Cecil County, Maryland

It is 270 miles from Morgantown to Elkton, the county seat of Cecil County. You might think, from driving 240 miles through Maryland, that it was a big state. Much of the way, however, you can see West Virginia from the road, or walk to Pennsylvania from the exits. At Hancock, Maryland is only three miles wide.

I visited Cecil County this week, my sixty-fifth county to visit within three hundred miles of Morgantown since I moved here in July, 2012. These trips were my retirement project while playing spouse to the town's new rabbi, my husband, Joe Hample. Since July, I am out of retirement in my supposedly part-time job as representative for the Seventh Ward on Morgantown's City Council. Only three meetings a month, and committees, and demonstrations and events I'm asked to attend. I like it, but it makes it harder for me to get away. Our meetings are on three Tuesdays, and since October had five Tuesdays this year, I was off two of them.

I try to visit my parents' grave in Owings Mills before the High Holy Days. This year we were in Canada, and I didn't get there. It was only a few miles off the Beltway to go see them, so I did.

I grew up in northern Maryland, about sixty miles west of Elkton, and when I was a child, my family drove through Cecil County on our frequent trips to New York, where my grandparents and most of my parents' families  lived. What I knew as an adult was this: that Elkton, having the first courthouse in Maryland coming from the northeast, was a haven for quickie marriages, there being no blood test or waiting period required to marry before 1938. My grandmother's sister, Aunt Mary, told me that she and her Italian-American boyfriend were married in  Elkton, in what she called "Marry-land." The JFK Expressway, Interstate 95 from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware, was ordered built by President Kennedy because there was a scandal. Ambassadors from newly-independent nations in Africa driving US 40 from Washington to New York were not served in restaurants in Aberdeen and Havre de Grace in Harford County, nor in Elkton, in Cecil County. A state-owned restaurant was built in the median of the highway and everyone was served. President Kennedy attended the ribbon-cutting a week before he was murdered, and the highway was named for him. Cecil County also was home to a resurgent Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 1960s. In the last presidential election, the current president was favored with sixty-three per cent of the vote.

Cecil County borders Delaware and Pennsylvania both, and Elkton is only about twenty-one miles from Wilmington, fifty-one miles from Philadelphia, and fifty-eight miles from Baltimore. It looks like Maryland as I remember it, a handful of colonial buildings, little suburban houses, and big trees, reminding me of the hay fever and asthma attacks I suffered through as a child. There is corn, lots of it, although this year the stalks were brown and wrinkled from a long, blazingly hot and dry summer. My sister, when I told her where I was going, thought she had visited a lighthouse on a trip from her senior center. Cecil County lies at the point where the Susquehanna River, traveling through New York State and Pennsylvania, and flooded with seawater, becomes Chesapeake Bay.

I booked a motel for two nights off I-95 near  North East, along the bay in the western part of Cecil County. My Usual Chain gave me two free nights based on accumulated points. The clerk seemed unhappy.

I napped a bit, then headed out to find two historic places in North East, one the lighthouse at Turkey Point in South Elk Neck State Park. It was farther than I thought it would be, and I got there just at sunset, 6:13, 16 minutes earlier than in Morgantown, when the park was to close. It was nearly a mile to walk on a trail, but I got there in time to snap a shot in the fading light. Walking back, people were coming out to the point in Quaker garb, in family groups.  I drove back up to town with the "low gas" light on and made it to a gas station where our ten-gallon tank car took ten and a half gallons. I stopped at a chain of pizza places, ate a chicken parmesan sub, and headed back to the hotel. I never found the other place, a covered bridge.

Turkey Point Light, 1833, South Elk Neck State Park

I still had fifty places on the National Register of Historic Places to visit, and plotted different ways to see all of them on Monday, my one full day in Cecil County. I finally gave up and picked every fifth one, giving me ten places to visit throughout the county. The other things I do: visit a mall, a college, a synagogue and a big park, would have to wait. I had already done the park, there is only a Messianic synagogue, which I saw, on US 40 in Elkton in a beige box of a building, and there is no mall. I passed Cecil College, the local two-year school, near where I stayed in Northeast, but didn't stop .

I was up too late and on my alternate day diuretic Monday, which made my day difficult, because I needed more bathrooms than available. Twice, I had to duck out somewhere to pee. I'm one step away from adult diapers.

I did manage  to find my ten places and photograph them. One place is a 17th century waterfront estate down a long country road, and posted with "No Trespassing" signs. This happens often in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland. I didn't get that picture. Also, some of the places on The National Register are archaeological sites that no one wants you to find. I skipped those.

It should no longer be surprising that the it reached into the 70s F. during the day in late October. 2017 will likely be the warmest year of the last 150 or so since records have been kept. West Virginia politicians, and the US government think climate change is a "hoax."

Here are the pics:

West Nottingham Meeting House, 1811, near Colora

Elisha Kirk House, 1813, near Calvert

Rock United Presbyterian Church, originally 1761, remodeled 1872 and 1900, near Elkton

Cecil County Courthouse, Elkton, 1939

Mitchell House, Main Street, Elkton, between 1769 and 1781

painted parking meter and Halloween decoration, Elkton

Painted elk. There are several of these throughout Elkton

Holly Hall, Elkton, 1810-1820, off a main street, surrounded by fast food places and shopping centers, abandoned

Elk Landing, about 1780, near Elkton, in a park

St. Francis Xavier Church, dedicated 1797, near Warwick

site of the wharf in Charlestown Historic District

Main St., Port Deposit

Paw Paw Building, 1821, Port Deposit, built as a chuech

Walkway along the Susquehanna River, Port Deposit, looking south to the I-95 and US 40 bridges

Cecil seems to be a depressed place. Bainbridge Naval Station was once a major employer near Port Deposit. It now lies abandoned behind locked gates. I didn't see much going on in downtown Elkton. There are wealthy people who own shorefront homes and it is possible to commute to Wilmington, Delaware. The last place I visited, Port Deposit, is an old town on the Susquehanna at the base of a cliff. I saw some tourist-oriented places there, but all of them were closed on Monday afternoon, and many of the historic structures are decrepit and/or abandoned. Across the railroad tracks that front the river, there are new condo buildings. A sidewalk along the water is open to the public.

Having eaten too much at breakfast Monday at the motel, I skipped lunch, napped late in the afternoon, and went looking for a place to eat. I ended up at a chain buffet restaurant, located in a truck stop off I-95 north of Elkton at the Delaware line. The clientele may have been mostly travelers. There are now two state-owned restaurants on I-95, serving only several brands of fast food. In addition to the heavy-set people one might expect at a buffet, I saw many African-Americans and Spanish-speakers. I thought that odd, in a largely Caucasian-populated county. Still, anyplace in the South, including Maryland, that is a small restaurant, bragging about "family-owned" or "since (any date before 1965)" , were I African-American, I would be wary of how I might be treated. For me also, I like an anonymous sort of place where you can pick-and-choose what you want to eat.

I drove back leisurely on Tuesday, detouring off the Baltimore Beltway to drive through Pikesville, from Greenspring Avenue to Old Court Road., through Sudbrook Park and down Campfield Road past my elementary school to see the house where I grew up. I still often dream that I live in that house, sometimes waiting, alone, for my parents to come home.

Wendell-Washington House, 1953 (remodeled), Lochearn Census Defined Place, Baltimore County, MD

The Reunion

You might think about the reunion fifty years after your high school graduation at the time you graduate, but you don't really think that it will ever happen. At seventeen, I couldn't imagine sixty-seven. That would make me almost the same age as my grandmother! Unthinkable. And yet, somehow, the day arrives.

Two years ago, the class of '65 invited all the sixties classes from our school, Woodlawn, in Baltimore County, just west of Baltimore City, to join them in their reunion. I was planning to go to that. Our school only opened in 1961, with no seniors that year, so 1963 was the first graduating class, and I knew people from the classes from '63 to '69. I sent in my money, but a visit to the cardiologist a week before confirmed that I needed work done, and I was hospitalized Tuesday before the weekend, and three new stents were placed in my arteries. I had to admit I could not drive 200 miles over the weekend to a reunion. This year, my fall cardiologist visit is after the reunion, this week, and I'm hoping I will be okay.

I asked a few people I know if they were planning to attend, but they were not. One of my very best friends from those years died in 2012. Another friend, who left our school after eleventh grade, wouldn't spend a hundred dollars to attend.

I was nervous about going. Joe and I drove to my sister's house, twenty miles from the venue, where we stayed Friday and Saturday night. He had agreed to do a wedding for the daughter of a high school era friend (different school, different year) in downtown Washington.

I had directions to the venue, a hotel in Columbia, Maryland, where many of my classmates live now, in the next county west of Baltimore County. Columbia, a private development, didn't exist until our senior year. I used to go by there on Saturday nights with a daredevil friend at 100 miles per hour on empty two-lane U.S. 29, which is now a six-lane expressway jammed with traffic, on the way to visit friends in Silver Spring. I dressed for the reunion in my dress-up hipster clothes and had lost a few pounds, but still, I didn't look anything like my high school picture. I didn't know if people would speak to me at all.

I need not have worried. People were friendly. I pretended to remember people I didn't. I was greeted at the door by two women who grew up a few blocks from me and were in my class in first grade. A woman from the 'hood reminded me that she had graduated from Johns Hopkins with me, after transferring in junior year, the first year Hopkins had women undergraduates.

I sat with the former student council president, who had been kicked out of Yale freshman year after a raucous demonstration, had lived in West Virginia, become a leftist activist, then a Christian and now a religious Jew again. He is still dedicated to social justice issues. He thought we were on a similar path, and I imagine we are.

Everyone was upbeat, and did not discuss politics. We were there to catch up, to get a look at our old friends and compare and contrast. People tended to gloss over the sadness in their lives, but if you dug into them, you could find illness, the loss of a spouse or child, divorce, the fear of being alone in old age, the feeling that we may have lost our looks or passed up chances that would have improved our lives. My heart went out to everyone, happy or pretending.

There was a little book, where we had sent in about our current marriages, children and grandchildren. Most of us were retired and spending our time traveling. There were several marriages in our class, or with students in other years. Some were married very young (two in or just after eleventh grade) two marriages were between Jews and Christians, not at all common then, but still married. People asked me how I came to live in West Virginia after twenty-five years in Los Angeles, and I told them I was married to a rabbi, a man, and he was hired by a congregation in Morgantown. Most people knew that Morgantown is the home of West Virginia University. A few smiles froze and eyes glazed over on hearing this, but not many. And I have become friends with some classmates on Facebook, so they knew about it. The only other openly gay man in the class, I found out from reading our little book and doing some research, died two years ago. I knew he had AIDS, but he may still have died from something else.

People were surprised that I not only remembered them, but what street they lived on, and one (still) pretty girl told me I was the cutest boy in our class. I felt like I was on a playground from my childhood, and many of my friends were there, all trying to look like their grandparents. I still think of us all as the teenagers we were then, despite everything we have been through.

I enjoyed myself, and I was friendly to everyone, even people I could have held a long-time grudge against, and I felt like that favor was returned. We are all turning sixty-eight this year, and chances are we won't make it to a sixtieth reunion.

Despite our differences, we all shared a common experience many years ago. There was an understanding of how things were then, and we all knew each other when we were somewhat less guarded. We had to be honest with each other; we all came from the same place.

I'm glad I went to this reunion. I feel more grounded having seen how things turned out for everyone, including being able to see how things turned out for myself. I'm grateful to still be alive, and for my life to have turned out surprising, and surprisingly good.

With friends from the neighborhood: top, L. to R: David, Jimmy, Ann and me, bottom, L to r. Nancy and Harriett

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I won Russ Margo's CD as a raffle prize. Here he is with me after autographing it. It's good!

With Lenny, my friend since 7th grade, and his wife, Shelley

With Connie (still married to classmate Darryl) in her mascot uniform for the Woodlawn Warriors

Panic and Grief

Things have been tough lately for a lot of people. The parents of a friend in California were evacuated from Santa Rosa because of the fires there, and may have lost their house. Many people in Puerto Rico are still without water, food and power weeks after Hurricane María blew over the island. In Miami, where I used to live, the main streets downtown were under water because of Hurricane Irma. And Hurricane Harvey in Houston flooded the city and poisoned the waters nearby when chemical plants were destroyed. A man in Las Vegas shot into a crowd at a country music festival. The whole nation is in crisis.

Then there is the current national administration. The President is clueless and vindictive. He models himself on Vladimir Putin. His henchmen, Mike Pence, Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions, are bent on destroying individual freedom, environmental progress, and the voting rights of many Americans. The President threatens a nuclear war with North Korea. That would likely be the end of all of us.

I was elected to Morgantown's City Council earlier this year. I was helped by people who are appalled at the clumsy stupidity and arrogance of our national government. In addition to approving bond sales for redevelopment, tweaking the city's codes and fixing the streets, we have signed Morgantown to the Paris Climate Accords, and will pass an LGBT rights ordinance next week. We are doing what we can to fight fascism in the United States. It looked like we would be attacked by bused-in anti-gay protestors, but so far that hasn't happened. Two weeks ago, while we were worried about this, the President was going to visit Morgantown, to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. Friends of mine were planning protests, and a motorcycle gang said they would come and protect the President. Meanwhile, the whole city would be shut down. I had visions of what happened in Charlottesville happening here in my town.

The President cancelled. He traveled instead to Las Vegas to meet with people injured in the mass shooting there. His party will block any attempt to stop the proliferation of weapons in this country. We are all just sitting ducks.

On a personal level, my life is good. I have a strong marriage; we own a modest house and two aged cars. We travel, and I will be at my fifty-year high school reunion this weekend. Suncrest, the neighborhood where we live, is suburban and leafy, but in the city of Morgantown, where I am the first openly gay man, the first in a same-gender marriage, to be elected to Council.

It's strange that what has most disturbed me this week is not any of the above. Last week, tree surgeons parked down the street from us, and started hacking off limbs  from a beautiful oak tree, still mostly green, and towering over a modern ranch house. At first, I thought maybe they would just cut a few branches. After a day, I saw five or six blue jays in the street by this house. Their nests must have been destroyed. I noted also, that some tree limbs were over the roof of the house, and that it was planted too close to the house. Actually, the house was likely built too close to the tree, probably fifty years ago. They cut the whole tree down. When I saw the workers there, I wanted to scream "Murderers!" at them, like I want to do with people who have NRA stickers on their car.

Maybe it's just that this tree was more visible to me than fifty-eight people shot to death in Las Vegas, or people without food and water in Puerto Rico, or the current EPA allowing the use of a pesticide known to have a negative effect on children's brains.  There's so much outrage over everything this administration has done in just ten months, that I can't process it. Instead I use the fallen oak tree as a means to process my grief and rage over every senseless thing that is happening in my country. That's what I think, anyway.