Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to all tortured followers of Scribe of the Eastern Shore. Visit my Friend Mark Walker at : http://overdaedge.blogspot.com/

sorry for being a no show

I got sucked into Facebook. Back to let you know that my co-written book on Salisbury will be coming out next quarter from History Press. 200 photos. Something for you guys to read while waiting for More Ghosts of the Eastern Shore this fall!

Hey! Read Over da Edge Blog by Mark Walker!
Later.....

First Hunt -- Poplar Hill's haunted halls

OK, again, sorry for the hiatus. A lot happening. I went on my first serious investigation of a haunted house last week. It was the ancient Poplar Hill mansion downtown Salisbury. I followed the Maryland Ghost Hunter Society around as they set up elaborate cameras and other recording equipment, then went from room to room trying to get the spirits to communicate or manifest themselves in some way. Society members scanned the 9000 square foot mansion from basement to attic, getting some interesting items including a large bright orb in the attic, but the motion cameras and electromagnetic meters were silent.

A psychic was brought in to try to communicate with the departed and she had a sudden, violent episode where the spirits of runaway slaves overtook her and wailed through her that they would be found out.

Being a good Christian fellow, I prayed a lot before going in, and felt no fear at all, even in the depths of the dark basement, unlit and close. I am waiting to get the results from the audio recordings and this will make a good chapter in my next book.

On a sour note, some prim lady from the city took umbrage at the fact that a psychic was plying her trade on the property and investigations have been suspended for now, since the property belongs to the city and apparently a secretary can control the workings of the entire city government, so further results may have to wait until the tail stops wagging the dog at the mayor's office.

Meanwhile, next Saturday I'll be off to Furnacetown with another group of investigators and we'll see what turns up then!

A hunting we will go! (Ghost hunting, that is)

Well, as the summer cranks up, so does my work and I have decided to try to boost my posting on the old blog here. Hang on to your hats!

First, I am doing a new photo book on Salisbury and badly need uncollected pre-1980 photos with Salisbury landmarks or buildings in them. Drop me a line if you have any to share. Don't have to be famous or professional, just readily identifiable. Thanks!

Second, I have encountered two paranormal groups cris-crossing the Shore. First is the Maryland Society of Ghost Hunters, led by Rodney Whittaker. I found out they are doing a hunt at Poplar Hill in Salisbury so I wangled an invite from the curator, bless her heart, and will report what goes on if I survive! That's June 26. The second group was the Salisbury Paranormal group, led by Mike Dean. Mike and his two partners have already done videos of the Pocomoke Forest and are going back there in July. They have asked me to come along. I couldn't resist. So while the economy tanks, the war goes on and gas edges higher, I am going ghost hunting!

Too long ago!

I am sorry its been so long since I wrote up something, but have been caught up in three shows, got a contract for a new book and just life in general. Wish I had something profound to say, but too much bad stuff going down. GM bankrupt, Chrysler bankrupt. Gasoline on the rise. I have one vehicle from each of these two once proud companies so I hope they survive. Meanwhile, its a stormy night on the Shore. Say, if anybody has any photos of Salisbury to share, let me know!

Rainy days and Sundays

More April Showers today. I guess we can use them to bring the water table up a bit more. Say, just wanted to let folks know that the Fair Share bill passed in the Senate, but that doesn't let Norm Conway off the hook because it failed in the House. The Governor will sign it, so all non-AFSCME state employees can expect to have their pockets picked by the increasingly socialist agenda coming from Annapolis. Sigh....


In other news, author David Poyer will be speaking at the Writer's Bloc meeting on May 16. Be sure to come and see him. I am re-reading his first novel, the Shiloh Project and its pretty good. He shows a good flair for military hardware.

Stop by on May 9th and see members of the Bloc at the Westside Heritage Festival. We'll be under a tent somewhere. Finally, I have met with the Maryland Ghost Hunters Society and they are planning more investigations here on the shore. Drop me a note if you are having some serious problems or have some stories to tell.

You want politics, you gottem!

Trying to have a wonderful Easter weekend, but stupid stuff just keeps coming around. Stupid stuff 1: Maryland House Bill 298, the supposed "Fair Share" act. You see, some years back Governor Parris Glendening, after being influenced by AFSCME, a union that some (but not a majority) of state employees belong to, got legislation to enact collective bargaining. I was on the fence about it. The measure was defeated, but the governor caved in to special interests and signed an executive order calling for an election to see which employee association would speak for all employees. Though a minority percentage of employees, AFSCME won the rights. Now, years later, they want to collect a "service fee" from non-AFSCME members to supposedly fund their efforts. This is a rotten bill with no cap on fees, no oversight, no consideration for employees who belong to another group, nothing. Hundreds of calls flooded in. Norman Conway is the head of the House of Delegates Finance Committee. He has refused to listen to the people that elected him and plans to ram this bill down everybody's throats in order to keep his chairmanship. I think its a shame. I will not forget in November 2010.

OK, then we have pirates. I understand the US Navy is forbidden to attack them if they have hostages under the rules of engagement. I am afraid we will cave in to their demands, and every US ship will be a target. Why can't we have a coalition force to attack the Somali pirate bases and wipe them out? They'll just keep doing it. We stopped the barbary pirates in 1800, let's stop these new thugs, or at least issue letters of marque so that privateers can do it for us.

I hope everybody has a happy Easter. I'll be in the play Who Will Call Him King of Kings at Emmanuel Wesleyan Church on Shamrock DR. Salisbury tonight and tomorrow. We need to do a lot of praying as a nation this Easter weekend.

Spring is here now

Sure, I like talking about the weather. It's sunny and breezy and now I've got to cut grass tomorrow. I'll be playing a cruel jailer in my church's Easter play this year (Emmanuel Wesleyan on Shamrock Drive), so come and watch me chew the scenery next weekend, Friday through Sunday. What else is going on, let's see. Mayoral election in Salisbury. Lots of mud being slung. Vote your conscience not rumor. Went to see a Haunting in Connecticut (subtitled AIG and the Chris Dodd re-election campaign). OK, seriously, the backstory was really interesting, but the modern horror haunting stuff was pretty bland by even 1970 standards and bore little relation to the purported "true" story from what I have read on the internet.
Big tax on cigarettes started this week. It caused one of my co-workers to quit smoking, so I guess it served a purpose in lowering health care costs. Next, Big Macs will be taxed so your arteries don't clog. Oh, that's right, you'll lose weight because you won't be able to afford to drive, since OPEC cutbacks are starting to affect the price of oil (up about $20 since the beginning of the year when it was $33 a barrel).
I have a friend who thinks I am an idiot because I don't think Obama is a Marxist and is turning our country into another Soviet Union. Hey, the companies came to the government for a bailout, so they accepted the consequences of being on the government dole. Worse, I hear Tim Geitner was covering up for some of the banks. I am getting a bit tired of him and think Obama should dump him for somebody not in banking, maybe in collections, like a repo man. Since I am an idiot for being a Democrat I now have Obama in my top friends list on MySpace. He hasn't sent me any email, though. Guess Michelle and the kids are hogging the computer all the time when they aren't hugging folks and being good and decent folk. Oh, well....
Say, I'll be at the Shad Festival April 25th all day. Come and say hello. I will also be at the Worcester Technical School May 1st talking about Eastern Shore Culture and at the Westside Heritage Festival on May 9th. Come say hello! I signed up to be an official Scribe of the Shore, am waiting to hear back. Meanwhile, drop me a comment.

Another hiatus

Sorry, guys, been very, very busy. Somebody asked me why I only talk about the weather, but on the internet, when you put stuff out, its public and you are done for. I don't put anything out there that's worth pirating, but hey, who knows? Since last post I put in some time at the Regal money pit. Saw Last House on the Left and Watchmen. Last House was really good, even though it started slow. Now, I make a distinction between bloody and gory. It's a fine line, so here's the deal. Bloody means a lot of people die hard, but to me, gory means that people's innards are spilt all over the place and vital organs float around like Macy's Thanksgiving balloons. I put Last House in the bloody category. The last scene was borderline gory, but your mileage may vary. The rest of the shootings, stabbings, bludgeoning and hand stuck in the garbage disposal (you didn't see anything, just him screaming until his hand came out and it was only gashed). The hardest thing was rape. A young girl gets brutally raped then shot. If rape upsets you, don't go see this movie. While I felt bad for the girl, it was the key to the plot. My wife and I sat through the whole thing and we both enjoyed it as a good thriller with a good ending.

Watchmen was a different story. Ironically, there is a rape scene in it also, but its dealt with less explicitly and again, its central to a plot point. Having said that, the movie is too long and too complex. I read the original story in the 80's and had to really concentrate on all the stuff because the plot explodes in all directions from superhero psyches to alternate history (Nixon elected 5 times????). It does paint a more realistic picture of how the world may have been if there really were super-powered beings, but it is not a black and white story like Batman or Superman where the good guys are good and the bad guys bad. I think it should have been done in two parts, like Lord of the Rings, that's how much story is in it. Having said that, it is a fairly faithful adaptation of the comic series, the effects are cool and it makes you think not only about good and evil, but about the greater good.

On the home front, I am working on a sequel to Ghosts of the Eastern Shore and have been visiting a remote area where the owner is not only haunted, but hexed. That's right. More info coming out of this area as it seems to be a hotbed of activity (which may explain no cell phone service).

A beautiful day on Delmarva

This has been a week of roller coaster weather. First snow, now near summer-type temperatures. Not sure whether to believe in global warming or not. I am hot and cold about it (snicker). OK, its been a week since the last post and so let me see what's been happening.

I had a great time at the Outdoor Show. Everybody was very friendly and the food was delicious. Met some great folks, including past and present muskrat skinning champions. The show made the newspapers coast to coast and I barely had time to leave my table. It was great! It was drizzly all day, but not too bad. Sunday it turned nasty and I stayed home Monday (hey, I'm getting too old to play on ice).

Friday I taped another chapter of the Write Stuff for PAC-14. I interviewed the crew from PLB comics and Gianni interviewed Tom Taylor, the president of the Writer's Bloc. We need a webmaster bad. If anybody reads this, drop us a line.

It was a blah week in politics. The Stock Market continued to tank (I used to think 2000 was a high number, now I am scared we may end up back there.), no peace in the Middle East, and the Obama haters said he was too ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man. So, are they all, all honorable men. I guess we'll just have to stay tuned. This week's message is short. I don't have much coming up, but keep an eye out for the PAC-14 shows and drop me some comments!

Local eats (not for the faint hearted)

I work in an office with people from other states, or folks who were city bred. I was talking to them about the Outdoor show and that they were going to have muskrat on the menu and most of them were disgusted by the thought. Eat a rat? Yecchhh.... OK, so I don't care for them either, but I could tolerate them. Tonight, let me run down the wonderful foods that folks love or hate.

Muskrats. OK, my grandfather trapped them for years. I tried them didn't like them. Didn't get ill, but just didn't care for them. My mother and grandmother ate them til the days they died, but would only buy them with the heads still attached so that they knew they were getting the real thing. Seeing them on a platter stewed with those enormous teeth kind of put me off on them, but hey, they are edible, so why not?

Squirrels. Never saw them cooked, never ate them, have no clue.

Rabbits. Same deal, but think they are probably tastier than squirrels

Raccoons. Tried them once. Meat was tasty but boy were they greasy

Deer. Nothing wrong with their flavor once you get past the "Bambi" factor.

Wildfowl: Ducks and geese, have eaten both, they taste delicious. Pigeons, doves and other small birds, have not tried. I assume they are like chickens.

Fish: Have not eaten blue fish or Drum, but well prepared are supposed to be edible. Have eaten farm raised catfish. Love the creative labeling for shark (steakfish) and ocean perch (blow toads), both of which are delicious, though I found blow toads to be a bit chewy. When I told one city boy that ocean perch was blow toads, he actually turned green. Oh, well....

Shell fish: Love them all, including those little black mussels

Arthropods: Crabs and lobsters are wonderful, including soft crabs, but non-coastal raised folks seem aghast at eating softcrabs. Hey, they cut the eyes off!

Prepared meats.

Scrapple: I grew up eating scrapple and have even eaten raw (but not in 30 years). I still love scrapple and just had some a few days ago. Mid-westerners seem to be disgusted if they are told what its made of first. Oh, well....

Souse loaf and head cheese: Yeah, you know what part of the pig it comes from. Souse is less meat carried in a transparent gel of rendered fat that is delicious on crackers (so I am told). I am not adverse to eating either, just never have done so. Ate plenty of liver loaf and liverwurst, so figure its about the same

Pigs feet. My grandmother loved pig's feet, but seems like a lot of trouble for little meat.

Chitterlings: I can eat pork rinds all day long, but the insides? Man, it smells strong unless its properly rendered. Some ladies got some today and I was OK til I got about three feet from them and then that smell wafted up and my stomach flip flopped. Visually, they looked sort of like creamed chip beef, but the nose knows. I ate them many, many years ago and while it stayed down, it was not an experience I plan on repeating.

I am really looking forward to a big oyster fritter tomorrow at the Outdoor show. Has to be on Sunbeam sandwich loaf with lots of ketchup. Yep, now that's a treat. Well, if I survive the show tomorrow, I'll try to give you a report. I'll get to see who is champion muskrat skinner this year. So, visit Your Humble Scribe and I'll see if I can post something on Sunday.

New Pac-14 shows air

That's right. The latest Pac-14 episode of the Write Stuff will start airing next Thursday and feature my cohost Gianni Hayes interviewing Ann Foley, author of Having My Say about Wiley "Gator" Abbott, the 13 time champion muskrat skinner, and other Dorchester County Books. Next month, Gianni and I will discuss tips on getting publishers to look at your stuff once you write it. Be sure to check the Pac 14 website for times. This is only for Comcast viewers in Wicomico, I think.

National Outdoor Show next weekend

The 64th National Outdoor Show will be this weekend (Feb. 27 and 28) at Golden Hill, in Dorchester County. Besides crowning some kings and queens of the outdoors, there will be contests, including muskrat skinning, and lots and lots of food, including those savory rodents, oyster fritters and other local delicacies. Your Humble Scribe will be there along with fellow writer Ann Foley, on Saturday only, but the opening until we are near exhaustion. Please come by and chat with us, tell me your ghost stories, and check out our books.

Another week ends, more uncertainty begins

Just got done with a pile of dead limbs in the backyard with the family. The smell of burning wood sure takes me back to when I was a kid down in Mt. Vernon. I was talking to the head of our office's cleaning service today and he grew up in the country just like me. His experiences were similar to mine. Let me share some of the stuff about 45 years or so ago.

We first talked about chickens. Both of our families raised chickens. His was the standard production chicken house while we raised ours mostly for eggs and consumption. We both remembered getting the baby chicks or biddies in and how cute they were, little balls of yellow fluff. I remember going to the old Cohn and Bock feed mill in Princess Anne to get chicken feed and how it smelled in there, so rich and exotic. Todays kids would just think it stunk, but smells were a unique part of any experience for me.

Anyway, our methods of getting chickens ready for a meal were similar. Our mothers held them chickens down on the chopping block and we used the cleaver or axe to behead them and then let them run around until their nervous systems realized they were dead. I have heard that people that were guillotined during the French revolution talked a bit after their heads rolled into the receiving baskets. That was parodied in the film version of Whitley Streiber's The Wolven.

Next, the bodies would be put in scalding water to loosen the feathers and the chickens would be plucked. Feathers would pile up around the back of our house and would blow around for a while. Once plucked, there were still fine, hairlike pin feathers left. My mother would take a piece of newspaper and roll it into a cone shape, then light it and singe off the feathers. The other fellow's mom would use paper grocery bags. We also found out that we liked the hearts and livers from the chicken. I still like chicken livers and miss the old Bonanza in Delmar.

We heated by wood until I was a teenager. We had two stoves, a big one in the dining room and a smaller one in the living room. They were nice for the room you were in, but beyond that, the rooms were cold. In the winter time, we all slept in the living room by pulling the mattress and box spring out of the bedroom and my grandmother slept on a studio couch. After my grandmother died, I got her room, but by then we had oil heat and you could sleep in the bedrooms during the winter. Mother kept a woodstove in the dining room up to the end, though.

I see by the papers and blogs there is a big scandal down in my old Somerset. My advice to readers is not to believe everything they read. Blogs and newspapers get viewers/readers by gussying up trash and innuendo. Remember the old Glen Frey song "Dirty Laundry"? Some things never change. Like William Randolph Hearst, one of the original Yellow Journalists said when it was reported that there was no civil war in Cuba: "You provide the pictures and I'll provide the war."

I also see that nobody wants to give Obama a chance. He's be president for less than a month, handed a worse crisis than any president has faced since Pearl Harbor, and nobody will cut him any slack. I am not happy about all in the stimulus package, but hey, he did something and he admitted that he wasn't perfect. Better than some other folks claiming unrealistic stuff like "Peace in our time" and "Mission Accomplished". If things aren't better by the end of this year, well, maybe I'll change my tune, but for now, I am willing to wait and see. If the folks I see at the office are any indication, its very, very bad and we need to pull together as a community and a nation to help the folks who are worse off than we are. I thank God I have a job and a roof over my head. I get a handful of people each week who have neither. What good would more tax cuts do them? Their houses are being foreclosed on and their usually guaranteed year round jobs have gone to seasonal.

Maybe the Tribulation is starting? Who knows? When a day's wages only buys a loaf of bread, then I'll wonder about that. The pre-Nazi Germans under the Weimar government carried a wheelbarrow load of paper money just to buy a loaf of bread and Hell surely followed after them. Is it our turn next? I pray not. I really mean that. Come visit your Humble Scribe again.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just came back from being stuffed at JR's in Ocean City! I ate next to nothing all day in anticipation of eating out and was not disappointed. This was my first time eating there and their ribs were fantastic! Their onion loaf is delicious also.
OK, so Happy Valentine's Day to anybody who reads this. Traffic is so slow here that I have pretty much decided to go weekly until the comments pick up. Congress just gave a big heart full of candy to everybody as well, but it came with a high price tag so unless the economy picks up big time, we are in danger of passing along this debt for the next few generations.
Anyway, I'll keep it short tonight and hope everybody is well and that you'll drop some comments every so often.

Muskrat love (or not)

I read the Daily Times every day, though it seems that I am getting more informative city and county news over at the Salisbury News blog. Both outlets have their agendas, so the mix kinda gives a balance. I have to say that the Times reporting of late has been so bland that I think they fear local government and their spell checking remains atrocious. However, I read Brice Stump's articles faithfully. Why?

When I first started treasure hunting inthe 1980's, it was the late Milford Webster that called my attention to two books written by Brice Stump. One was It Happened in Dorchester County and the other was A Visit With The Past. Both these books were full of vanished lore of lower Dorchester County, a place where houses and graveyards were slowly eroding into the Nanticoke, a wild, history filled area between the Blackwater and the Nanticoke, the name of another book of his. I devoured all three of them, and they inspired me to research the history of that part of Delmarva, along with Milford and friends.

Brice's writing about the Lewis Wharf area and its links to the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and even the Civil War made a compelling story, one that is still evolving, as new evidence comes to light. Brice was also the first person to publish a color photo of me in any newspaper, and his camera didn't break. Anyway, today's column had to do with the Expo at Golden Hill and the fact they will be serving up muskrats and rabbits. I'll be there on Feb. 28, along with fellow author Ann Foley.

Later today, at dinner, my daughter and a friend were eating dinner (roast beef with vegetables, including mushrooms. Her friend noticed the mushrooms and my daughter said: "I thought it tasted different" to which my stepson told her : that's because its muskrat, to which she turned several shades of green until he confessed it was beef. This is pretty much the modern reaction to muskrats, the rodential delicacy of the Eastern Shore.

I have to confess I can't blame her, but I did point out to her that she was the great-granddaughter of a muskrat trapper. It's true. My grandfather, Louis H. Horner, trapped muskrats on our marsh property in Mt. Vernon until he died and then the traps lay on the chicken coop roof and rusted. Why? Well, my dad was an urbanite and I only saw him fire a gun once and he missed. My grandather died when I was six, so there went my only chance at learning the trade. The marsh lay peaceful, though poachers did trap it. My mother and grandmother still occasionally bought muskrats and served them up stewed with potatoes, onions and carrots.

Naturally, they had to have the heads attached so they could be sure it wasn't some lesser rodent. So, at dinner time, out would come the big platter, smelling of pungent musk with the carcass of the muskrat swimming in his own gravy, curved incisors pointed right at me. I disliked the taste and never voluntarily ate any, though I don't begrudge anybody chowing down on them. They represent a time when many people came up hard, living off whatever the land could provide, including muskrats, squirrels, rabbits, racoons and deer, or turkeys, geese, ducks, quail or pigeons. Fishing, however, was something my dad liked, so I learned how to do that early and got to be decent at it.

Anyway, thanks to Brice for another fond memory (even if it wasn't tasty). If this economy gets any worse, we might all be reduced to eating such creatures. Not sure if Nutria are edible, or snakehead fish, but hey, if its them or me.....

Well, at any rate, visit Your Humble Scribe again.

Help is on the way?

Is the stimulus package DOA? Did it die of excessive pork or not enough bipartisan beef? With Obama wounded by the excising of Dashcle and that other lady, it looks like the Republicans have recovered from the defeat over two months ago. Obama's perceived mandate for more social spending appears in trouble. One of our allies (Kirgystan) wants to shut our big airbase that supplies our troops in Afghanistan. Can the grim hand of Putin be behind that or aren't we paying enough bribes to keep us there? I have changed my news feed to get international news and added local weather for folks visiting here. I also added the weird news since a UFO or Bigfoot story might surface. Finally, I put an Edgar Rice Burroughs slideshow so I can display one of my favorite author's works. Not sure what to add next, maybe a YouTube search engine. How do you like the blog now? People were saying they had trouble posting, so I loosened up the requirements a bit.

I read with interest today about a local sex abuse scandal. The defense for the teacher involved said nothing about the allegations themselves being false per se but launched into a diatribe about the accuser's misdeeds. So, the defense seems to be to slime the accuser, not prove innocence? I await further news on this. Meanwhile, my next Pac-14 show with co-host Gianni Hayes will tape on the 20th and air shortly thereafter. Look out for it!

Finally, I will be at the Golden Hill wildlife expo on the 27th (that Saturday anyway) with author Ann Foley, so if you feel like watching folks skin muskrats and see the crowning of the new Muskrat Queen, come check it out! Let your Humble Scribe know what you think of the new decorations!

Long Time, no blog

Sorry for delay, folks (I assume somebody reads this stuff), but have been busy editing Against the Odds for the next issue (25). If you like wargames, this is the avant garde mag for you. For everybody else, here comes more snow! (maybe, perhaps, possibly). The more I read the local news (Salisbury), the more saddened I become as the city slides into an abyss of partisanship and backbiting. Growing up in the 60's and 70's, Salisbury seemed like a magical place for a country boy with no income and no transbertation. I have mentioned subs around Salisbury before (and L and F subshop came up, a place I can't recall whether I went to or not), but what I remember most about Salisbury then is visiting it in cold weather. My mother and I would catch a ride with her friend and our neighbor Irene Bruce, who worked at Sunshine Laundry and her mother worked for a time a White's Jewelers downtown.
We would be dropped off right there at Division and Main St. and the adventure would start. Usually it was cooler weather because Mom worked late spring and summer either picking strawberries or in the canning factories. Conveniently, we lived right next door to McIntyre's. That's another story. Once turned loose in Salisbury, Mom and I followed a routine. We'd have a snack at Read's drug store (now Channel 47), visit Woolworth's and a couple of other stores, then spend the afternoon at the matinee either at the Boulevard or the Wicomico (where the library is now). In between, we'd usually have lunch at Woolworth's and walk down to the park, where we looked at the animals and I'd play with whatever toys I got at either Read's or Woolworth's. They were the usual boy toys for the time, soldiers, or airplanes or spacemen.
I got to see a variety of movies in those days, depending on what was playing. They ranged from the more adult (like David and Lisa and Operation Thunderbolt which I really liked) to Walt Disney, to even my first James Bond movie (You only live twice). I was hooked on Bond after that and had an assortment of Bond toys like a gun, a ring, a game, and even some fake James Bond business cards (I still have one). Around five,we'd meet Miss Irene's mom back at the entranceway to White's where it was a little alcove and protected from the elements and from there we'd get picked up and head home.
As I got older, the toys gave way to books after we discovered a little book and magazine shop near Read's. It was 1968 and I was buying Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks along with anything else that struck my fancy and Mom would let me buy, along with a few comics like Gold Key's Flying Saucers Serious Business. I remember picking up a sequel to War of the Worlds called Invasion of Mars and it was so engrossing to me that I read it as we walked to the park. I still liked visiting the animals and take the grandkids there when the weather is nice even now. At least once we walked all the way from downtown to the old Salisbury Mall.
The little book stall that I loved so much packed up and a new bookstore opened up in the mall, so I had to depend more and more on secondary places like Salisbury Drugs, Super Giant and the drugstore down by Safeway. Salisbury was changing, growing up and getting more sophisticated, and I was growing up too.

Goodbye Snow

OK, it was fun while it lasted. Now just back to cold. A friend of mine and I were reminiscing about the snowstorms we had in the 70's. Somewhere between 77-78 there was a big snow storm. We were in Salisbury playing board games, either Flattop or Panzer of Squad Leader, and the snow was predicted to let up early, but it didn't. Pretty soon it was so deep I was wondering if I could get home, down in Mt. Vernon in those days. Anyway, I decided to bug out before it got dark, so I packed Rich up and I couldn't get up his driveway, so dropped him off and headed for Rt. 13. I took it slow, then down Mt. Vernon Rd. It was starting to get dark and the snow was blowing everywhere. I really must have had a guardian angel that day. When I got to the house, the front yard was drifted up so I accelerated my old Monte Carlo as fast as I could without it spinning and plowed into the yard. I just managed to get off the road before the tires started spinning. There it sat for a few days until things got thawed out.
That was a bad winter. I fractured my right arm slipping on ice in Princess Anne also and lost my job on account of not being able to work with both hands (and had to fight for unemployment because the boss didn't want to pay. Things worked out though and I managed to find some better paying jobs until the economy finally settled down in the 80's. Now things are bad again.
I feel like I have gone back in time nearly 30 years. Even the State of Maryland, a place where you thought employment was secure is thinking about laying off. With the hiring freeze and eliminating positions when people retire, you are left with an aging, less capable workforce dealing with more work and more stress. Things are not good right now and I am praying very very hard that whatever the new Prez does works.
OK, not much going on down on the Shore right now except cold, murder and politics. Come visit your Humble Scribe again.

More on Murder and Mayhem

Joe Albero in his blog just updated the murder with some shocking news that the villains were earlier arrested and released. Please check out his blog at: http://sbynews.blogspot.com/

While Joe and I are not always on the same page politically, I have lately found his local news more detailed and more accurate than the local papers, who in today's lead story, shocked me by revealing that Nissan sold a previously unknown model called the "Ultima". Who proofreads over there anyway?

Bad grammar and proofing seems to be plaguing the Times of late. As an editor, such stuff jangles on me. Anyway, its still a beautiful day on Delmarva. I braved the crowds at Fruitland Walmart (they seemed particuarly busy for a non-Christmas season day) and am back at the keyboard. Gianni Hayes and I submitted a book proposal to History Press this week. Wish us luck and do visit Your Humble Scribe again.