Ever since I moved back to Baltimore, much to the chagrin of my friends here, I’ve been moaning that I want to go back to Richmond. I frankly enjoyed Richmond much more; it’s prettier, cleaner and has more things to do that don’t involve illicit drug trade. All the same, it is a smaller city and doesn’t have a very good opera company. It does still have an operating grand hotel and an operating movie palace, but... hey.
By the way, I just love the word chagrin. It’s a good word, isn’t it? I particularly like the fact that Cleveland has a fashionable suburb called Chagrin Falls, and even more particularly that no one in Cleveland sees anything remotely odd or funny about it. Either the whole city has a poor vocabulary, or they’re just so immured to jokes about it that they respond stoically. Perhaps Baltimore should establish a similarly-named little hollow. "Oh, yes, we still live in town but Cousin Adalbert has moved out to Vaguely Dissatisfied Terrrace. Didn’t I hear that your sister and her husband just got a place in Dyspeptic Acres?" Then, of course, Washington would have to respond in kind with a more fashionable emotional condition: "Well, you know it’s been a rough week for me. We had a dinner meeting with Representative Bla and the focus group from Bla-Corp out at the conference center in Manic-Depressive Towne at Bile Creek." Soon enough Richmond and Norfolk would be on the bandwagon too and they’d tear down the lately-elaborated Lifestyle Centres in favor of Annoyance Centres and... Oh, never mind. My digression has taken on a life of its own. Some children just need to be aborted. (Take that, right-to-lifers. I’m even more "right" than you are–I’m into Eugenics! Put that in your bubble-gum pipe and smoke it.)
**Note to self: shelve random digressions for future rants and get on about the subject.
You see, when the chagrin’d (hehe) folk say "you can’t go home again," they mean Richmond. They fail to remember that I’m from Baltimore in the first place, and nowhere is that statement more adept than it is here. You sure can’t. I left a city that was outdated and tired but still happy and pleasant, and returned to a city that was a bombed-out drug war zone. It’s bounced back remarkably; Baltimore is becoming once again a thriving and wealthy city. But–it’s not the city I knew and loved, and I’m not sure that I want much to do with the new version.
I considered Richmond "home" because it was the city that I’d selected for myself. There was no family insistence, no heritage or history–I simply liked it. It remains the only place that I have ever, of my own volition, wanted to live.
Now I won’t ever really be able to go home to Richmond, either. The apartment house that I picked out in the city I picked out burned badly on Monday last, badly injuring one of my nice older neighbors and killing several pets.
The Jackson is a stylish address and I’m sure they’ll rebuild it, but like the Baltimore of my childhood it will never be the same. I have no doubt that the pretty old Anaglypta wallpaper in the staircase is destroyed; the pretty French doors between the living and dining rooms are probably shattered. Since, I understand, the place was getting turned into expensive condos anyway, my beloved ‘20s-tile bathroom was probably already gone. I can’t bear to think what has happened–between renovation and fire–to the huge kitchen dressers and butler’s pantry, where I spent many happy hours polishing the silver.
I know that in the future there will be hundreds of good times and lovely parties at 2806 Monument Avenue, but they won’t be my parties anymore. I couldn’t bear to live in the rebuilt Jackson because it wouldn’t be the same. If I ever–please, God–manage to move back to Richmond I will have to live in the Anne Frances (if I can afford it), the Southampton (I’ll only be able to afford it if I sell nose candy on the side), the Flavius (I can afford it, but who’d want to?) the Rosaleigh (fashionable but depressing), or the Seminole (if I must). I could buy a house, I suppose, but I’m done with that.
You can go home again. There are always trains to take you there. There’s just no guarantee that "Home" will be what it was when you were there in the first place. Really, was it ever what you remember it to have been? Much as I loved the French doors and the big front porch at the Jackson, the jackhammer sound of the steam radiators was a real pain in the ass.
By the way, I just love the word chagrin. It’s a good word, isn’t it? I particularly like the fact that Cleveland has a fashionable suburb called Chagrin Falls, and even more particularly that no one in Cleveland sees anything remotely odd or funny about it. Either the whole city has a poor vocabulary, or they’re just so immured to jokes about it that they respond stoically. Perhaps Baltimore should establish a similarly-named little hollow. "Oh, yes, we still live in town but Cousin Adalbert has moved out to Vaguely Dissatisfied Terrrace. Didn’t I hear that your sister and her husband just got a place in Dyspeptic Acres?" Then, of course, Washington would have to respond in kind with a more fashionable emotional condition: "Well, you know it’s been a rough week for me. We had a dinner meeting with Representative Bla and the focus group from Bla-Corp out at the conference center in Manic-Depressive Towne at Bile Creek." Soon enough Richmond and Norfolk would be on the bandwagon too and they’d tear down the lately-elaborated Lifestyle Centres in favor of Annoyance Centres and... Oh, never mind. My digression has taken on a life of its own. Some children just need to be aborted. (Take that, right-to-lifers. I’m even more "right" than you are–I’m into Eugenics! Put that in your bubble-gum pipe and smoke it.)
**Note to self: shelve random digressions for future rants and get on about the subject.
You see, when the chagrin’d (hehe) folk say "you can’t go home again," they mean Richmond. They fail to remember that I’m from Baltimore in the first place, and nowhere is that statement more adept than it is here. You sure can’t. I left a city that was outdated and tired but still happy and pleasant, and returned to a city that was a bombed-out drug war zone. It’s bounced back remarkably; Baltimore is becoming once again a thriving and wealthy city. But–it’s not the city I knew and loved, and I’m not sure that I want much to do with the new version.
I considered Richmond "home" because it was the city that I’d selected for myself. There was no family insistence, no heritage or history–I simply liked it. It remains the only place that I have ever, of my own volition, wanted to live.
Now I won’t ever really be able to go home to Richmond, either. The apartment house that I picked out in the city I picked out burned badly on Monday last, badly injuring one of my nice older neighbors and killing several pets.
The Jackson is a stylish address and I’m sure they’ll rebuild it, but like the Baltimore of my childhood it will never be the same. I have no doubt that the pretty old Anaglypta wallpaper in the staircase is destroyed; the pretty French doors between the living and dining rooms are probably shattered. Since, I understand, the place was getting turned into expensive condos anyway, my beloved ‘20s-tile bathroom was probably already gone. I can’t bear to think what has happened–between renovation and fire–to the huge kitchen dressers and butler’s pantry, where I spent many happy hours polishing the silver.
I know that in the future there will be hundreds of good times and lovely parties at 2806 Monument Avenue, but they won’t be my parties anymore. I couldn’t bear to live in the rebuilt Jackson because it wouldn’t be the same. If I ever–please, God–manage to move back to Richmond I will have to live in the Anne Frances (if I can afford it), the Southampton (I’ll only be able to afford it if I sell nose candy on the side), the Flavius (I can afford it, but who’d want to?) the Rosaleigh (fashionable but depressing), or the Seminole (if I must). I could buy a house, I suppose, but I’m done with that.
You can go home again. There are always trains to take you there. There’s just no guarantee that "Home" will be what it was when you were there in the first place. Really, was it ever what you remember it to have been? Much as I loved the French doors and the big front porch at the Jackson, the jackhammer sound of the steam radiators was a real pain in the ass.
posted by Daniel | 1:47 AM
2 Comments:
I do so miss the 1920s bathroom tile of my last apartment! I have no use for 21st century show-place bathrooms, all granite and glass and slate, with their surround-spray showers. Pah.
A couple of years ago, Mike & Catherine and I toured what had once been a pretty spectacular Queen Anne pile in Takoma Park, Md. Sadly, it had been thoroughly Washingtonized, with "built-in bookshelves" where none had existed, the old cast-iron cookstove freed of its legs so that it sat ridiculously but oh-so-picturesquely on the floor, and--worst of all--chic new quarry-stone tile and six-person tubs jammed into the formerly chaste Victorian-era bathrooms. Y'know, if you want that kind of crap, just buy a new house and leave real architecture alone.
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