On the streets where I used to live

While I really have never changed careers, I used to satisfy any wanderlust need I may have had by moving on a semi-regular basis – at least in Baltimore. From 1979 to 1991 I lived in five different places.

Blogmaster Nancy was one of my roommates in my first and second apartments. My first apartment was in Catonsville actually around the corner from my parents’ house in an older development with no air conditioning. The original rent in 1979 was $205 per month including heat. My second apartment with Nancy was in Anne Arundel County. It was in a much more modern complex with air conditioning, swimming pool and a slightly higher price tag.

The third was my first venture into Ellicott City but not in the historic district.

The fourth apartment is one of the most interesting places that I have ever lived. Blogmaster Jim was my roommate. We lived on the second and third floor of a storefront building on Main Street in historic Ellicott City. At one point this building had been a hotel and each of the three floors had a ground level exit because it was built into the side of a steep hill.

Moving day was quite interesting. Many historic districts offer permit parking to residents. Ellicott City did not. Luckily my good friends the Heasleys were willing to help me move. We had to park the moving truck in a parking lot two blocks from the building. Furniture was carried down the railroad tracks, over Main Street and behind three other buildings to get to 8016 Main Street. Now those are good friends.

Our apartment was the seventh and eighth windows from the right in this photo - above the space between the two red cars.

Here is the railroad bridge. The moving van was parked on the other end of the building to the right. We carried the furniture along the railroad tracks, over the bridge, down a narrow passageway behind the building, and into the apartment.

The apartment was one room wide. The second floor of the building was our main floor. There was an entrance from Main Street that would take us up a narrow flight of stairs with a sharp turn at the top. Our first floor consisted of a small living room, small dining room and a kitchen. There was a dishwasher that we always used for storage. The deck out the back went into what could euphemistically be called a garden. A staircase in the dining room plus a staircase on the deck would take you to the third floor where there were actually three bedrooms and a bath. The center one had a skylight and no window and the deck on the back also opened onto ground level. It was quaint, it was charming, and it was fun.

The first morning we discovered that the train tracks were still active. At 6:00 a train goes rumbling by vibrating the 18 inch thick granite walls much to our surprise. It’s amazing, though, how quickly you learn not to hear a 6 a.m. train.

Downtown historic Ellicott City has always been an extremely active area. There were many restaurants within walking distance. There was Leidig’s Bakery and since I now lived just down the street from Leidig’s I was the designated donut picker upper for the office. People always insisted on Leidig’s donuts.

The Patapsco River flowed just next door and in 1972, Tropical Storm Agnes wreaked destruction on Ellicott City. The high water mark is still tacked to a telephone pole. The water level would have reached the second floor for our building.

Parking was always an issue. We could never park on the street for more than two hours at a time. If we were lucky, we’d be able to grab a spot on the street just as the parking enforcement time expired for the evening or we’d have to park in one of the three public parking lots. One was one block away, one was two blocks away, and one halfway up Main Street which was quite a haul with groceries.

Jim and Connie threw me a surprise 30th birthday party in Ellicott City. The apartment was crammed with friends and there was a huge pile of gifts. Who could help but be excited by a huge pile of gifts? Now in these days I was a bit of a clothes horse. My tiny closet was jammed with suits and shirts for work because at this time our dress code literally required “impeccable suits and dresses” and we used to joke that ISD stood for that. The back of my closet door had a tie rack on it with ties arranged by color – probably numbering over 100. Jim actually used to jokingly give tours of my ties when some of his friends would come over.

Back to the party. As I looked through the pile of gifts of all different shapes and sizes I started opening them. Much to my surprise the first package contained a tie but the package did not look like it. And it was difficult to maintain a look of “Oh how nice, what a lovely tie” because it was certainly not to my taste. As I opened the second gift Barry starts to catch on. Again, no indication of what’s inside but there is in fact yet another ugly tie in the package. Not only had they managed to pull off a surprise party with absolutely no inkling of what was going on but they managed to pull a practical joke on me. Each tie was uglier than the last. We turned it into a contest. Many of these ties had come from the closets of the fathers of the guests and had to be returned because they were being worn. Some came from thrift shops but the winner came from Marlene Langdon, the mother of one of my friends, Tracy, who is now living in Tucson. Marlene managed to find a tie that was brown velour that when tied looked like you had a huge fist at your throat. The party was a huge hit and one of the most memorable birthday parties I have ever had.

Moving out was just as interesting as moving in. I was to be moving to the Carriage House on the grounds of the church – more later on that. As I was coming down the stairs from the bedroom level for the last time, I made the mistake of thinking “Oh, let me just roll this bag of clothes down the steps and it will land safely at the bottom.” Instead it took a bad bounce on the way down the steps and punched a big hole in the wallboard. Luckily Jim’s brother was quite adept at fixing this sort of thing and it was not a problem at inspection time.

Jim was in the apartment for several months longer. As we were doing final cleanup I’m walking down the stairs and Jim turns around and notices that the bottom of the box I’m carrying is ready to collapse. Unfortunately in this box is the remainder of the can of paint that was used to repair the hole in the wall that I had created. And, no, I was not at the bottom of the steps. I was near the top. This can of paint, of course, flies open, throwing paint all over the non-white stairwell which we then cleaned up madly with anything we could find. One thing I do recall was that there was a blue sports jacket in the box which mopped up some of the paint quite well. In the meantime Jim and I are collapsing in hysterics but we managed to get the stairwell back in order. Life in E.C. was never a dull moment.