Stories & Stuff
from Downtown, Uptown, and the Other Side of the City
A Christmas Confession
25 December 2011
The past four years, Stremba's been churning out an annual Christmas story. It's a more readable addressee-friendly successor to the old PLOT THICKENS. This year's story, USPS-ed to a privileged elite, harkens back to a post-WWII boyhood in eastern Pennsylvania, an era of dramatic changes felt not just nationally but in a special way by one local parish community on the less classy side of the tracks of a steam-powered coal-burning Reading Railroad.
Everything You Want To Know
About Detective Tod Hall, and
All You Need To Know
About The Portable Parlor Play Project
23 April 2008
On this day in April, 1875, young Theodorick B. Hall received an appointment to the recently reorganized Baltimore City detective squad. This, the third Detective Hall posting on this site, updates the legend with additional findings and outlines how the legend is used in a fresh series of parlor plays designed for literate adults looking for alternative fun together with other smart folks.
or An Anthology — Stories Off Baltimore Streets
26 September 2006
When you retell your personal stories, how important is the setting — specifically, the street where it happened? A dozen friends and acquaintances — some city natives, the rest transplants from the other side the Mason-Dixon Line — generously recalled experiences or passed on creative pieces that have strong connections to different streets of Baltimore, downtown, uptown and out to the town limits. It's quite an assortment of subject matter, style, and tone. But it's all Baltimore.
or An Anthology of Ice-Box Stories
10 May 2006
Generations before anyone ever conceived the term "global warming," summers in Baltimore have been hot as hell. Can it get any worse? Well, come July 2006, electric rates are increasing over 70%. As a public service, we offer this page as an alternative to budget-gouging A/C (and a "screw-you!" to the utility giant, BG&E). Pour yourself a cold one and switch on these ice-box stories, collected from friends after a prompt in an earlier piece, "Dad's Truck," posted on this site.
A Boy's Adventure in the Icebox Era
14 February 2006
It's the 1940s, WWII just over. It's a small city
and you're a boy in a district bordered by the Schuylkill River, the Reading
Railroad and Penn Street. You go everywhere on foot, and you've got this errand
Mom expects you to do. A fresh block of ice for the icebox. It requires more
trudging-beyond your territory. And, lo, look at that!—a truck!—idle!—an opportunity to get the chore done nice, quick and easy. This oft-told story is
from the oral riches of the John and Mary Stremba family, Reading, Pennsylvania.
A Veteran Listener's Frank Appraisal
& Disclosure of Key Tips
Summer 2005
Reading aloud. Why do so many think plain old literacy learned in grade school is adequate for the task of reading aloud? Distinct skills here. Among all the solo public readers, including lecturers, librarians, poets, politicians, and preachers, this assessment targets a special group — lectors, i.e. those who read aloud scriptural passages at liturgy. The unique approach to improving reading-aloud skills described here with its singular emphasis on how to relate physically to the page has been dubbed the Chrysostom Method.
In How Many Ways Did Tod Hall Love His Wife?
23 April 2005
Who doesn't love a detective story? Here we have the return of Tod B. Hall, an actual plainclothes cop in Baltimore's post Civil War era. This follow-up re-publishes material originally put out for public consumption in an 1888 history of the Baltimore City police, specific sections about an 1877 case of grain shipments stolen from the city harbor crediting Detective Hall with tracking down the thieves, barge crewmen, one of whom expresses gratitude to his arresting officer.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
February 1, 2004
A storyteller faces his limitations. His forefathers and foremothers told tales and sang songs in villages along the Carpathian mountains, pieces of tradition they'd received from their forebears. But, Lord, this American descendant of old Rus' has grown into such a secular and urbanized guy he can't make their folktales and folksongs his own. God help him.
What's A Storyteller Do With
Baltimore's Great Fire?
Great Fire Centennial, 2004
When it comes to Baltimore, there are three big stories.
Poe. H.L. Mencken. The Great Fire. But it's that Fire that has been an enormous
source of material yet, even more, has served as a gateway to countless other
stories. You follow your nose for stories out of the dying embers of February
1904 through the extreme dust that plagues the city well into the spring. Go a
bit forward, go a little back, even slipping boldly into the 19th century. It's
an era Sheherezade herself could've sunk her teeth into.
In Search of A 1904 Story
Great Fire Centennial, 2004
Her first husband, Dr. John Van Bibber, had been dead over a decade already when she became Mrs. Robert McLane, a fresh status she held for just about two weeks. Her second husband's death in his 37th year made her a widow again. It's that single lethal bullet that fired my interest in the whole period.
Making Money, Making Love
in Old Baltimore
Great Fire Centennial, 2004
"Mr E. had no affection for his wife," said one of the defendant's two lawyers, "when after leading a prayer meeting one night, he was making love to Mrs R. the next day. Here's a man who has broken the heart of one woman [while] trying to break the heart of another."
A Search For Another Story
Great Fire Centennial, 2004
Who was it that was managing a ring of thieves stealing sloopfuls of grain in Baltimore harbor, then sailing it up some tributary of the Patapsco, having it milled, later underselling the flour merchants? The bare bones: it was Tod Hall's surveillance of the barges that exposed the thieves; Hall who chased them as far as Philadelphia and Hoboken; Hall who captured them, and brought them back — to justice, 1877.
Making a Name in Baltimore, 1904
Great Fire Centennial, 2004
The 1901 Polk City Directory listed Harry, along with everyone else living in Baltimore City. Harry was white. You could tell race by the asterisk before all the names of non-white individuals. About that asterisk one friend of color commented: "Funny how generously they gave us those asterisks when what we were needing wasn't more punctuation to crowd us in but more space to move out into."
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