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| When I was a lad in the 1950s, the state of Maryland used to promote itself as “America in Miniature,” which always seemed like an absurd claim even to a child, as Maryland is so teeny tiny (the 42nd biggest state in the Union) that it could scarcely encompass all the features of an entire continent.
But as I sit here in my attic office in January, Maryland (Baltimore, specifically) is doing a pretty fair impression of Minnesota. Some 7 inches of snow has fallen and temperatures are expected to be in the single digits in the evening, with 30 mile an hour winds. As the great W.C. Fields said, “T’aint a fit night out for man nor beast.” And yet, I know with certainty that once Spring comes, Maryland’s geographic mimicry will reverse itself, with steamy, Florida-like heat setting in as early as early May if history is any guide. The Chesapeake Bay and adjacent Atlantic Ocean will start pumping moisture vigorously up toward the world famous Inner Harbor, giving the air a remarkably solid quality--you think oxygen is a gas until you experience a Baltimore summer, then you learn it’s really a liquid. So, with all these meteorological extremes, why in the world does anyone bother to live here? Possibly because that boast about being “America in miniature” is surprisingly true. I can leave my peculiar, down at heels neighborhood in Baltimore city, drive north for just half an hour, and find myself in “horse country,” where white painted board fences enclose hundreds of rolling acres of green pasturage, such as one would expect to see in Kentucky. Yet I can also drive about a half hour east from my house, through the city, and arrive at the Dundalk Marine Terminal, where goods from all over the world are delivered by ship for transport into America’s interior. (Maryland has been a vital transportation hub since Colonial times. And America’s very first railroad began here, the Baltimore & Ohio.) Remember, these two very different vistas--the one calm and pastoral, the other muscular and commercial--are quite close at hand. If I care to drive, say, two hours east or west, I can find myself in such radically different topographies that it’s hard to believe they are in the same country, let alone the same small state.
Still, once you get to know the Shore, also called the Peninsula by its inhabitants, you learn it’s not totally spoiled by a long shot. Easton, in Talbot County, has been repeatedly acclaimed as one of the best small towns in America. It’s a place where the restored Avalon Theater, featuring mostly live folk music concerts, sits peaceably right next door to a very well-equipped gun shop. It’s also a place that can support the Tidewater Inn, a very upmarket hotel and dining establishment. In fact, the Eastern Shore is rapidly becoming a monied place, as wealthy retirees from big Eastern cities flock there for the milder climate and relaxed way of life. But if I drive drive west from Baltimore, out US Route 70 which runs all the way to Chicago, I’ll quickly find myself in a very different environment. One hour out, the terrain becomes hilly and dramatic, as you head toward Frederick, the town immortalized by John Greenleaf Whittier in his Civil War-era poem “Barbara Fritchie.” Once a market town for the surrounding central Maryland countryside, Frederick’s downtown maintains a more or less authentic 19th century air, even as huge subdivisions spring up around it, housing people who work in the Washington, DC region but can’t afford to live there. Go another hour west, though, and the country gets rugged, sparsely populated, and far less hospitable in the winter than Baltimore at its worst. The towns of far Western Maryland, like Cumberland and Hancock, are gorgeous in their isolation, set against jagged hills, ringed by deep forests. But they are the sorts of towns that have had hard going in the new economy--mill towns, railheads, towns that boomed in the industrial era, yet have lost their place in the information age. Oh, there’s a skiing and winter sports industry, but the wealthy folks who have headed to the Eastern Shore won’t permanently bivouac in Western Maryland. Here, Winter comes in October and doesn’t start looking for the door until late April. For final proof that the Free State is filled with contrasts, I can do no better than to describe my immediate environment. Right now, I live in Hampden, a working class neighborhood originally settled by textile mill workers. Our main commercial strip has a Dollar Store and Salvation Army Thrift Shop as prominent tenants. Yet immediately adjacent to Hampden, just 5 minutes up Roland Avenue, lies Roland Park, the most desirable neighborhood in all of Baltimore, a place of Victorian-era homes with wraparound front porches, guarded by enormous shade trees. The working class and the upper class, side by side. It doesn’t get any more American (or unlikely) than that. |
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Heading first south, then east, a 45 minute drive gets me to the Chesapeake Bay Bridges, twin east/west spans that link the Western Shore with the Eastern Shore. Until the first of these bridges was built in the early 1950s, the only way to cross over was by ferry--otherwise the intrepid traveller from Baltimore had to take the long and winding land route up through Delaware. Mind you, many natives of the Eastern Shore, an overwhelmingly rural area to this day, liked their separation just fine and believed that the bridge would lead their region to ruin. And when you see what Ocean City, once a sleepy little family resort, looks like now, with its huge condominiums and ungainly commercial development, the natives may well have been right.
