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I heard a lot about this city. My parents were
here during The War, their war... WWII, both working in Washington and living
in Baltimore. Mum worked in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, helped
print the invitations to the reception for the King of England when he visited
Washington... quite an occasion: she has the photos, and I was entranced
by them. Entranced, too, by the photos of the monuments and the Tidal Basin,
and all the things people come to Washington area to see. But the pictures
I had of Baltimore my parents painted for me with words... such as mum's
first meeting with a Baltimore blue crab.
It was walking down the concrete toward her from the fish market, and this young lady from Oklahoma just about gave it all the sidewalk it wanted. Mum and dad had a favorite beer garden that served crab and had electric lights strung all about tables in an open yard... we never figured where this was, but it was wartime. People enjoyed what they could of the good life when they could find it, what with rationing and the air raid warning sirens posted on the buildings and a real shortage of just about everything the troops might need.
The years passed. They moved to St. Louis, and I came along. The war ended. They drifted by degrees back to family ties in Oklahoma. I grew up, went through school.
A push from a prof to apply for a scholarship I didn't think I had a hope of winning put me in a strange position, not having dreamed of going to graduate school... and then miraculously having a scholarship to do that. I was a Classics major... there weren't that many choices. I sent off appeals for applications, needing to give the scholarship committee a very fast answer. And my roommate of four years also applied for a scholarship and got it. So we were both looking. It seemed cosmic luck that hers came through for Baltimore. Baltimore, Buffalo, and Stanford were the three places that responded to my letters. So Baltimore had the edge from the start. I wrote back to the Classics Department at Johns Hopkins, and packed.
We arrived with my roommate's car in tow, with no notion where we were going to live, and drove right into the midst of a rock concert that had all streets blocked. I think it was the Beatles.
I was too frazzled even to look at the marquee. My strongest memory is of a policeman on a horse trying to use a phone booth, and our two cars completely hemmed in....
But we got a room and began checking out possible apartments... chose one on St. Paul because it was close to Homewood Campus, and on the major bus lines. I'd never really seen a row house. The cornerstone of a nearby one said 1790-something. My state was founded in 1909, so I was impressed. We had a window seat that was painted shut, with a big bow window. We made jokes about "Arsenic and Old Lace" and never did get into it. The wallpaper was also circa 1790, and the gas light sconces were still evident.
The wiring was pre-standard, meaning it was cloth-covered, nailed along the baseboards and the socket we used for the pawn shop television was so large in relation to the plug that when the bus came by on the street outside the plug would fall out. This was particularly annoying, because the bus came at 25 after and five of the hour, meaning it always happened at the ending or the midway climax of any given program. We used to put ice cubes on the thermostat trying to get the heat to come on... silly us. It never worked. And two cables connected our back porch to the roof. We refused to walk out to the rail.
Doors would open and close themselves in sequence... not because the place was haunted, but because it was broken-backed. A pencil placed on the floor would roll one way if placed on one side of the line and the other way if placed on the other. A wind would gust through the windows, and the magic happened. It was our place, and we loved it, and were entranced with the character of the city... the vendors that would come down the alley, the little specialty shops. So that if you wanted bread, you went to the baker, and for meat you went to the butcher shop and you could buy a little inexpensive bouquet from the flower-seller with the cart in between.
We walked everywhere. The car was garaged two blocks away and we didn't want to move it. In those days we could scarf down a sack of bismarcks and lose weight... and by the time I ran out of scholarship, collected my degree and left, I was a sylph.
I really missed Baltimore when I moved back to the Great Plains. Not all aspects of it, but it remains an experience of a very special city, a very wonderful city to live in, despite the electric plug and the thermostat. The character of the place is still there. You could still spot the air raid advisements faded on the wall. The sign "George Washington Slept Here" is probably telling the truth... and there's always somewhere to go, something to do, and delicious food, and wonderful markets.
When I took to professional writing and began doing conventions I had no hesitation when Baltimore asked me to come and be a pro guest. Baltimore kept finding one way and another to ask me back and it was a mutual love affair. The city's changed, of course: the infamous Block has become a floating market. I never yet have visited when the tall ship could be visited. It was under restoration when I was in school here, and I have never gotten to see it yet.
But I love the aquarium and the waterfront and, yes, my old neighborhood, where the merchants all knew you and you just politely waited while the baker passed the time of day with the gray-haired lady in front of you. You'd get your turn, and she'd talk your arm off, too.... I remember having one of those long layovers on a flight to New York... six hours to wait in Baltimore. I called up the local sf folk and told them I was in town... and they turned it into a party. We went to a wonderful Mexican restaurant where they cooked a great mole (being a southwesterner, I know good Mexican food) and they got me back to my flight. No posh flight club ever offered anything on the scale of Baltimore and its people.
I've done cons in Baltimore for virtually forever. It resonates to me of home, in a very special way. I'd urge everyone planning to see the sights of Washington to save a day or two for this grande dame of Eastern cities. Its sights aren't marble, and cameras won't catch the best ones, the special dinner, the panorama of the harbor, the color, the noise, the curious character of the shops and the not-quite-rush that never quite ascends to breathless. I've loved it for years.
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