As the faces of the old neighborhood change, I find myself in an increasingly odd role. When I first moved into the St. Paul street house, I didn't quite fit any of the proscribed patterns for the neighborhood. I was a Baltimorean myself, but I was under seventy and so didn't match the other old Baltimore types in the area. Nonetheless, being a real live Baltimorean, I didn't fit the mold of the "urban-homesteader" types who'd moved in and thought they were doing the city a great favor by their presence.

I had simply moved here because I'd always wanted a Saint Paul street address, and had every intention of continuing about life as generations before me had done. I would (and do) buy food at Lexington Market, hear Mass at St. Alphonsus, get very drunk on Preakness Day and change the rugs twice yearly.

For better or worse, though, the neighborhood is becoming stylish again, for the first time in nearly seventy years. As I've lived here for nearly fifteen now, the newcomers see me as an old-timer. Little do they know! Years ago, I knew very few people who weren't from Baltimore. Now it seems that I know more auslander than natives.

The auslander are always a little flummoxed by our ways. We are probably among the last of the major cities that considers entertaining at home far superior to restaurant dining, but then we have a tradition of excellent food.

We also take great pride in — of course, our silver — but also in the snowy-white linens that the silver rests upon. If I make the biggest fuss over the silver and its care, storage, polishing and display, the linens take a very close second. I have always taken care to wash the best linens by hand with a glass washboard and Fels-Naptha soap. Fels-Naptha smells a little too much like a funeral parlor, but it sure does make your napkins glow.

Because the house never had enough electric power to run a dryer, I've had to hang my wash out on a line since I moved in. No problem really — didn't everyone do that for centuries? Of course, everyone in town knew what my drawers looked like, but I figure everyone else has the same damned drawers. No shock factor there.

Today I made one small leap for myself, but a grand jetee for Baltimorean laundry. I had an electric line run in for a dryer.

This will make some aspects of daily life more convenient. No more worrying whether or not I've clean shorts for the next day. An easy job, to tumble-dry a sweater that's gotten irradiated with smoke from the Pub.

I do not trust the dryer. In my experience they're hard on fabric, and the bleaching effect of the Sun (the star, not the paper) is lost.

The neighborhood will be deprived of the nebulous pleasure of looking at my underpinnings, but all of the good linens will still be hung out to dry. A fine damask cloth is a masterpiece. It must be washed by hand, dried on a line, and starched and ironed within an inch of its life. I wouldn't trust my Imperial Crab to a microwave, and I surely won't trust my grandmother's Austrian linens to a dryer.

My neighbor down the street — one of those who loves to hear stories of Das Alte Baltimore — saw the electrician at work and stopped by to see what was going on. She said she'd miss the socks on the line. I'll miss them myself, I think.