I saw the International Space Station fly over on Tuesday night. It flew practically right over my house. It looked like a fuzzy butterfly. I tried to take a picture with my phone but it didn't turn out. I could tell it wasn't an airplane because of its size and there weren't any blinking lights on it and it was much higher than the airplane that flew over at the same time. Pretty cool.
I started decorating for Halloween also on Tuesday night. I took down all the fall things, packed them up and put them all away. I slowly unpacked all the Halloween including some new things I bought and put them all on the table and then started decorating. Well I tried to start decorating. I put on some Christmas music and tried to decide where to put all this stuff. Yeah, I said Christmas music.
The problem was the Christmas music made me nostalgic. My cousin recently passed away and the music started making me think of home and holiday's past. So needless to say, I didn't get very far with decorating.
I am from Maryland, I grew up in an area just south of Baltimore named Glen Burnie. Now first I have to teach you to pronounce Baltimore Maryland. Say it with me - Bawlmer Merlin. The people of Merlin tend to slur words together and even change the name of words entirely. A good example would be the movie, the Blair Witch Project. The Blair witch is an old tale from Blair Merlin, an area northwest of Bawlmer. The problem is that you won't find Blair on any map of Maryland because it is Bel Aire but the locals have changed the name to Blair!
The people of Merlin have a very special way of speaking, I can't begin to describe the accent but it is very distinct. In Merlin you don't have a name you are 'Hon' everyone is 'Hon' in 'Hi Hon how are you today?'
If you search You Tube for Baltimore accents there are some really funny video's of people from Bawlmer talking.
I grew up in Glen Burnie where I lived in a small house with my parents and brother. My Mom is one of 17, yep 17 so I had lots of cousins to grow up with. My Uncle was an undertaker and had part ownership in a cemetery so I grew up understanding death and what happens. My friends and I use to even hang out in cemeteries where we'd take ghost pictures. The older SLR camera's had a bulb setting that would hold the aperture lens open for as long as you need it to. So we'd slowly walk across the camera's field of vision or stand in one spot for a few seconds then run off quickly. The result is a ghost image on the film - pretty cool.
Every summer our family and 2 or 3 of my Mother's sisters and a brother and their families would travel to Oshin City - yes pronounce it with me Oshin City Merlin. We'd go down to spend time on the beach and swim in the werter, yes werter, ride the waves and even surf. My cousin taught me to surf when I was 13, he surfed to impress the girls and taught me for the same reason. I was the little sister who was bugging him.
Driving to the Oshin was really an experience, us kids always had to drive with Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Bob because Aunt Kathleen could never remember how to get there so it was up to us kids to direct her on how to get to the Oshin. I can remember being 8 or 9 and directing her how to get there. Not hard, find US 50 and head east and you will eventually hit the ocean. You'd think she'd remember since we went there every year.
I remember one particular year when my cousin Dan had gotten his drivers license. He lived in downtown Bawlmer near the baseball stadium - when the stadium was Memorial Park, when the Colts played in Bawlmer. Anyway, Dan had just gotten his drivers license and we were going to the Ocin Hon for our annual 2 weeks in August before school started. Since Aunt Kathleen didn't like driving over the Bay Bridge and Uncle Bob didn't drive, she stopped her car and let Dan drive. I can remember my cousin Larry holding my hand and freaking out, "He doesn't own a car!" was all he kept saying, and no his family didn't have a car. His Mom, my Aunt Anna, didn't have a drivers license; she rode the bus back and forth to work every day. We obviously made it over the bridge that year! Dan did well, there was no plummeting to our death over the 2 mile high and long bridge over the Chesapeake Bay.
We'd spend every summer at the oshin and even survived a hurricane. I can remember walking on the beach, the wind whipping the sand so hard it hurt your face and anything exposed. My cousin Skip and Dan had to hold my hands because I could hardly walk against the fierce wind. The apartment we were staying at creaking in the wind while the rain pounded on the roof. We all hunkered down and played Monopoly for hours on end by candle light since the electricity had gone out. I was excited to wake up the next morning to see what destruction the hurricane had done and found that the oshin had met the bay. Oshin City is a strip of land with the Atlantic Oshin on one side and a bay, Assawoman, yep, Assawoman Bay on the other and no I'm not changing the name the Merlinders don't change that name. In parts this peninsula call the Del Mar peninsula is less than a mile wide. The peninsula is attached to Merlin on the east side and hooked to Delaware. I love the beach, still do, and miss those times.
Is there anything, music, smells or movies that remind you of childhood memories?
I'll share more later... thanks for reading and laughing with me about the silly Bawlmer accents.
Victoria
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