laid out in the mid-1700s, but there was a settlement here long before that, and as early as the late 1600s, there were cabins along the rivers and creeks.  By time Joseph Bruner and his family, immigrating from southwest Germany, built this beautiful house, families were actually pulling back from the western edge of settlement in Western Maryland in fear of the French and their Indian allies at war with England in the colonies. The house Bruner built was staunch enough to house many people, should they have needed fortification.  The house was solid enough that it is still here, and is one of the finest examples of Colonial German architecture in the country.

The walls of Schifferstadt are three feet thick.  Herr Bruner made a window sill in the kitchen that even today I admire because it took work to chisel the granite to form a drain from the stone sink inside to the outside.    Getting waste water outdoors without having to slosh it out in a pail is a great boon to civilization in a household, even greater than having water running into the house, and I know this to be true.  I have written (see the link on the right to Backwoods in New Hampshire) about my simple, rustic life on Stone Mountain, and I do not take for granted efficient water management.  I know that only a loving husband would have made this sink drain for Mrs. Bruner.

Behind Schifferstadt is Carroll Creek, which runs through town.  At this end, the creek is managed for wildness.  This is a tame stretch, and behind me, the banks are obscured by fern and grass, and all manner of flowering bushes.  I flushed the beautiful great blue heron, and I did not intend to do so.  The stream must be clean because there is a little sign that this section of Carroll Creek is reserved for trout fishing by children and the blind, by order of the Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources.  There would be no trout if the stream were polluted.

I spent some time walking on the banks of the creek and got quite soaked.  It has been raining for days, and this weekend has been a break in the weather.  The giant arts festival in the town center is this weekend, so a break in the rain meant that the streets of Frederick were crowded yesterday, and will be today because Frederick is a beautiful small city.  No one comes up here, however, and I am glad to be alone on the creek.

Great Blue Heron With an Eye Out for Breakfast

Baker Park in Frederick is a 44-acre stretch of green that follows the course of a creek through the center of this town of 60,000 people, the second largest city in Maryland. The park is cut through by a few roads, and the roads cross bridges over Carroll Creek.  Here is an enterprising great blue heron waiting for a good catch early today. I saw this fellow last week with a big fish in his beak, flying toward a roost near the covered bridge by the high school.

This morning I also saw a night heron about 100 feet upstream from the great blue, and he, too, was fishing, and at the bottom of a small spillway across the creek. 

It is a fine thing to live in a city with enough open space to support such birds.  I see them only in the early morning; I do not walk in the park when the rest of the world is awake and bustling about--mothers with baby carriages, runners, people having lunch as they sit on the benches throughout the park.  The early morning is my time for observation.

Frederick is a great small city.

Saturday Flowers May 31; a Walk in the Park

Here is a picture of the flowers I arranged early Saturday morning for the kitchen table. The tablecloth is from a small village in Alsace where cloth has been made and printed since 1837 (with a cessation during World War I).  The manufacturer is Beauville, and the village is Ribeauville, of approximately 5,000 people.  The cloth manufacturer is on the outskirts of this compact village, at 21 Route de Ste Marie-aux-Mines, a quick walk from the village center.  http://www.beauville.com The village is one of the most beautiful in France, and I have been there many times.

_____

My morning walk today was most welcome because yesterday hard rain was falling and I did not go out in the wet. 

Here is Baker Park, one small view of it, at about 5:30 a.m. 

I came upon a family out for a stroll to Carroll Creek.  Madame still has all ten ducklings that I counted a few days ago.  She is doing rather well, because Baker Park is not without its perils.

Great Blue Herons in Frederick

Here is a handsome fellow, whom I disturbed early this morning by the side of Culler Lake in the center of my town of 60,000 people. Frederick, Maryland is fortunate in that Mr. Dulaney, who laid out the town in 1745, drew the city on both sides of Carroll Creek, which resulted in a downtown linear park that runs from Schifferstadt (www.frederickcountylandmarksfoundation.org), a sturdy German-built stone farm house constructed in 1758, and then away to the east, all the way through the center of town.  Baker Park, as it is now known, is a beautiful green swath that has kept the town lovely, and home to at least two Great Blue herons of my recent acquaintance, this fellow and another I saw flying toward the lake as I crossed the college campus a little later, on my way home.

Lengthening Stride

I arise daily around 4 a.m. at the behest of the cat, who makes certain demands and then after about an hour of those shenanigans, returns to peaceful slumber in her King Arthur Flour packing box. 

Truth be told, whenTammietta made the preliminary, delicate rustle this morning that if unheeded would rapidly escalate into a catarumpus, my husband quietly said, if you want to sleep in (4 a.m.!), I'll take care of her this morning.  I almost took the offer, but I thought instead of the pleasures of the cool morning alone in the streets and parkways that I would miss--the quiet time between 5:30 and 7 a.m., when of late I have been walking around Frederick.  

I drank a few cups of rooibos (Mma Ramatswe's red bush) tea this morning, had a bowl of cereal, read The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and when the cat returned from asserting her independence, struck out on my own. 

I am not alone at this time of day.  Joggers, runners, and dogs with their folks appear.  The nighttime crowd of party-goers and bar hoppers have been abed for awhile, and at 5:30, only a few early morning commuters are driving to the train station or setting off for the trip into Washington, which will take them one hour.  If they wait until 7 a.m. to depart, their commute time will double.

My commute is to my office upstairs in the house, so I can afford to spend the morning walking. I took my camera in case I found the Great Blue Heron, a young one, I saw high in this tree yesterday morning by the creek.  I'll post the picture when I find the bird.

I was startled by a couple of men who from a distance sounded like ducks with their cackling laughter. They were sitting near here in a protected area, and they must have spent the night in the local homeless shelter.  Their faces and bodies indicated lifelong alcoholism, and as I strode past and smiled to acknowledge them, they made rude comments.  Humph! I can stack my triglycerides against theirs any day of the week, and I'd bet that they could not walk 3.5 miles an hour if they tried.

He Must be a Narnian

An intriguing man parks his car next to mine in Terry's lot behind the houses on the other side of E. 4th St.  He is normal enough looking--slight, about 5'9", dressed as any 25-year-old fellow would dress when going out with his pals, and he has bright pink hair. I like his hair. It is neatly shaved over his ears, but longer on top, and he combs it straight up in a peak along the crown of his head.  When I see him I smile and think, Narnia for the Narnians!

Saturday Flowers May 16; Early Morning Walk

I am waiting for a little more light outside before I set off on the brisk morning walk that lately I have taken up.  I used to hike over hill and dale, but that was when I was living in rural isolation and my friends were whatever wildlife I could scare up in the woods or by the big pond on the other side of Stone mountain.  In those walks I have come upon deer, foxes, bear, moose, an otter or two, birds in size from the wren--little Druid bird, to the massive golden eagle, and once, a silent, Eastern coyote passed like a drift of smoke across the road just a few feet in front of me. I treasured every animal encounter on the mountain and felt particularly honored when its creatures allowed me to see their passage.

It is 37 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but I have the kitchen door open to the garden so I can hear the early morning birds in their second chorus.  The first occurs a good hour before dawn, and I missed it.  I have turned off the heat so the furnace doesn't clank to life on this May morning.  My husband is peacefully snoozing still, and I believe that he sleeps more soundly knowing that I am up and taking care of all matters.

I have written in months past about my life on Stone Mountain in the backwoods of New Hampshire, but I never discussed the kinship I experienced with the life of the mountain and the mountain itself.  It was on Stone Mountain that I learned to be in the woods in a non-disruptive way so that critters would not be too fearful of me upon encountering a human.

Another thing I learned while living alone for so long was how to project myself outside my body.  Let me tell you how its done.

After a period of silent meditation during which I called to myself the protection of all I honored--my fellow critters on Stone Mountain and the mountain itself, as well as the central figure of my faith, I would lie down on the floor with my arms and feet stretched out, and close my eyes. I would tell myself to feel my extremities, and then feel beyond them a few inches, then a few feet. Then I would tell myself to experience being outside the house, perhaps on the roof, or on the stone ridge near where the foxes lived, and see what I could see.  Mind you, I did this in incremental steps, over weeks, before I grew adventuresome in my travels.  The travels themselves will await another time to tell, but you can know that upon returning to my home, being my body on the floor, I always experienced a sideways jolt as if I were falling back inside myself, at an angle. It felt as if I had been upright before and suddenly found myself for that instant of reconnection inside a body that was lying on a different plane.  I got used to it.

It's time to go outside and take a walk through Frederick now.  The people I meet will be walking their dogs or running.  There is a nice camaraderie with these folks because we share the enjoyment of the fresh air and the quiet morning.

The flowers in the photo are Saturday's, and my walk is now.

Azalea at Home

The azalea that lives on Rosemont Avenue, just past the college, was planted when the house Sped and Linda now own was built more than a hundred years ago.  

I had never considered azaleas as the independent denizens of their habitats they are until I was sitting on my friends' porch recently while the day lengthened into evening and the gusting wind that preceded heavy rain blew through the outer boughs of this beauty. In the inmost part of the azalea, a small bird sheltered undisturbed by the wind.

The house is protected from the street by the azalea, whom I suspect has a say in the comings and goings in this grand old house over the years.  Could the azalea have chosen inhabitants who would respect its dominion over the property?  Linda mentioned that she has trimmed it only few times, as when it began to take over the big porch a few years ago, where we sat now and talked, she with a bowl on her lap of blackberries and strawberries that she was trimming for supper. The little bird watched us on the porch, safe and sound.

Behind the house there is a garden that my friends have made with flowers and vegetables, and a thicket of brambles, and even a new compost bin.  The garden is abundant and verdant, possibly having been given the go-ahead from the azalea out front. When Linda tended her husband (who is healthy and well today) through a grave illness a few years ago, and never left his side for months at the hospital, the garden was untended by her, and left to its own notions.  When Sped returned home, one of the first sights he saw was the brick patio, and  growing over its surface between the bricks was a new garden of self-seeded petunias in full bloom, a pretty gift to him from the garden.  The petunias must have taken the hint to be confident in their own direction from the azalea.

Saturday Flowers, May 9

Refreshing, isn't this?  I get to look at this crock of flowers when I am in the kitchen, and I can see it now if I bend away from my grandfather's desk where I am writing, and look through the dining room into the sunny and bright kitchen.

My house was built in 1885 by a man who took a big risk in the housing market and built four row houses on East 4th St. that mirror each other inside and out. Totaling just under 1,000 square feet on two floors plus a basement, this is a tiny house by most standards of new construction, but I believe the popular aesthetic is moving away from large to small, and that many people would find this size house as perfect as do I.

What's not to like?  There is a library upstairs with a large drum table next to my husband's comfy leather reading chair.  The only one who can sit in this chair with impunity when the good professor is home is his little cat Tammietta.

There is a city garden, long and narrow, that is sun-dappled in the afternoon, and is planted in shade-loving perennials. There is a table and bench chairs by the house, and Adirondack chairs on a brick patio in the back of the garden. There are a few trees here and there in the adjoining gardens, and we have a silver maple, about 30 years old, that someday will tower over all, long after we are gone.

There is even a significant mystery beneath the garden's surface, a mystery shared by the neighboring house, and which we do not advertise.  Once upon a time, a neighbor was tilling a patch of ground to plant flowers and his hoe struck a rock beneath the soil surface. He scraped away the soil and found a small mound of stones, and pulling them away, he discovered larger pieces of slate and beneath that, a cross-hatch of railroad ties.  He did not uncover it all, just a few square feet, and a small aperture large enough that he could stick down the pole of the hoe, which swung free in the darkness. 

The neighbor called my husband to see what he had discovered, and between the two of them, they rustled up a 45-foot extension cord with a trouble light and poked it down the hole. The light was quickly overcome as they lowered it slowly down.  Lower and lower they dropped the extension cord, and they reached the end of the cord before they hit bottom.

The neighbor rigged up a camera on a board and lowered it down.  What we discovered was an old cistern built to take advantage of a natural cleft in the rock that formed one side of a 12-foot-in-diameter well, and at the bottom there is a tunnel, and in the mouth of that shaft, which leads east, there is a large, rusted piece of equipment.  We decided that there were too many neighbor children who would want to explore this discovery, which would be thrilling for 12-year old boys, and deadly.  The cistern probably has little oxygen at the bottom, and we do not know the condition of the walls, although they are dry. We replaced everything as we found it, and put a large stone on top of all, with pots of flowers to mark the spot. We sit out in the evenings, my husband with a cigar, the cat watching the squirrels, and I, pulling a few weeds and considering whether to transplant the hosta to a new location, and we think of the hole and its construction in the days when this end of East 4th St. had a livery stable and a blacksmith's shop where the houses now stand.

It is difficult to picture a world without me, but while I am not filled with Cleopatra's "immortal longings," I realize that someday in the distant future, my particular perspective will have given way to the sight and perception of others who will walk down my street and wander through my town, and I wonder what they will experience.  It is possible that two hundred years ago, others thought the same.

A Thomas Hardy Afternoon

Today being May Day and a day of rain and mists, as the afternoon was lengthening, I took a country drive in the county and found Pennterra Manor, a fine, 2 1/2-story Georgian house built of local quarry stone well more than two hundred years ago. The house is hidden from easy sight of the main road and it is reached by following a smaller road that bears its name and that winds a mile through the trees and fields of the 300-acre home place, now protected by conservation easement held by the Maryland Environmental Trust and the Maryland Historical Trust. 

The house itself is on the National Register of Historical Places. Pennterra Manor is privately owned as a residence, so I did not take a photograph.  Here, however, is a link to copy and paste of a 35-year-old photo of the place.  The windmill in the photo is long gone.

http://www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net/nr/NRDetail.aspx?HDID=361&COUNTY=Frederick&FROM=NRCountyList.aspx?COUNTY=Frederick

The scenic Monocacy River flows close by, and here is a photo I took this afternoon of a bridge over a little tributary creek that cuts across the property near the main house by the river. Below this photo is another, of two worthy citizens of Pennterra Manor farm, a Black Angus bull and his lady love. It is spring.

An Honest Dollar Washing Cars

Two blocks east of my house on E. 4th St., next to their tidy place on the corner of Chapel Alley, and in the parking lot of the Sanctuary Progressive Community Church, Dave Kint and his wife Janice have established a car washing and detailing business. I took a walk this morning and spotted Dave working with his son on a couple of vehicles.  On Saturdays, the cars of the church congregants are lined up through the little parking lot, but on other days, there is often a car in the queue. Do you see the bottles of cleaning products lined up against the house sill along the side?  That means the place is open for business, and it is on most days except Sunday, or when it is raining. The enterprise fascinates me because it takes a willingness to work hard, and lots of trust that your neighbors will want you to clean their cars.  This is America, where you can take matters into your own hands to make a living.

Michael, a close friend who lives in Germany, has asked me how one becomes a technical writer.  Michael directs the research at a large cancer research center and has no interest in becoming a tech writer, but he is curious about enterprising Americans, having lived for many years in our midst.

In our conversation, I recognized how fortunate we are in the United States to be able choose our work, and to change it.  I explained that once I had been a book editor and magazine writer, and then about 10 years ago opportunity presented itself to write tech material for software.  I outfitted myself with new skills and knowledge along the way.

Apparently it is difficult to change one's career in Germany.  Christine, Michael's wife, upon returning to Germany after many years of living and working in the United States and already highly educated and certified in her field at home, had to acquire additional specialized training for a new position.  Had the position been in the States, she could have been hired outright to perform it because she is intelligent and motivated.  In Germany, she achieved her new position at the end of a long, government-sponsored pipeline of training and preparation.

My friend Cedric, in France, studied for three years to prepare himself for the entrance exams just to enroll in a university to become a pharmacist.  The open seats to start university in his field were in the very low hundreds in the country, and he just missed qualifying to be among the chosen few.  Cedric had studied night and day for three years, and passing the entrance examinations was his single mission in life. He tried again the next year after spending a fourth year studying for the exams, and trailed by only a few places the few hundred who were admitted.

The French university system is such that once admitted, you study only your single subject. If you qualify to enter the physics program, that's what you become.  You can't change course mid-stream. The broader education in the U.S. university system, where you may flounder around for a couple of years taking core requirements and then choose a major, is unknown.  To be fair, the French education system for children in the middle through high school ages is excellent, and most people in France do not go to the university. There is not as much opportunity for striking out on your own, and Cedric got no A for effort.

Not so on E. 4th St. in Frederick, where a family is making an honest living and saving its money to lease a garage.  The Kent family is doing what it must to earn a living, and it has required gumption we can be proud of. 

Giant Among Peeps

Peeps Ahoy!  When I espied the Holy Easter Peep at the Giant grocery store yesterday  I surreptitiously snapped its photo to show you.  I sincerely hope that it is eaten by joyful, delighted children rather than some grownup, who might take this item alone through the self-checkout and retire with his plunder to a pickup truck in the parking lot to eat this with both hands plunged into its yellow goodness.  The big Peep deserves happy children.  It looks as if it could grant wishes, doesn't it?

Fresh Bread for Maundy Thursday Love Feast

I just finished slicing some of Joe's fresh bread for supper and liked the way the counter looked and thought you might, too.  He likes to bake bread, which he says returns an immediate result for his day of labor, in sharp contrast to the years, he says, that it takes his economics majors to "turn out." Joe gives most of the bread away to neighbors, and to anyone with whom he interacts throughout the week.  The plumber, our physician, and the guy who puts new soles on old shoes have been the beneficiaries of Joe's largess. 

Apparently the recession has been a boon for the shoe repair industry, and Chris the cobbler, who has a workshop at Dr. Levine's podiatry practice in Frederick, has been exceptionally busy for months. You can find Chris working behind the large plate glass window in his shop that is filled with customers' worn shoes that line the racks and fill the shelves and spill over onto the work benches.  The scene is what you see when you enter the good doctor's waiting room if you look off to the left behind the display of new slippers for sale, the comfortable German ones made from boiled wool that we like to wear around the house. Chris likes Joe's bread.

Most of the bread on our counter today will wind up at church this week for the Church of the Brethren pre-Easter ritual of foot washing on Maundy Thursday night. The church is a small denomination, and it is growing smaller every year. It is much easier washing someone else's feet than having one's own feet washed. 

The ritual, held in the fellowship hall behind the sanctuary, is a quiet affair, and is followed by a meal called Love Feast of broth, bread, and maybe some fruit.  The meal is a reminder of congregational interdependence, and stories are told of churches delaying Love Feast until festering issues have been resolved among the people.

Sometimes the women wear small prayer caps at Love Feast to remind themselves to be present in a spiritual mind during the ritual. Most women do not wear prayer caps anymore.  Of course, there is giggling if little girls are present, and painful in-snorts from 14-year-old boys who have been told to be respectful by stern grandparents, but who at the end simply can not hold back their discomfort and then they laugh.  Then everyone laughs, and the tension of being on best behavior is lifted.

The bread on the counter will sit out overnight and in the morning Joe will bag it up and freeze it for Thursday.  He will probably make some whole wheat bread with seeds this week, and take that, too,  on Thursday for the supper.  The bread is always welcome.

Flowers April 4, Beating a Door to His Path

I had a swell martini at the art gallery last night, the classic kind from the 1930s, gin with a splash of vermouth. A drink scented with juniper berries appealed to me but I discovered that a little goes a very long way. 

Martini in hand, and discussing his own art with Karl, I learned that happiness in marriage has taken the desperate edge off his creativity, a trade he willingly made.  He thinks it would take three martinis to get into the clinical state of mind of his earliest years, when paint flowed freely.  I respect my inhibitions, and I put my unfinished drink back on the sidebar.   

I saw Karl on the street once in those early years sitting on a concrete step watching the passing scene.  A cigarette burned in one hand, and the other lay across his lap, pale arm in blue shadows. He was the quintessential artist, a little out of time and place. Today, he sells successful art (his own included) but the art that he collects is painted by artists on the edge of reason, where brush strokes are made from a deep well without direction from the ego.  He showed me some of his stuff in the back so I could see the difference between commercial art and what Van Gogh might have painted for others to discard.

Karl had framed for display two of his own items painted by Steve, who would be coming to the gallery, today, Saturday.  Steve is a sweet, good-natured man who, if you did not know his name, you would recognize (if you have been in Frederick) as the man with the long beard and psychedelic clown pants.  Sometimes Steve sets up an easel and turns out small pieces that he sells for $5 when he needs money.  Steve's art, Karl explained, arises from an intelligent and schooled mind that now paints to express his awareness of a rich and self-effacing understanding of the forms and colors of life.  

Karl framed two pieces of Steve's art and placed them in the gallery show.  I overheard people admiring the man's work, and it is interesting how a frame can domesticate abstraction and make it accessable to all.

A Virtuous Pot is Its Own Reward

When my husband was a young professor and on his first sabbatical abroad, he bought two frying pans in Paris.  One would think that hefting along a couple of iron skillets would have slowed him down, but he had only to carry them across the Channel to his house in East Sussex, where he was living and studying.  The Le Creuset pans from Paris would have made an impression on the neighbor ladies, and I have speculated about where he learned that the best Sunday night supper of all is an omelet, green salad, and a glass of white wine.

Over the years the collection of pots and pans has grown.  The original large skillet, and a number of smaller pots that joined it immediately upon return to the States had become degraded over the years with use, and if truth be known, some misuse when I was first learning to cook with them.  "The fire is too high!" he would call out and he crossed the kitchen, scowling, to adjust the flame under his prized Paris skillet. 

Two weeks ago we boxed up two skillets and three pots and shipped them to the Le Creuset center in Early Branch, South Carolina, where they could be assessed and repaired, and muttered over, darkly.  Over time a wooden handle had split, and chip had been knocked out of a pot lid, and the cooking surfaces had become worn.

An hour ago, Fed Ex delivered two big boxes to the front door, and I was surprised to see that they came from Le Creuset.  I ruefully said to my husband that the company must have decided that the 99-year guarantee doesn't cover the kind of damage we reported.  We opened the boxes, expecting to find our old stuff back, possibly resurfaced and with repaired lids and replaced handles, and with a terse little handwritten note about taking better care of their cookware.  No!  What we unpacked instead was a brand spanking new collection of three pots and two skillets, in bright, flaming red so red that each  piece shouted Bonjour as we lifted each out of its box. I dragged to the garden table all the new pots and pans and put some other Le Creuset with them for additional color for you to see.

My mother always says that virtue is its own reward, and that if you are going to buy something, make sure it's the best you can afford.  Buying pots and pans with a lifetime guarantee may seen frivolous to some, but Le Creuset makes the very best cookware in the world.  See the yellow oval pot behind the rest?  Vegetables slowly simmered in just a bit of broth become the most delectable food in the world.  The big green pot cooks our traditional Christmas dinner of Charcroute Garni that we learned to make in Strasbourg.  Finally, notice the humble little pan in the center. Only omelets are made in this exquisite pan, and it remains in perfect condition.

The other thing my mother taught me was that "Only sluts take naps in the afternoon," but world traveler that she is, my mother has never lived in Paris.

Saturday Flowers March 7

If three of the bright red tulips seem a little too boom-boom-boom, it's because they are.   As the days pass, the other tulips will droop while continuing to grow, and in a few days I'll change the water and trim the ends so they will last the week.  Michelle Blank, the owner of Flowers by Jim in Frederick, will look at this and think, "What Horror!" but then she has to please her many customers who want their arrangements to look beautiful and professionally composed, in their Sunday or wedding-day best so to speak. I'm after informality on my kitchen table.

Michelle's shop this morning was fresh and sparkling, and the back work room was filled with stately and gorgeous wedding arrangements.  Next Saturday, I might ask her if I may snap a few pictures of the shop to show you the art on the walls.  She has pieces collected over many years, and they are worth examining. If Michelle has flowers on her counter top in the sales room, I'll show you those, too.  The counter is dark wood, and antique, and on it she keeps single-color blossoms in a small vase. Those flowers are past their sell-by freshness but remain lovely and arresting nonetheless.

Here is what remains of last Saturday's flowers.    

Michelle added a single lily bud nearly hidden in the blooms, and the lily opened yesterday.

A Yorkshire Lass

The morning’s fresh flowers were in their crock on the kitchen table, and the rest of the world just had to manage as it might. Saturday afternoon, I decided to take a walk.

As I walked, I considered the book I had finished at 3:45 a.m., how structure and subject had supported each other, and how with a less poised pen its authorial device would have strangled the living story of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

The book turns on a series of letters written in 1946 between an author, her publisher friend, and a number of the inhabitants of the crown dependency of the bailiwick of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, which were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Germans in World War Two.  There is darkness and great sorrow in the story, but there is also the depiction of moral (and sometimes fey) substance among rural island people, who display enough outlier characteristics inherent in any isolated, small population to drive the story forward.  By the end I was thinking, “Hurray for the steadfast pig farmer!”

On the way home on this chilly day, I stopped for a cup of hot tea at Michael’s Café Anglais on North Market St., and stayed for a chapter of a parallel book on the war.

The tea room was active.  The young waitresses were cooing over an old black dog who was taking a drink from a water bowl placed before her on the wooden floor next to a table occupied by two women, obviously mother and daughter, for the one was elderly enough not to be out on her own.  The slender old woman had white hair pulled back from her face by a hair band.  She was dressed as Katharine Hepburn would have approved.  Her name is Helen, and she is 97. She and her daughter were reading the morning papers and having tea and scones with clotted cream and jam.

When the daughter went elsewhere in the tearoom, Helen herself came to my table and told me  how she met her husband. 

Some seventy years ago, she ran away from her parent’s home in Yorkshire and joined the RAF.  As she was riding her bicycle home from town after work one evening, she was driven into an air raid shelter by the sirens warning the approach of the enemy.  She met an American soldier in the shelter, and they talked.  When the all-clear sounded, the soldier walked her home, and carried her bike the four miles.  The next morning at her RAF headquarters, an office mate announced the arrival of a Yank, looking for Helen. 

He had decided overnight that she was the girl for him, and he came to announce his intentions. 

Helen stood up at my table and broke into a little song popular at that time,

"I’m going to get me a Yorkshire lass, and we’ll have a love to last."

She and her soldier married, he brought her home with him, and she bore him six children.   She named her children, and told me that all she ever seemed to do then was knit their sweaters, and feed and diaper them.  She remains an active knitter, and she showed me her blue wool scarf, a bow tie design, being narrow behind the neck, and broad at the tails to warm the front.

 “I live here,” she said, and as she crossed both hands over her chest, “but I am a Yorkshire girl. Next summer I’ll go visit my cousins; I don’t need the children to take me, do I?”  I agreed that she could manage nicely on her own.

First Footing in the New Year

The Scots have a custom I am ridiculously fond of and oddly bound by, and that is recognizing that the person to first step foot over your threshold in the New Year bespeaks the fortunes to come of the household.   What one wants is the best of people to be the first footer, because then all the New Year will be sunny and bright and full of good cheer.  Fortunately for me and my household, it worked out quite nicely, thank you.

Hot Lemon Juice

I learned to drink hot lemon juice in Germany.  While others were quaffing their half-liter glasses of beer, I drank cup after cup of juice.  Back home this morning, and awake early because I think I am on German time six hours ahead of the small hours of darkness here, I went to the kitchen and sliced a lemon in half, squeezed the liquid into my tea cup and filled the cup with water just off the boil.  I added a bit of honey.  I enjoyed it so much I made a second cup with the rest of the lemon. Thus fortified,  as dawn arose in the east I decided to take a quick walk to the bakery two blocks away for some breakfast breads to spread on the table with an assortment of cheeses, which surely I had around here somewhere.  Wait!  I am not in Germany, where bakeries, green grocers, cheese shops abound in every neighborhood.  I am in Frederick, Maryland, so I hopped in the car and drove to the local chain bread and bagel shop instead. 

Jealous Bitch Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

A good cab for $10?  Ha! You say? I found one. Jealous Bitch Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 is delicious, especially with Coho salmon and accoutrements, as was the menu this evening. The wine is delicious, and the adorable and beauty-challenged dog on the label is inspirational.

My husband is the one who chooses the wine for the family.  He studies and evaluates, and grouses and figures, and refers again to his cataloges and piles (yes, piles) of Robert Parker's Wine Advocate falling off the library table. When we go to Calvert Woodley in Bethesda to pick up the periodic order, I usually select a bottle or two based on the beauty of the bottle or the color and design of the label, but my choices really are to help him feel that if he were not in charge of our modest wine cellar, it would go straight to hell due to poor choice. I must amend that.  I have made some good buys. Consider the Cognac Tesseron, Lot 53, X.O. Perfection, for example.

It is wonderful cognac, and I know and respect cognac, but part of its charm for me is that it has enthralled one of my husband's colleagues.  This fellow is a runner, all sinew and econometrics. After his runs on a Saturday, if he is not in a marathon somewhere in the world, he'll tidy up and come to call. I get the Edinburgh crystal from the cupboard, and he and my husband repair to the garden, my beloved with a cigar and a tumbler of something decent, and his runner pal with tumbler filled with three ice cubes over which I pour a double measure of the good stuff. 

We last opened wine on election night. We broke open a bottle of champagne, and since the neighbors were asleep, or else on firefighting duty or celebrating in the bars of the city, we drank the entire bottle ourselves. The effect was transcendent, as was the election. 

Quick Squirrel

A neighbor lad has a downstairs back porch identical to mine.  The porch roof is formed by the balcony, and between the floor of his balcony and the roof of his back porch is a habitat for squirrels. I wonder what things are like in their nest, but it's likely to be a messy affair, judging from the enormous nests in nearby trees.  There have been wisps of cloth and twigs hanging from the neighbor's porch roof; the squirrels are preparing for winter. 

I am working in the upstairs office, which opens onto my own balcony overlooking the autumn garden.  Leaves are swirling in the brisk wind; how many perfect fall days will there be in what remains of the year?

A plump squirrel thunked a landing on the balcony a moment ago, and he just poked his little gray head in the open door, eyed me and backed off--but not too far, and we watched each other from about three feet apart. I think this charming little fellow must like apple pie, because I baked one late this morning to serve to guests a while ago, and there is still the apple-cinnamon fragrance in the house, and all doors and windows are open.  He just went on his way, maybe wistfully, because in truth the pie was good.

Snoozy Puppies

http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.45.swf?cid=317016

Try this puppy cam.  Moretta sent it to me, and I am watching it while awaiting Barack Obama's first press conference as president-elect.  Here is the address for a really fine blog.  lamoretta.typepad.com

Let's Build a Fort

When I was a kid, and long after the age when I really could get away with such wild play, I liked to build forts in the field behind our house.  In fact, my mother's sisters reminded me on more than one occasion that I was too old to play with sticks and brush, grass and stones, but I ignored their admonishment. The field was vast, and on a hill.  Field is too tame a word for what was really scrub land.  Near the top of the hill was a rocky outcropping fringed by trees, and below that there were thickets of brush, and even wild berries.  Wildflowers grew everywhere.

Building a fort takes less skill than you might imagine, but it is essential to begin it right.  Back up to a big rock, or better yet find a coppice of trees out of sight from the houses below, and begin laying out the entry place with a line of stones. Then you can begin to collect sticks and brush to pile and weave the walls around you.  The trees are canopy enough, but it's good to have some low boughs to form the roof of the fort.  You can make a bed with a pile of any forest debris, but autumn leaves are best.  After the fort is built, then you can lay in your stores, which should include plenty of sharp-pointed spears (always reusable in each new fort), a book, and maybe some apples for later in the afternoon. 

It's raining now, and I have an assignment due, but what I really want to do is build a fort somewhere.

Frederick In the Streets October 4, 2008

Getting jiggy with the people in the annual In the Streets free-for-all festival in Frederick, October 4, 2008. My friend Annie, who just returned from Pisa on a semester's sabbatical leave told me that the daily market scene in that Italian city is as crowded as the once-a-year festival in my town. 

I'm not one for rubbing elbows with the madding crowd, but once a year I can dive in, knowing that a hot soak, a good book (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle) and a cup of Yogi Tea (with valerian and chamomile) will set me right. So here you are! Take a look at wonderful people in my town.

Morris Dancers and perfect children.

Maybe they will remember the day.

This is Michael's tea room.  His customers have other things on their minds today.  We stopped in to pick up Typhoo tea, about a month's supply.  Here is Michael himself in the tiny kitchen, preparing savory pies. I have stopped at the tea room after a harried day to explain to Michael, "I have guests coming, the table is set, the salad is ready, but the main course has failed.  What would you recommend?" Not a problem.

The Cuban Cafe, two blocks from home.

The festival took place on Market and Patrick Streets, and the Carrol Creek Parkway.

Bands played throughout town.

Frederick's German heritage was celebrated.  The town was settled by German immigrants after 1745, led by a German Reformed schoolmaster from the Rhineland Palatinate.

Here are just a few images of people enjoying the day on Market Street .

 

I

 

I just wanted to show you the passing scene.

There's nothing like a street festival to bring out the best in people. These two people are Obama fans in a state already in his camp. 

Empty Streets of Frederick Town

As my husband and I drove home Thursday evening from my big birthday bash we noticed that the highway and city streets were deserted; in other words, alone on the road we were.  It was 8:55 p.m..  This was a unique event.  I have never seen the highway without traffic.  I read that 70 million people watched Biden Palin debate, and I am here to tell you that 60,000 of them were in Frederick.

Do you notice that the big birthday bash was over well before 9 p.m.? I just noticed that myself.

East Fourth St., Frederick; The House Next Door

I was sitting on the floor of the vestibule of the house brushing on the last strokes of Morning Sunshine paint to the exterior of the front door yesterday when a city police car pulled up to the curb with the driver just out of easy line of sight from me.  One does not want to appear abnormally curious in such a circumstance, so I turned my head and nodded perfunctorily at no one in particular and continued until I finished the job. The car idled at the the curb for about 10 minutes, so after dusting myself off a bit and cleaning up the paint clutter, I stepped outside to admire my handiwork and walked to the patrol car to speak to the policeman.  Together, we admired the beautiful front door.  It is just like its neighbor doors because an enterprising developer built four identical row houses in 1895, and all our doors are original.

The policeman was just stopping on a quiet street to complete some reports, and so we talked a little bit about my pleasant neighborhood. He said, "You have firemen living around here, don't you?" I pointed out my next-door neighbors' bright red door and said, yes, right here, and pointed out Mark's house across the street, for he, too, is a fireman.

Mark will retire before long; he has been an active duty firefighter for 28 years.  He is a first responder in difficult situations, and he was one of the firemen who, on September 11, 2001, raised the American flag over the Pentagon.  He trains other firefighters now, and he has a wide network of people who respect him greatly.

I think it was Mark who urged my neighbors Mike and Richard, professional firemen themselves, to buy the house next door. I had not thought that two fire guys would be such fine neighbors, and their dalmatians, too.  They have worked on their house and garden in ways I did not expect of young men in their mid-twenties.  They have done an excellent job maintaining and improving the old house, and have decorated it with American flags and posters of the St. Pauli girl, in keeping with their patriotism (and other aspirations). In a row on top the kitchen cabinets they also keep their discarded fire fighting helmets, worn out from exposure to fire.

These men were 25 and 23 respectively when they moved in five years ago, and I continue to be impressed by them in particular and by the kind of men who choose this line of work.  In the last five years the lads have moved to progressively more dangerous districts in Washington DC and nearby, but they still come home at the end of their shifts.  Three years ago, Mike joined the National Guard and trained for six months as a combat medic.  He went to Iraq, and came home at the end of his tour.  He fell deeper in love, bought a house with his girl, and just recently sold his share of the house to Richard. Richard, too, is in love, and he told me that maybe "she is the one." I hope so.

Here is a photo of Richard that I just took from my balcony. Although his station is about 40 miles away, he doesn't leave his calling behind him when he comes home.  I was outside one evening tending the plants in the pots in front of the house and fire alarms blared out in the city. Richard shot out his door and sprinted the block to a cross alley and disappeared from view. A minute later, police and fire trucks raced up the street and stalled at the turn to the alley.  Richard came home a little later, and said that he ran to the house of the reported fire, banged on the door, was admitted, and he put out a kitchen fire before the others got to the house. 

When there is a fire downtown, frequently more than one fire department responds.  The houses are connected row houses, and if one goes up in flames, a block could be lost. My husband and I, returning home in the car one late afternoon,  turned onto our street to find the block barred to traffic by fire trucks and police cars. There was excitement and people were milling about, and firemen were up against another neighbor's house, climbing ladders into windows, hauling hoses.  Wires were hanging from poles, and we were warned away from our porch.  Apparently the fire chief had landed on his back earlier when he touched one of those vagrant lines. Earlier in the day there had been a serious thunder storm and lightning struck a neighbor's chimney and insulation was caught in a smoldering fire that broke out later.  I regretted that neither Mike nor Richard had been home.  It was a day made for them. Richard and Mike are the men to know if ever one were in trouble and needed help.

 

East 4th Street, Frederick; Part 1, Terry

I am fortunate in my neighbors on East 4th Street, and always have been, except for some bad neighbors who moved away.  But why dwell on them?  A too-crowded house, 2 a.m. interior renovations and vermin aside, they eventually scuttled out of town under cover of night and the street has never looked back.

Neighborliness is important here and over years of calling out hello as we cross the street, and a few conversations here and there and forgatherings to pull weeds from the bricks in the front sidewalk or snow shoveling in a neighborly team the entire block for the benefit of all, a certain trust has built up between people that respects privacy, limitations, and both the responsibility of one for the many and all for one, when there is need.

Terry    To begin, there are Terry and his new wife, Vicki.  He is an electrician.  He is also a natural gentleman.  She is now the property manager of the big parking lot they own behind the houses on the other side of the street, and where so many of us pay $45 a month to park, and it is money well spent.  You see, he is what we call "old Frederick," and that means that his name and his family are embedded in the fabric of town. People leave Terry and what's his alone when mischief is afoot, and it's their mischief. A car parked in Terry's lot is as safe as in the bank vault. 

Now that Terry is married, he and his wife sit out in the evenings by their door step, under a green porch umbrella, and the paved dooryard opens out onto the 30-car asphalt parking lot.  Terry, in his bachelor days, used to sit at a card table in the parking lot in front of the flung open garage doors, with his beautiful black and chrome motorcycle next to him, and he would feast on crabs in season.  He and his motorcycle are so close that I always suspected that when people were not looking, Terry might slip his bike a bite and they would burp in unison (we know that what motorcycles do is not burp, of course).   

Terry has been gentled by his wife, and it is he who faithfully covers her rows of flowers in the narrow earth strip he has converted for her use between the asphalt and the buildings that edge the parking lot.  Every morning to protect the red and pink impatiens from the blast of the sun radiating off the pavement, Terry unrolls the long lengths of pink cloth, and in the late afternoon he rolls them back up and stacks them out of sight.

Terry inherited the big building on the corner of Market and 4th from his mother, who died last year.  The building is three stories tall and has many apartments in it, and behind it, running the length of half the large open parking lot, is a cavernous garage that Terry has partitioned over the years and outfitted half of it as an apartment for himself and Vicki, and more it as his electrical shop.  The other half he has converted into a shop used by a woodworking and cabinetry company. 

The parking lot has been coveted recently by developers of an adjacent 5-acre site, unusual in a downtown historic district.  The site was bought by a patient man who acquired it piecemeal over 20 years, and many of the sturdy brick row houses fronting Market St., besides.  He sold the large vacant lot to a developer who leveled what was the best dog walk in Frederick, and he laid expensive infrastructure for 48 dwellings, all of which had to meet strict historic district requirements. The four model houses built to attract customers for the rest of the development stand alone fronting East 5th St., largely unvisited by prospective house hunters, and are now for sale. Their prices have dropped little from the starting price of near $500,000 for a unit of three stories plus basement. 

I walked through the houses during an open-house weekend a year ago, and I was delighted by the newness.  The residents to come would not concern themselves with the need to replace a 100-year-old tin roof, or a 35-year-old furnace, or parging the foundation stones in the basement.  For them there would be new kitchens, skylights, and graceful stairways, and from the second and third stories overlooking 5th St. views of modest houses across the narrow street getting smart new paint out front and trash picked up from under the porches. 

On East 5th St. in Frederick, Maryland, you can today buy a tiny house, actually several, that are original log houses built by poor people more than a hundred years ago.  Brickwork covers some, and wood siding others, but beneath the surface, they remain little log houses, and they are beautiful.  You could buy three of them for one of the enormous and empty model houses on the vast and empty lot behind them.

Terry wisely never sold his parking lot to provide extra access for those future residents.  Why would he sell today for a few million, he said, when he would have to find another place to live with his wife and find a new shop and garage for his business?  He decided to stay and manage his properties and live a neighborly life.