The Morgantowner: Carroll County, Maryland

Garrison Keillor wrote a story for The New Yorker once about "Momentism," a fake philosophy about how moments define your life. I had a moment Thursday, on my way to Carroll County, Maryland. The directions on Google Maps had me get off I-70 at the eastern end of Washington County, and head northeast on back roads through Frederick County. I was driving in our little 2012 Suzuki, and Coldplay's "A Head Full of Dreams" was in my CD player. The windows were open, the temperature dropping as I climbed Catoctin Mountain. There was a sign for Cunningham Falls State Park. I went to a Jewish summer camp near there for part of three summers, 1961,'62 and '63. Not that camp was all that pleasant an experience for me. The air smelled from fresh tree pollen, reminding me of the asthma attacks I had at camp. I remembered the bullying, and that time the first year, before my twelfth birthday, when my parents, who said they wouldn't, drove up in their beautiful new Oldsmobile convertible on visitors' day, and I burst into tears when I saw them. It wasn't the last time they couldn't figure out who I was. I careened around the curves in the road, and Chris Martin was singing "Hymn For The Weekend," and I was just elated. I can't explain why I was so happy at that moment. Maybe I was feeling that that insecure 11-year old, away from his parents for the first time, had finally figured out who he was and is happy about how it all worked out.

I had divided Carroll County into two parts, north and south, and randomly picked ten of the sixty-one sites on the National Register of Historic Places to visit Thursday afternoon and evening, and ten more for Friday morning. And I wanted to make sure I saw all the Historic Districts. A lot to do. I reserved a room near the edge of Westminster, the county seat, at a chain motel, not my usual chain.

I grew up west of Baltimore, in Baltimore County, between Liberty Road and Reisterstown Road. Both roads begin in Baltimore. Reisterstown Road was U.S. 140, now State Road 140, and is the main street of Pikesville and Owings Mills, Baltimore 's Jewish suburbs. At Reisterstown, it turns left to Westminster, and used to go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania as U.S. 140. Liberty Road heads more westerly, starting at Baltimore's Druid Hill Park as Liberty Heights Avenue (notorious from Barry Levinson's movie) and becomes Liberty Road at the city limits. Growing up, that area was mostly Jewish; now it is largely African-American. As soon as I saw a sign that said "140" I felt close to home. Not that I ever visited Carroll County as a kid. It wasn't someplace we went, although it was only a fifteen minute drive out Liberty Road.

I did go there once, maybe twenty years ago, with my post-college Baltimore friend Chuck. The county had a corn festival with 25, 50 and 100 mile bike rides. I think I was living in Florida then, so it may have been thirty-five years ago. Time flies. Chuck and I did the fifty mile bike ride, then had a dinner of three pieces of fried chicken and all the corn you could eat. Chuck said to me "Don't you feel right at home here?" Actually, I didn't. I was ten shades darker than everyone there, and I thought people were giving us looks. Maybe I'm paranoid. Anyway, Chuck is from Southern Maryland, and his family has been in the state since the 1600s. My father came at eighteen in 1940; my mother in 1947, when she married my father. They were both New York City born and raised.

I arrived in Carroll County at 1:30 P.M., and spent two hours looking for historic places in the north end of the county.

Ludwick Rudisel Tannery, Taneytown, 1807

Early stone house in Taneytown Historic District

Jacob Koons Farmhouse near Taneytown, c. 1869

Wilson's Inheritance, near Union Bridge, 1830s, looked vacant

Uniontown Historic District

House in New Windsor Historic District

At 3;30, I headed to the hotel, having hit only five historic places and two historic districts. I slept an hour, spent another hour on the computer, then walked a mile and a half into downtown Westminster, passing McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College), where people were walking to a high school graduation. I walked much of Main Street, Westminster, snapping pics and settling on a family-run Thai restaurant for dinner. I stopped in the library, located in a park setting on Main, and got back to my hotel after nine, stopping, against diet rules, for homemade ice cream (cherry vanilla) at Baugher's Restaurant, near my motel.

McDaniel College, Western Maryland College Alumni Auditorium and Chapel, late 19th century

Main and Center Sts., Westminster

House on West Main St,Westminster

Baltimore style row houses, Main St., Westminster

Carroll County Library and Park, Westminster

I was up late trying to make sense of the half-day I planned for Friday. I thought I could hit the remaining five historic sites and a few districts at the north end of the county, then see all I wanted to see at the south end of the county. That didn't happen. There is a mall in Westminster, not doing well, with a Boscov's Department Store, out of Philadelphia. I found a few places in the north end of the county, then decided I should try to seee some of the south before heading off to my sister in the afternoon.

I ate lunch at 1 at a Denny's in Eldersburg, the most suburban part of Carroll County, just past Liberty Reservoir, on the Patapsco River, a few miles out Liberty Road from Randallstown, in Baltimore County, where I attended Hebrew school and had my bar mitzvah. I was tempted to go back and have a look, but the synagogue is now a church, and you can't really go back, can you? The Denny's is in a town center-like development where there had once been a mall. I told my sister I was on my way to her, 45 miles away, via MD 32, a kind of outer loop of Baltimore. I stopped to check out Sykesville, a historic town at the south end of Carroll County, just across a bridge from much hipper Howard County. This is where I found the independent bookstore, the ice cream shop, the old train station and warehouse, now trendy restaurants. I messaged my sister that I might be a little later than expected, and hung out a bit. The woman at the bookstore had never heard of Howard County native Michael Chabon, and didn't have the collection of essays he and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, edited. That's what I was looking for.

Maybe Chuck was right. It was good to be near home again. The trees are a little different than in Morgantown, the smells, the heat that Friday. Still, most of this county was unfamiliar to me, and, as usual, I enjoyed exploring.

Slagle-Byers House, 1819, on a major street north of Westminster

Union Mills Historic District, mill is from 1797, owned by the Shriver family originally. Union and Confederate generals were hosted here during the Gettysburg campaign. The homestead is 17 miles south of Gettysburg.