Thoughts on Prague - Fred and Ginger - Wars and Bombs - And Learning to Travel

I visited Prague in 2004.  There is much about Prague that I really liked.  It's a fascinating city with a brutal past. Like a lot of European cities Prague suffered tragic bombings during World War II. During the Soviet era Russian troops and tanks marched down Wenceslaus Square to put down an uprising.  Two students set themselves on fire in Wenceslaus Square in protest of the Soviet invasion.  There is a very small memorial to these two men in Wenceslaus Square.  It's very small and close to the ground.  You can walk right past it without realizing it's presence.

The first student was Jan Palach. In August 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the reforms of Alexander Dubcek's government during what was known as the Prague Spring. The Prague born Jan Palach decided to make a sacrifice of himself in protest of the invasion. He set himself on fire, in Wenceslas Square on January 16, 1969. A month later (on February 25, 1969) another student, Jan Zajíc, burned himself to death in the same place. The memorial to these two men is very small and unassuming. If I had not been looking for the memorial I would have walked right past it without noticing it.




As I walked the streets of Prague I could not help but be amazed at the beauty and the history all around me. And I learned an important lesson from Prague. I was still a some what novice traveler and tourist in 2004. This was only my fourth time to travel abroad. I was still the wide eyed American walking around with his mouth open amazed at all that I could see. But Prague taught me to be aware of what I was looking at and try to understand what was being told to me.


The photograph on top of this blog is the Fred and Ginger Building in Prague. It is also known as the Dancing House. It does, at first glance, resemble Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers dancing.

The building is an example of deconstructivist architecture, with an unusual shape. But if you take some time and look closer the building looks like a structure that is falling down. The original building on the Ginger side was destroyed by a bomb during World War II. The Fred side of the building which is the neighboring house (with a small globe on the roof) was co-owned by Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who lived there from his childhood untilthe mid-1990s. You can almost see the bomb explosion as you watch the neighboring side collapsing. I first saw the building in a guide book when I was planning the trip to Prague. I did not read much about it's history or it's symbolism. But I was fascinated with the design of the building and could not wait to take photos of it.

As I continued walking along the water front past The Dancing House I saw this church with two very unusual steeples. I was very much fascinated with the unusual steeple with the two spires. It was unlike any other church I had seen in Prague. Prague has many beautiful churches and is known for it's skyline of spires. But this church just quietly sat in the background with no explanation. I took several photos of the church and unfortunately I did not take the time to find the name of the church. As I mentioned I was still a somewhat novice traveler. Unlike when I travel today with my digital camera and take hundreds of photos including street names and descriptive plaques on building, I was using film and had limited exposures. I took a bus out of Prague the following day to see an old castle in a neighboring town. I asked the guide on the bus about this church when we drove past it. He told me that a church sat in that location before World War II. It was destroyed by a bomb. He said when the church was rebuilt the steeples were designed to represent the point the bomb falling down to destroy the original building. When I walked back past the church the next day I could see the symbolism very clearly.




I learned a lot from my visit to Prague. I learned to look down for the small memorials on the ground that might be missed. I learned to look for meanings and memorials hidden in unusual architecture and church steeples. It really changed the way I travel and how I look at things in foreign locations. There is so much to see, so much to learn, and so much that can be easily missed if you don't take the time to ask questions and do some research.  

The People Across The Street

I love to tell stories.  I think I got this from my mother.  When family would get together Mom loved to tell stories about growing up.  She shared stories with me and my sister.  She told her stories to my daughters and to her nieces and nephews.   I do the same thing.  When they hear some of my stories people often tell me I should write a book.  Well I think there is a book of stories in every one's life so I don't think mine are anything special but some of them are unusual.

When I was a child growing up we moved a lot.  The first seven years of my life I think we moved almost every year.  We lived on almost every street in my little home town of Havre de Grace.  Finally at the age of eight when I was in the third grade my parents bought a house.  It was a new little rancher just recently built a half a block from the beautiful Susquehanna River.  It sounds like an ideal location and today the neighborhood is very attractive.   In 1960 it was quite different. Diagonally across the street was a large scrap metal junk yard.  Directly behind our back yard was the office and another part of the scrap metal junk yard.  And directly across the street were "the neighbors".

In a tiny two story brown shingle house lived Joe and Pearl.  Joe was a World War I veteran and Pearl was his common law wife.  Living with them in this tiny four room house was their nephew Willie.  Joe and Pearl were in their late forties or early fifties.  Their nephew Willie was probably in his mid to late thirties.  Joe was still fighting World War I in his mind.  He would wear his army uniform on Saturday nights and go to the dance at the VFW where he would sit in the back on the hall on a metal chair and listen to the music.  He seemed a little strange but harmless to anyone who saw him there.  Living across the street from him we saw a different side of Joe.  On Sundays he would bring out his four wooden flag poles and fly his American flags in front of his house.  In his uniform he would parade back and forth in front of the flags and yell across the street to us about the war, "The Big One" as he called it.  We heard all about the Kaiser, all about Germany, and all about how lazy and unappreciative we were of his war effort.  He yelled at the cars driving by, he yelled at anyone walking down to the river, and he yelled at the dogs running by his house.  He carried his rifle on his shoulder as he marched across the yard every Sunday.

Pearl was his common law wife.  She seemed more friendly than Joe but we knew she had to be a little off as she lived with Joe.  After midnight in the dark she would leave their house and walk all over town digging through trash cans for treasures.  I think she furnished their house with stuff she found in the trash.  She also wanted to share things she found with the neighbors.  She found a light for a bicycle one evening and gave it to me the next day for my bicycle.  I brought it into our house and showed my mother.  My mother was not thrilled with the idea but told me to be polite and thank Miss Pearl later.  I tried to turn on the light and it did not work.  My mother told me it probably needed a new battery.  She opened up the light and found it was full of cockroaches. She screamed and closed it up with a snap.  She ran to the back yard and threw it over the metal fence into the sheet metal junk yard behind our house.

A few days later Pearl saw me on my bicycle and noticed that the light was not attached to the handle bars.  She called me over and asked me where was the light.  I was scared and did not know what to say so I told her I was waiting for my Dad to attach it for me.  Pearl waited patiently for a few days and then confronted my mother.  She stood in her yard and yelled across the street to my mother.  "Where is the bicycle light?  I know you think your too good to take a gift from me.  GIVE IT BACK.  I will give it to Johnny down the street.  I WANT IT BACK."  Well my mother could not give it back because it was over in the junk yard some place.  Johnny down the street was my best friend.  I had told him the story about the light and we laughed about it as two kids would do.  Pearl called him over to her yard one day and told him I had a bicycle light and he needed to go get it from me.  John told me what she had said and we both laughed about the cockroach light and how he didn't want it either.

Willie was Pearl and Joe's nephew.  He was a grown man and he could not talk.  I never knew what his mental problem was but I would watch him and kept my distance.  He scared me more than Joe or Pearl.  He would stand in their yard and look across the street and just do a deep bizarre laugh.  "Huh huh" That was all he every said, just that deep throated huh huh laugh.  When Pearl would get angry at us, like she did over the bicycle light, she would sit inside her front window and we could hear her talking to Willie.  We could never hear what she was saying but we could hear her voice.  Then Willie would pick up little rocks and pebbles from the side of the road and bring them over to throw in our yard.

There was a small wood shed in the back of Joe and Pearl's back yard.  Joe would chop wood for their furnace and stack it up against the shed.  We would see Joe or Pearl go out to the shed from time to time but we never gave it much thought.  Then one afternoon we saw flashing light and heard a siren.  There was an ambulance over at Joe and Pearl's house.  We thought maybe one of them was ill or had a stroke.  The ambulance driver took the stretcher out of the back of the ambulance and carried it to the wood shed in the back yard.  Our curiosity was peaked as we watched with our other neighbors and saw a very old man being carried on the stretcher out of the shed and to the ambulance.  The old man appeared to be dead.  No one had any idea that there was an old man living in that shed.  We never found out who he was and never saw him return.

We never quite looked at Pearl, Joe, or Willie the same way again.  We moved a couple of years later. I remained best friends with John from up the street.  Today there is a beautiful large condo on the lot where Joe and Pearl's house sat.  I doubt anyone living there has any idea about the man who died in the shed that day or any of the other strange things that went happened on that lot.

First Impressions - Oslo

I did not have the best first impression of Oslo.  I was not sure what to expect.  Outside of elementary school Social Studies class and ninth grade Geography class Norway was not a place that I had thought about very often.  It certainly was not a travel destination that I had dreamed about visiting. My traveling partner at the time had a business meeting in Copenhagen he had to attend. We were looking at the map to see what other places were near by that we had not seen before.  So I found myself in Oslo.  We boarded the train from Gardermoen Airport to the city of Oslo.  We were soon put off the train in a little town called Lillestrom.  We had boarded the express train by mistake and they would not accept our non express train ticket.  Stupid tourists.

Littlesam in Lillestrom 

After our little mishap on the train we finally arrived to the train station in Oslo.  We walked out of the station to the little square in the photo at the top of this page.  I was not impressed.  The square was not very large.  There was a small unattractive tower in the corner.  And there was a man with a Middle Eastern musical instrument sitting in the square playing some very strange sounding music.  Nothing about this reminded me of anything I knew about Norway.

In spite of our little delay in Lillestrom we were still too early to go to the Bed and we had booked.  So we took some time to explore the square before looking for a taxi. The first thing we found was a large statue of a large anatomically correct tiger.  

This was not the first thing I expected to see in Oslo. So why was there a tiger in front of Central Station in Oslo?  There is a reason for it being there.  For the 1000th anniversary celebration in 2000 for the city of Oslo the city requested a bronze statue be placed in the square, Oslo's nickname is Tigerstaden or the City of the Tiger.  The name most likely came from a poem by the Norwegian poet Bjornstjerne Bjornson.  His poem "Sidste Sanq" was written in 1870 and describes a fight between a horse and a tiger.  The tiger represents the dangerous city and the horse the safe countryside. My first impression though was not a dangerous city.  It was just a small odd city and I was not sure what I really thought of it yet.  There were a few other odd statues in the square that I was finding interesting also but odd.

We finally found a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Bed and Breakfast we had booked.  Like everything in Oslo, the Bed and Breakfast was not quite what I had expected.  It was an old white clapboard house across the street from Frogner Park.  More about Froger Park a little later.  But needless to say I found it somewhat odd also.  We were a good ways out from the center of town, but fortunately there was a tram stop right in front of the house which we could use to go back into the city.  The house was clean and the owners were friendly.  But once more there was a lot of oddness around us.  We were in an upstairs bedroom without a lot of heat,  Our bathroom had a toilet and a bidet.  And oddly for some reason the owners used the bidet for a magazine rack.  It was filled with unusual Norwegian comic books.

Larry sitting outside of the Bed and Breakfast

Directly across the street from the Bed and Breakfast we wound Frogner Park.  Frogner Park is home to the world famous Vigeland Installation.  Although many times referred to as Vigeland Park, it is actually just the name of the sculptures in the park.  They were created by Gustav Vigeland between 1920 and 1943.   So what was odd about the park?  Every statue was a nude statue telling the  life cycle of man.

I have been using the term odd a lot.  I don't mean it in a bad or derogatory way.  I found Oslo any thing but unpleasant.  It's not the most beautiful European capitol I have visited.  But it's also not the least interesting.  The people of Oslo could not have been friendlier.  The owners of the Bed and Breakfast were very pleasant and made us feel very welcome.  I was growing to like Oslo more each day and finding it somewhat unusual made it all the more interesting.

So what odd things did we find in Oslo?  We found a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.  This honestly was the last thing I had expected to find in Oslo.  The memorial is located in Frogner Park.  The monument was created by Paul Fjelde from Valley City, North Dakota and was donated to the people of Oslo by North Dakota Governor Louis Hanna.

We took a brief train ride out of the city of Oslo up into the mountains to do some hiking and also to see the historic Holmenkollen Ski jump from the 1952 Olympics.  There was nothing odd about this.  This was something I had expected to see in Norway.  The train runs from Central Station in Oslo to the top of the mountain in Frognersteren.  There is a wonderful restaurant located near the Frognersteren station when I did get to sample reindeer which was something else I had expected to do in Oslo.

Larry hiking in Frognersteren

We left Frognersteren and hiked to the Olympic ski jump.  I had seen ski jumps on television watching the Olympic many times.  But that did not prepare me for what I saw.  The jump is much higher than it appears on television.  It's very overwhelming just to see the size of it.  And it wasn't just some cold looking structure.  It actually had a beauty to it's design.  I understand the original jump that I saw in 2005 no longer exists.  It was replaced in 2010 with a new and more modern jump that is considered to be one of the best in world today.  I am glad I got to see the original though.  There is something special about the history of it and also for me it was special because it dated back to the year I was born.

The original 1952 Holmenkollen Olympic Ski Jump in Oslo Norway

I left Oslo with a deep appreciation of the city and the Norwegian culture.  I had the opportunity to visit the Edvard Munch museum and to see his famous painting The Scream.  I spent time walking through the Akershus Fortress.   I meet some wonderful and kind people.  I learned to appreciate that finding something odd is a good thing.  First impressions are not always the best impressions.  It's the lasting impressions that really count.

Last impression of Oslo.  The beautiful Akershus Fortress

First Impressions - Paris

Bel Kaufman in her novel Up The Down Staircase tells the story of a young teacher's first year at an inner city school.  The novel opens with the teacher in her first day with her home room class.  She has planned to read them a brief essay she prepared on first impressions.  In the hectic and chaotic first hour of teaching with a room full of unruly students doing their best to distract the new teacher she never gets the opportunity to share with them her thoughts on first impressions.  Much like Sylvia Barrett in the novel I have unsuccessfully wanted to share a series of travel blogs on my first impressions of places I have visited.  And much like Sylvia Barrett I have found myself distracted and never had the time to finish my thoughts on first impressions.  I thought I would start out with my first travel experience in Europe, a trip to Paris.  However my introduction here of the novel and memories of reading the adventures of Sylvia Barrett have already distracted me and unless I use some discipline I will never start this series on first impressions.  I will just have to put Bel Kaufman, her creation Sylvia Barrett, the novel and the movie starring Sandy Dennis on the back burner and return to them some time in the future for another blog.  But let me start this blog on first impressions with the words of the character Sylvia Barrett from the novel.  "First impressions are very important".

This photo is the best representation of my first impression of Paris.  It was chilly, damp and rainy.  The skies were overcast for three days.  I took this photo from the top of the Arc De Triomphe.  When I returned home and back to work this photo became my background on my home and work computer.  I looked at it over and over and could never get over the thrill of seeing Paris for the first time.  I joined a web site called Virtual Tourist after the trip.  There was no Facebook at this time.  Virtual Tourist became my very first social media web experience.  This photo was my introductory photo on Virtual Tourist.  Although I have long since migrated from Virtual Tourist this photo still remains there on the first page I created.  A chilly,damp, rainy day in the city of Lights.

We booked a hotel on the internet which was a first for us.  We basically went into Yahoo and searched on hotels in Paris.  We found one that was affordable near Pere Lachaise Cemetery.  It was named "Hotel Modern".   I learned my first travel lesson with this hotel.  Don't believe the name or what they say on their web page.  If it's inexpensive there is a reason it's inexpensive.

The room was not great.  It was not even just OK.  It was pretty nasty.  But look at my face in the photo.  I was so thrilled to be in Paris.  The room did not ruin the experience.  I learned my second travel lesson also from this hotel.  You don't spend a lot of time in the room.  So don't over pay and don't fret if it's not beautiful.  The city awaits you.  Get out and experience it.

I will never forget my first impression of Paris.  It was magical and beautiful even on a rainy day.  I had my first taste of true French Vanilla Ice Cream.  It was the best ice cream I had ever tasted.  I had a scoop every day.  I had my first rump steak in peppercorn sauce, a taste I will never forget.  I knew very little about wine before going to Paris.  I drank very little wine and when I did drink wine it was usually White Zinfandel.  So you can imagine my shock and delight when I had my first true French wines.  I was surrounded with people speaking a foreign language.  I remembered from high school how  to say hello, good bye, thank you and Where is the library.  I could also say I fell down in the street.  So basically I spent four days saying hello, goodbye, or thank you as often as possible so I could feel like I was speaking the language.

Since that time I have traveled a lot.  I have learned a lot.  I now consider myself a seasoned traveler. I have been to many of the worlds great cities.  But nothing compares to that first moment in Paris.   I thought the magic might have been because it was my first trip overseas.  I returned eight years later and was a bit concerned.  I was afraid I would be let down this time.   I thought it might be different the second time around.  It might not as wonderful as my memory had made it.  But I had nothing to worry about it.  It wasn't me.  It wasn't because it was my first time to be in Europe.  It was magical because it was Paris.  I took the photo below when I returned in 2008.  It's the Eiffel Tower once again and taken from the top of the Arc de Triomphe once more.  And it was still a chilly, gray, rainy day.  And it's still Paris, my favorite city of all.

My first visit was in 2000.  I returned in 2008.  Next year is 2016.  I think it's time for another visit.

Christmas Tea

I love the Christmas season.  It's my favorite time of the year.  But I also find that I am easily depressed during the Christmas season also.  I don't enjoy Thanksgiving.  I find it too sad and depressing each year as I grow older.  There are so many memories of family and those who are no longer with us.  I try to skip right past those old photos of Mom's house with the roast turkey and the family around the table.  It's just too difficult remember my grandmother and my aunts and the rest of the family.  Once I get past Thanksgiving I jump right into the Christmas season.  I start watching Christmas movies.  I break out the Christmas CD's for my car.  And I look for something new each year to make me smile.

It's all very commercial and superficial. And I know this. But I love the trees.  The ornaments.  Even the silly Santa hats.  I try to find one thing for myself each year that will make the holidays brighter.  Two years ago I bought this silly Chevy Chase Griswald's Christmas mug.  Nothing spectacular.  Just a silly mug.  Now it's part of my Christmas tradition and makes me smile each year.  It's much better than the sadness of those old photos from Thanksgiving.  We have tacky Marilyn Monroe mugs that my daughter Danielle bought me for Christmas one year that we now break out on Christmas morning each year for our morning coffee.  There are special plates and dishes we set out for our holiday snacks and sweets.   Yes there are problems in the world and in our country.  And I know I am blessed and have so much to be thankful for that it's silly to get overly sentimental on the holidays.  But something stupid like a holiday mug with Chevy Chase on the front makes me smile.

Last year I bought a special holiday tea to have in the Chevy Chase mug.  It was called Christmas Cookie.  It was terrible!  After steeping it was a cloudy grey mess in mug.  It look like dirty aquarium water.  So the mug made me smile and the tea made me gag.  Not quite the experience I was hoping for.

This year as I prepared for the day to bring out my Chevy Chase Christmas mug I was hoping to find a better tea.  I found one called Cranberry Vanilla Wonderland.  I knew just looking at the package that this would be the one.  It had Cranberry and Vanilla and came in a beautiful Christmassy package.  It was perfect.  The herbs and probably the dye turned my mug into a beautiful red cranberry color unlike the mucky dirty aquarium water from last years selection.  It had a warm vanilla and cranberry scent to it that would be great for a candle also.  So today being a little stressed with finances for the holiday this year, trying to work Christmas spending into a tight budget, I sat down to chill and reflect.  With the cranberry vanilla tea, my holiday mug and a deep cleansing sigh I am ready to forge on and plan tomorrows holiday experience.  I am so glad I found the tea.  It could have turned out much worse.

Bucket List - Visiting Tallulah

Talking a selfie at Tullulah Bankhead's grave side

I love the internet. I learn little bits of unimportant information almost daily that sudden become important to me.   Several years ago on one of my internet searches I learned that Tallulah Bankhead was buried in Maryland.  Suddenly this little morsel of unimportant information became a fixation for me.  I wanted to find her grave and visit it.  So with a little more research I found out that she was buried in Rock Hall, Maryland. I talked for several years about taking the drive from Baltimore across The Bay Bridge to find the grave but never made the journey.  Last year Mark and I went to see Stephanie Powers in the play Looped.  It's a very funny play about Tallulah Bankhead looping her voice for her for a scene in the movie Die Die My Darling.  While Stephanie was in Baltimore doing the play she took the cast down to Rock Hall to visit Tallulah's grave.  Once again I read this on the internet.  I thought it was a very classy thing for Stephanie to do.  I am a huge fan of Stephanie Powers.  I met her back stage years ago here in Baltimore when she was touring with the musical Applause.  Because I had made a donation to the William Holden Wildlife Fund I was allowed to meet her back stage, have a brief moment to speak with her and received a personalized photo from her.  I was thrilled.  Everyone in front of me was telling her how much they loved her in Hart To Hart.  When I got my turn I told her I was a fan from way back.  I told her how I had first seen her in Palm Springs Weekend and loved her on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.   She smiled graciously and replied "Oh that makes you a true fan."   The fact that Stephanie visited the grave of Tallulah renewed my interest in visiting the grave also.

I think my interest in Tallulah Bankhead goes back to my childhood.  For some reason my mother used to sing with a Tallulah Bankhead voice to  entertain me.  It always made me hysterical.  Even as I got older I still loved to hear her sing like Tallulah Bankhead.  She also used to sing like Marlene Dietrich sometimes also.  I am not sure why she did this.  Most kids that age have no idea who Tallulah Bankhead is in the first place. Or Marlene Dietrich for that matter.  I can remember watching Jack Paar with my mother when I was very young.  Dad would go to bed because he had to go to work in the morning and Mom and I would stay up to watch The Tonight Show with Jack Paar.  I can remember watching Tallulah Bankhead on his show.  I didn't understand most of what she talked about but I was fascinated with her voice and mannerisms.  I was introduced to so many fascinating characters watching Jack Paar with my mother.  Bette Davis, the writer Alexander King, humorist Jack Douglas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Genevieve a French chanteuse.  I always loved to her Genevieve speak.  She had terrible broken English, which I am sure was all part of her act, and her accent fascinated.   To this day French is my favorite language and I am fascinated by all thinks French.  This all must go back to those childhood nights watching Jack Paar with Mom.  I have a photo above of Jack Paar and one of Genevieve.  Funny but when I look at her photo I can still her voice in my head.

So thanks Mom for the introductions to a strange world of celebrities.  And thanks Tallulah for keeping me fascinated all these years and making it to my personal bucket list.

The Tough Ladies of Locust Point

Locust Point is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Baltimore.  It is slowly being gentrified from a rough working class area into an up and coming neighborhood with trendy bars and remodeled classic Baltimore row houses.  The old concrete silo's and warehouses are now becoming attractive condominiums.  The old form stone covered row houses are now dwarfed by these renovated towers and apartments honoring both the past and the future of this neighborhood.

I started spending time in Locust Point last year.  It's a neighborhood I had not given much thought to in many years.   I was out on one of my photo walks last spring and found myself in the heart of South Baltimore, the Locust Point neighborhood.  My father had sisters who lived in this neighborhood when I was young.  It was a rough working class area that could be dangerous at times.  We would go down to South Baltimore to visit his sisters always making sure all the car doors were locked before leaving the car and watching over our shoulders as we walked to their houses.  When we got ready to leave my Aunts would' always warn us to be careful walking back to the car.  This was the Locust Point of the 1950's.

The lady on the left is my Dad's mother Margaret Sampson.  The lady on the left is his sister Stella.  They lived in this South Baltimore neighborhood.  My Dad's sisters Agnes and Margarette also lived in South Baltimore.   My father's sister Anna Mary lived on the north east side of Baltimore not far from where I live now.  But she traveled by bus each day to Locust Point to work along with Stella and Agnes at the box factory.  They were hard working ladies.  They were not the June Cleavers or Donna Reed's from the television shows.   They were the working class "Roseanne" types of ladies who were worked hard to help support their families.  I have very faint memories of my Grandmother Margaret Sampson.  She died in 1955 when I was three years old.  I have a very brief memory of seeing her at my Aunt Kate's house but no memory of her voice or actions. I was told she loved little boys and would try to hold me on her lap although she was very ill with uterine cancer at the time.

One day last week I found the old box factory where my Aunts used to work.  It still looks like a rough place to work.  Agnes, Stella and Anna Mary all three worked here for many years.  They were all three tiny little Welsh/Irish women.  Stella and Anna Mary looked small and fragile.  Agnes looked tough.  She had tattoo's on her arms and this was in the 1950's before tattoos were acceptable.  But appearances can be deceiving.  Stella and Anna Mary looked fragile but they were as tough as Agnes.  These were not ladies you wanted to mess with.  They worked hard, they liked their beer, and they were not afraid to finish an argument or a fight.  But they were also loving and kind ladies who were proud of their families and would take care of each other.   They would embrace your and kiss you cheek one moment and then let out a profanity that would shock a sailor the next.  When I go to Locust Point today I feel like they are with me.  I can sense them around me when I walk down there taking photos with my camera. I can't go to this area and not think of them.  I didn't know them all that well growing up.  Of all of my father's Baltimore sisters I knew Stella and Anna Mary the best.  Agnes and Margarette were more distant to me.  I only met or saw Margarette a few times usually at family funerals.  She was a large woman and quite loud also and I remember finding her kind of scary as a child.  .  I saw Agnes more often than Margarette but not as often as Stella or Anna Mary.

I walked past the box factory to take my photo and I could almost imagine those three sisters, Agnes, Anna Mary, and Stella standing inside working hard, sweating, and waiting to get off work to walk down to one of the corner bars in South Baltimore for that cold beer they loved so much.  I have a favorite bar in Locust Point now also.  It's quite different from any that they would have recognized.  There are large screen TV's broadcasting the World Cup.  The beer served is craft beer both local and from around the world.  I am not sure how they would have reacted to this.  I don't know if they would have traded their traditional bottles of Natty Boh for one of my craft beers or not.   They probably would have laughed at the idea of watching soccer, not cared for the really hoppy beers, and probably punched out anyone who crossed them.

When I became an adult and we had a family funeral I was given the job to drive the Aunts back to Baltimore City afterwards.  Not one of them had a car or drove.  They lived in the city.  They didn't a car.  We had a funeral for one of my Uncle's during the winter one year.  It had started to snow during the funeral.  Afterwards I had to drive Aunt Anna Mary back her home not far from where I live now.  At the time it seemed a great distance to me though.  As we drove the snow started coming down harder.  Aunt Mary was in the front seat with me.  Her husband Walt was in the back seat.  I don't think I ever heard Walk say a word.  He was very quiet and Aunt Mary always took charge.  I could tell she was getting concerned about the snow.  I thought she was nervous about us driving in the snow.  I told her I was used to to driving in the snow so there was nothing to be concerned about.  Walt laughed out loud.  One of the few times I ever heard him speak.  He said "She's not afraid of your damned driving.  She's afraid she doesn't have any beer at home and might get snowed in!"  She looked over at me and smiled and said "Can you stop at the liquor store on the way to our house."    With the snow coming down I really wanted to just get back home to Harford County before the roads got any worse, but I agreed to stop and pick up a six pack for her.  I parked the car near the liquor store.  Walt stayed in the car while Anna Mary and I went inside the store.  I picked up a six pack for her and she looked at me like I was crazy. " Put that back she snapped at me.  We could be in for a blizzard."  We left the store with two cases of beer.  When it snows in Baltimore people rush out for toilet paper and milk.  Aunt Mary rushed out for a case of Natty Boh.

At another family funeral I was assigned to take Aunt Stella and Aunt Aggie back to South Baltimore afterwards.  They enjoyed the ride home and we talked non stop.  They both called me Little Larry for some reason.  I was never sure why but I never minded it.  They laughed and told me family stories that I had never heard before.  And these two white haired grandmothers were not afraid or ashamed to drop the "f bomb" a couple of hundred times during that forty minute drive.  When I arrived at Aunt Stella's house she told me she would love to have me come in for a few minutes if I didn't mind.  I said sure.  I was enjoying her company and wanted to talk some more.  She said she had to check the house first though and asked me to wait in the car.  She came back to the car all upset and cussing up a storm.  "That f#*king husband of mine isn't home and the friggin pit bulls  are running lose in the house.  They'll rip your leg off if you try to come in."  This was the last time I ever saw Aunt Stella.  But I will never forget that moment.