American Scramble 2

On to Baltimore

American Ramble p. 66

The next two days are funny. First, my feet really hurt. Besides nightly ice and some Motrin, there’s nothing I can do about that. I have to get to Baltimore in two days because I’m meeting up with some old friends who are seeing Bruce Springsteen at Camden Yards. The plan is to get dinner with them and then continue on my journey. 

These two days would feature an immense and disturbing contrast. First, I walk through Annapolis and some lovely suburbs to its north. Then on the second day, via Glen Burnie I go into Baltimore from the south. Two more different sections of America you are unlikely to find in such close and jarring proximity. 

Annapolis is lovely, one of my favorite towns. It has brick and cobblestone and military pomp. As I’ve mentioned here before, one of my favorite places in the world is Cape Cod. When I travel to other states, I always wonder, “What is the Cape Cod of this area?” Annapolis is sort of like this for a certain section of Maryland. It also feels like fewer people live in it than makes sense, and this gives it a special place in my heart. “An empty city” is my ideal environment, but you barely ever find one. 

Because of my pessimism and moderate insanity, I have started to associate nice places in America with the past and shitty places with the future. Annapolis’ aesthetics make this association feel particularly appropriate. The vibe is intensified - brought to completion - by the Maryland World War II memorial just outside of town across the bridge. The monument is on a large divider between two two-lane sections of highway, and in the morning it is somber and empty. 

After a few miles on a mostly empty Governor Ritchie Highway, you reach the Baltimore and Annapolis trail. The trail winds through a series of nice suburbs almost to Glen Burnie. Ostensibly, these suburbs must contain families, but everyone on the path is old. I dip off the trail to go to a place called Navel Bagels. Catering to sailors you might think, but no, more retirees each buying more bagels than prudence or any physician would countenance. 

I took a picture along this path that looks like the shire. You feel that you are out of time, out of place. When you reach Glen Burnie there is no doubt that you’re in America and things just get worse from there. 

I take Hammonds Ferry Road from Glen Burnie to Baltimore on the second morning and for a while, I don’t know what kind of place I’m in. It’s a sort of weird industrial road through an area called Lansdowne. It’s a rundown area, but what houses there are seem to be maintained by an older generation of American poor. The homes are small and shabby but maintained and the residents are not frightening. 

Then you hit Washington Boulevard and you are fully in the terrordome. 10 am on a Thursday? Doesn’t matter. Terrordome. I believe the next neighborhood I walked through is in the general vicinity of Morrell Park and it’s some of the worst shit I’ve ever seen. 

Slight digression here. In 2009 and 2010 I was based in Beirut and I spent a lot of time and a complete summer living in Damascus. During that time, I walked a significant portion of the city. Everywhere a foreigner was allowed to plod anyway. There were slums in Damascus. There were no places like Morrell Park. 

You may recall that in 2011 Syria devolved into one of the most brutal civil wars in recent history. Probably a million people have died. The confected history of that country and its uniquely ill-conceived government let several social and political problems to fester that allowed for the country’s shockingly precipitous and violent free fall. But again, before the first shot was fired, no Morrell Park. 

I bring this up because it’s important to think about how it’s possible to have several important human indicators on which the richest country in the world lags behind a government run by a philosophy called Baathism - a sort of nazbolian Arab juche that combines the worst aspects of the totalitarian right and left. Those people don’t create social policy where a 7-Eleven parking lot is full of dozens of human zombies at 10 in the morning, zooted off their faces and with so many needles strewn about the concrete that even in boots you’re nervous to walk across. 

American Ramble p. 73

Syria never saw that particular form of human debasement. Neither did a dozen other terribly conceived and run countries I’ve been to. The reality of this troubles me to a level I struggle to communicate. 

Another dispiriting aspect of Morrell Park demography corresponds to color. Everyone working in this neighborhood, taxi drivers, the man who sells me water in a convenience store (again behind glass) are various shades of brown - recent arrivals. The zombies are nearly equal parts black and white. Older Americans, as if the longer you’re here the deeper the soul sickness gets. 

The black and white zombies are young and perfectly unified in their pursuit of oblivion. The long dream of American racial unity achieved via a self-administered lobotomy 6-12 times a day starting very early in the morning. The young American zombies sway and titter in the wind. You would like to cross the street to give them a respectful berth, but they are peppered too regularly on both sides. 

After you leave Morrell Park you go through a busy underpass with four intersecting highways. At each intersection point, a more solitary zombie is set up with a tent, attempting to beg from the many fast-moving cars that go by, panhandling with absolute disregard for their bodies as they make swift approaches to cars that mostly do not decelerate even a little. One wonders what these lone zombies do to get the others to respect the boundaries of their assumed territory.

These zombies surely have people who love them. People back in the real world who worry about them and try to check up, knowing that their love has no apparent benefit for its subject or object. I think this is how I love America. 

After Morrell Park there’s a mix of things. I look for a hostel called DaDream in another neighborhood I shouldn’t be in.  The listed address is an empty parking lot near a church. I make it into the city center. Bruce is doing a sound check and you can hear the E Street crew from ten blocks in any direction around Camden Yards. 

I decide I need to drop my bag somewhere until my friends arrive, and after trying a few hotels and being rebuffed, I find a weird app that instructs me to leave my bag at an ice cream shop at the inner harbor. The kids working there seem confused but say something like “oh right, we signed up to be a station for that luggage app.” I trust them.

American Ramble p. 78

We have a reservation at the Kona Grill but the whole city is in disarray because of Bruce. Armies of boomers on the phone and demanding to speak to managers spill out the doors of every restaurant. The concertgoers have overwhelmed third-party reservation apps and everything is overbooked. People with much more juice than us are making a fuss and we wave another white flag.

There is exactly one restaurant in walking distance with open tables and we quickly discover this is because it’s a vegan pizza place that only serves nonalcoholic beer. We try it anyway and the foam cheese is certainly an impressive space-age creation but a dog would not mistake it for food. 

Four of the crew go to see Bruce, and the two of us without tickets decide to take our friends’ keys and go to his place in the suburbs where we will watch college football until they return triumphant and drunk. This occurs around midnight, and they play us videos where they’re singing along to Thunder Road. My old beagle, probably at least twelve and now living with my friend, is there, curled on his bed by my feet. For this brief evening, America feels like home again.