Clifton Park in Baltimore has a truly fascinating history. It all started when Johns Hopkins bought a 500 acre property at an auction in 1836 from Henry Thompson. At the time it was a working farm with a farmhouse. What he did with the farmhouse and property is amazing…
The mobster Al Capone left a gift to Baltimore’s Union Memorial Hospital that you wouldn’t expect from America’s best known gangster and the single greatest symbol of the collapse of law and order in the United States during the 1920s Prohibition era… (more…)
I love Cuban food. This recipe is easy to make and is a great way to enjoy the taste of Cuba. I’ve made this countless times and thought I’d share it with The Old Line family… (more…)
On a recent Sunday Fran and I decided to take a drive out of the city on Belair Road for a little sight-seeing. It was a gray, overcast day—but there was little wind and the temperature was just right. As we headed into picturesque Baltimore County, Fran suggested we look for the Jericho Covered Bridge around Kingsville. It’s the last remaining covered bridge in Harford or Baltimore counties and crosses the Little Gunpowder Falls. So we turned down Jerusalem Road in Kingsville and meandered through the storybook farm country to find it… (more…)
Abraham Lincoln is known for his ability to tell jokes and a funny story. In fact, it made him a celebrity when he lived in Sangamo Town, Illinois, as a young man supervising the construction of a flatboat. One resident said “he could make a cat laugh.” Lincoln’s humor was distinctly crude, and his lifelong fondness for off-color stories became legendary. When asked in 1859, “why do you not write out your stories and put them in a book,” Lincoln “drew himself up—fixed his face, as if a thousand dead carcusses…were shooting all their stench into his nostrils, and said ‘Such a book would stink like a thousand privies.’ ” Lincoln felt clean stories lacked fun, but favored stories that illustrated a point and disliked vulgarity for its own sake. Most of these off-color stories have been lost, as most people did not want to tarnish his image by relating them. Here are a few of them that I found… (more…)
Fran and I purchased a great piece of Baltimore culinary history. It is a promotional booklet from 1953 for the now gone Oriole Cafeterias. Called “A Cook’s Tour of Baltimore”– it combines photos and history of key points of Baltimore history, the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner (written in Baltimore), and recipes of some of the most requested dishes served at the Oriole Cafeterias. Here’s the story of this much-loved restaurant and a few of their recipes… (more…)
I love to find old fading painted signs on buildings in Baltimore. A fading sign reveals what that building used to be; what it was for. Though some of these buildings are now are abandoned, most have new owners and house new businesses, and these fading signs are like ghosts whispering a secret of former things. Fran and I love to capture these images before they fade completely away and hide their past from sight. The building above used to be the infamous Yeager’s Music Store in Highlandtown. It was a melting pot for all the big name acts in town during the 60’s and a lot of people took lessons there. Yeager’s is long gone, but this fading sign ensures it’s not forgotten. Check out some of these disappearing signs around town… (more…)
When longtime residents of Baltimore reminisce, they think about the things they grew up with. They think about friends, family, jobs, the schools they attended, the home town sports teams, that first date and what they love about Baltimore. When they think about food, they inevitably think about their favorite restaurants that they grew up with. It seems everyone has a favorite restaurant or two that defines real Baltimore food to them. A lot of these old restaurants are gone, but certainly not forgotten. I can’t cover all of them here, but I’ll mention a few… (more…)
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