Sorry to be silent for so long; just know that I’m working hard.
Anyway, here’s a quintessential Bawlmer moment, from yesterday: Dusk, a quiet block of rowhouses in South Baltimore. A boy kicks a football, much to the delight of a little girl, who goes skipping and squealing after it. She sees a stranger. “Hi! What’s your name?”
“Laura. What’s yours?”
The girl’s mother comes running up. “What are you doing?”
“I’m talking to this lady. Her name is Laura.”
“Don’t talk to strangers,” the mother chides, grabbing her by the arm. “And that’s _Miss_ Laura.”
Yes. Don’t talk to strangers, but if you do, use the proper Bawlmer form of address.
When my brother James and I were growing up, we spent non-school days from when I was born until I was about eleven at the Randallstown apartment home of Miss Betty and Mr. Norman. They were the parents of Greg, whom my father worked with at the Walters Art Gallery before Greg left to curate the Babe Ruth museum. Miss Betty and Mr. Norman have always been Baltimore personified, as far as I’m concerned, with their old-time west Baltimore drawls and turns of phrase. Miss Betty actually had me convinced as a young child that she was not always speaking the same language as my accent-free parents.
Miss Betty, in my memory, is about four and a half feet tall, with green plastic curlers in her hair and big fuzzy slippers on her feet. She watched us most of the time and spent the days berating my brother and me as we fought, with furious cries of “You better had!” To keep us entertained, she put on the 700 Club, or Orioles highlight videos. Most of the decor in the home was in some way related to the Orioles, Colts, or some sort of smiling crab.
Miss Betty never learned to drive and never had a traditional job, as far as I know. She seemed to cook all day long, every day, and when she and Mr. Norman finally retired to central Pennsylvania several years ago, the only thing she asked for as going-away presents were cans of hominy.
Thanks, Laura, for continuing to provoke such grand memories.
Going back in years, my two/three year old sister was safe and sound wandering down the beach at Virginia Beach in 1950. She suddenly disappeared, as all children can do, and our parents were frantic. She was traced down the beach by, “Yes, I saw a little blond girl with big blue eyes going that way.” Finally, we found her having milk and cookies with a woman in a beach side cottage, happy as she could be. [The woman had called the police, as my parents had, and, thus, the reunion.] Now, those were the “good old days.”
A few years ago, my brother- and sister-in-law, living in Charleston, took in their little niece, Morgan, whose mother was unable to care for her. My wife and I immediately became “Miz Sharon” and “Mr. Joe,” which I guess is the polite form from Baltimore south. (Certainly not up here!)
A year or so later, they officially adopted her. Now we’re “Ay-ant Sharon” and “Unca Joe,” which is even nicer.