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Life Behind and Beyond the Picket FenceI think the word “Patapsico” (also spelled “Patapsco” by tourists, the Department of Natural Resources and the dictionary) has been a part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember. Decades before the 1994 establishment of the tire park in the Hilton area of Patapsco State Park, my friends and I used the area as our playground, scrambling around on the banks of the river and playing Indians in an unknowing homage to the Susquehannock and Piscataway tribes who inhabited the area centuries before. My family always loved the outdoors and it seemed like at least part of every childhood …
Last week my son graduated from middle school in an event marked with more pomp and circumstance than a presidential inauguration. I say he graduated, but that’s not an accurate term. He’s not Amish-completion of eighth grade does not mark the end of his school career. Rather, my son has been promoted to ninth grade, an event I had difficulty believing would ever happen when I dropped all 65 pounds of him off at the imposing middle school entrance three years prior. Watching him stumble off under the oppressive weight of a backpack bigger than his entire torso, I wondered if my tiny child …
It seems to me that Catonsville Patch owes a debt of gratitude to Councilman Tom Quirk. Speed cameras have been a hot topic since their installation in 2009. But it was in January 2011, when Quirk proposed a bill providing the unlimited use of speed cameras in county school zones, that Patch began to enjoy a veritable feast of website traffic every time the issue is mentioned. People just love to talk about this topic, and it’s not hard to see why. Most folks, including the politicians, don’t know all the facts. Partly because the issue is so deceptively complex that statistics are hard to …
Last night I sat at the computer making plans for my family’s summer trip to Hershey Park. My kids are pretty excited about this one- a Dave Matthews concert in Hershey Stadium Friday evening, followed by a Saturday filled with 12 hours of exciting, mind blowing, and vomit inducing adventure at Hershey Park. Since we live a bit too far to go back and forth after the concert, I booked a vacation rental for Friday night. After completing our purchases and reservations I sat back and determined the damage: *Dave Matthews Concert for four (my son is sitting out the concert as his musical taste …
On March 30, six white plastic balls, whose fate would otherwise have landed them in a cup of beer during a college beer pong competition, rolled out of a spinning machine and changed forever the lives of three Maryland public school employees. Over the past few days my mind has often dwelled upon these lucky Baltimore folks who just hit it big in the $656 million Mega Millions jackpot. The self-dubbed “Three Amigos” purchased the winning ticket at a 7-11 just eight miles north of Catonsville in the town of Milford Mill. After the March 30 drawing, each of the amigos immediately became $35 …
Yes, Candy Man you were right. Mixing candy with love does make the whole world taste good. Nobody knows this better than the folks at Ken’s Old Fashioned Candy Shop located in the heart of Catonsville at 819 Frederick Road. Since it’s opening on Sept. 26 of last year, my children have made many treks to the shop, barely needing to watch their step, guided by the same type of innate GPS birds use during yearly migration. Ask my 13-year-old son about Ken’s and his gaze immediately softens, his face adopting a tender expression usually reserved for discussions of South Park, or roller coasters…
The hype surrounding St. Patrick’s Day has always amused me. This day theoretically celebrates the Feast Day (and also happens to be the day of his death) of St. Patrick, probably the most celebrated saint’s feast day in the world. Why do Americans feel so strongly about this guy? Patrick wasn’t Irish, he was English. He lived in the fifth century, long before we became we, and had absolutely nothing to do with the founding or history of the United States. He apparently drove some snakes out of Ireland, but that point is debatable as the guy who saw this was deep in his cups at the time and …
The depth of idiocy that can be found in our state and federal governments sometimes stuns me. To clarify, I am not referring to particular individuals; rather, I am referring to the Frankenstein that is Government Bureaucracy, the stand-alone piece of the larger entity that seems to have run away from its creators. A bureaucracy that has created a federal tax code which, according to The Economist, has grown to approximately 70,000 pages? The same tax code that causes the head of the IRS, Douglas Shulman, to hire an accountant to do his taxes? That’s what I’m talking about. A bureaucracy …
As is true in every small town, progress in Catonsville has a way of evolving in a self-referencing manner. New replaces old, and then is supplanted by newer, but each incarnation seems to only emphasize the depth of the well from which it sprung. For example, there has been a strong and pleasantly fattening history of ice cream shops in our town. My memory stretches back to childhood ice cream soda extravaganzas at the counter of Moss's drugstore. These memories were succeeded by the pubescent-defining moments I spent at Father's Gay Nineties. The fact that my thirteen year old self never …
The holiday season is a time for celebration and, recession or no recession, this December has proven to be no exception. It seemed as if the last belch from the Thanksgiving feast was no sooner expelled from my belly than I was flung immediately into the round of parties, lunches and get-togethers that mark this time of year. This past weekend I was invited to an annual Christmas party, one that I particularly look forward to every year. Hosted by a good friend, a group of women gather in the city to raise their glasses and voices to an impossibly high volume. As the evening progresses …
It seems no matter how much I try to deny it, the Christmas season is upon us. As has been the case for many years, two key events informed me of the advent of the season- the Norelco commercial with Santa riding an electric razor, and the 18th annual Catonsville Tree Lighting and Santa House Ceremony (click here for information on Santa House holiday hours). I am very proud to say that I have been involved with the Santa House committee since 2001. In September of that year, ground was broken next to the Catonsville fire house for the construction of a new Santa House, replacing the previous…
A very old person who was trying to justify his place in the world once said, “With age comes wisdom.” As the years have marched on, I have found this adage to hold true, for the most part. This past Monday I had the opportunity to reaffirm some valuable life lessons when my husband and I dined at The Prime Rib, one of Baltimore’s finest restaurants. In my younger days, I had greatly enjoyed fine dining experiences, and had patronized The Prime Rib several times during my 20s and 30s. When life with kids became too hectic to support expensive, intimate dinners, I happily abandoned the world …
This week UMBC is holding its Homecoming Celebration, four days of exciting arts, athletics and family-friendly activities spanning October 12-15. This is the Catonsville event of the season, and the town is abuzz with excitement over the festivities! Hold on a moment, I have to come clean. I intended to write an article in which I waxed poetic about this event, proclaiming it to be THE Catonsville affair of the year, but the truth is I’ve only attended it once. Furthermore, I wasn’t even aware that the UMBC Homecoming Celebration was occurring this week until my editor asked me to write a …
Sometime last week I was visiting a store in Jessup a friend had recommended. As I turned into the parking lot I noticed the name of the plaza: “Columbia East.” Columbia East? I looked around to get my bearings, making sure I was actually in the town of Jessup. Yup, right outside the plaza was the big stone sign welcoming me to Jessup. My scientific skills, honed razor sharp by a highly rigorous anthropological study I conducted recently (for an excerpt of this study see Dunigan, Cheryl; Catonsville Patch; 28 July, 2011)* were piqued, and I entered the store, intent on solving this mystery…
Remember those hot summer days as a kid spent at the pool? When time stretched on forever and you didn’t leave the pool until well after dark, sporting chlorine-reddened eyes and bellies full of Now and Laters and giant Pixie Stix? As I grew older, the only thing that seemed to change about a day at the pool was my swimsuit choice. I went from swim team suits as a child, to bikinis, back to full swimsuits, and lately, skirted numbers with enough underpinnings to stop a bullet. This may come in handy when next I vacation in Bogota, or Detroit. Now, as an adult with children of my own, I find …
Goin’ downy ocean. For many of us living in Catonsville, goin’ downy ocean is an annual rite of passage that defines summer in Maryland. At least once each season my husband and I load our family in the car and make the journey over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and points beyond. Because of the traffic we always mean to leave for the beach by 8 a.m. That’s always the plan. Pack the evening before, wake up by 6 a.m. and be on the road by eight at the latest. Unfortunately, every year our best intentions are foiled. And every year I blame someone else for my own …
As I stood outside the entrance to what will soon be the new African-American Mini-Museum at 79 Winters Lane, I was doubtful I had arrived at the correct address. The museum, once the residence of Samuel and Ida Torsell, is a simple two-story structure, not unlike most of the other homes lining this first block of Winters Lane. Earnest improvements are obvious in the newly replaced downspouts and white painted porch and window frames, yet this structure resembles a family home more than a public museum. I was relieved of my doubt by the approach of Louis Diggs, a local historian and author …
Oh the icy breath of Mother Nature, when blown upon this town, leave a wondrous beauty behind. Trees groaning under their snowy loads, homes and land cloaked in capes of blinding white, and roads marked only by the occasional print left from foot or paw. When faced with such proof of nature’s magnificence, what can one do? In the great tradition of our forefathers (or at least four of my friends’ fathers), many of us buy a few six packs and some chips and hunker down with the neighbors. At least, that’s what I usually do. After this year’s first big snow, I found myself at my neighbor’s …
During Christmas break I took the kids over to the Bloomsbury Center to run them, and the dog, in the fields behind the center. As I stood on the side of the field tossing sticks in an alternate fashion to the dog, then the kids, I started to reminisce with my youngest and oldest daughters about the old days, when the center still stood as Catonsville Junior High school. As I began to call to mind my time in junior high, my younger daughter, a 9-year-old third-grader, put her stick down and listened attentively. My oldest daughter, a freshman at Catonsville High School, adopted her usual …
A few evenings ago I attended a holiday party. The highlight of the evening was a group gift exchange in which slightly inebriated women engaged in rounds of vicious gift stealing. After the dust had cleared on the killing field I was left with a red wine stain on my sleeve and a boxed CD set of Iron Chef America, Season 3. Having contributed a thoughtful and not inexpensive gift to the exchange, it seemed to me that I had been well, um, scrooged. Drinking my coffee the next morning, I thought about the giver of the Iron Chef boxed set as she happily gazed at the space now available in her CD…
