Where I Went to High School: SoMD*

When I was in high school mine was one of three in the county; it's one of four now. It had been built five years before my freshman year, and by the time I got there it was already overflowing with 200 more students than it was built to hold, and it had sank into the swamp about a quarter inch. Welcome to Calvert County.

The personalities of our three schools were predetermined: the northernmost school was built in the 70s with the ideology that windows are distracting and detrimental to the learning process, so the inside was dark and lit only by flourescent lights; the middling school (our rival) was the first high school of the county and built in the late 19th century, so there was constant construction and peeling paint; and the southernmost school (my alma mater) was built in the 90s with the new-age ideology that windows and open spaces are actually good for the learning environment. So my high school was, in a word, gorgeous; it was compared to a shopping mall by visiting students. It was also an extreme waste of space and money, so there were unusable seats in the auditorium and half-funded lab tables in the science wing.

I had the usual awkward high school experience I think, with high periods of silliness and notoriety (I got fired from the morning announcements and it is sometimes still brought up in conversation when catching up with old high school acquaintances), peppered with the occasional dramatic breakup or un-friending (before facebook!). My friends and I didn't drink or do drugs, a prevalent pastime in small-town America, so my high school memories are of parking lot dance parties after one of the thirteen-billion afterschool activities I was enmeshed in, bayside (or riverside, I can never remember which side of Solomons Island is which) picnics, a lot of loitering, and a LOT of driving around aimlessly.

I don't think my experience as an awkward, dramatic, self-centered, oddball teenager is in any way uncommon, but I often find that Hollywood seems to think so, and that irks me. Teenagers played by twenty-somethings often come off as smooth and experienced, but I am almost positive no teenager is without awkwardness, regardless of experience.

Obviously not every high schooler had "fairyland," an extensive playground in someone's backyard next door to the school, a popular class-skipping or sports team-running break hangout; or "the ghetto," the group of class trailers in the front parking lot put in place after the school ran out of room for trailers out back; or a school-wide inside joke about our crazy one-term Principal, who announced at the end of a long-winded speech on his first day that, "You don't mess with Libby, 'cause LIBBY DON'T PLAY," but everyone was sure awkward as hell, and that's kind of nice.

Comforting, even, knowing that some of my weirdest, most awkward moments ever can be retold and laughed [with] in the knowledge that everyone's got a story, like the time I asked a boy out by ambushing him and yelling that I was going to the movies (by myself) and did he want to go. Or the time my girlfriends and I skipped school to go shopping and I announced (loudly) in an upscale shoe store, "WHAT, DO THEY ONLY HAVE ONE OF EACH KIND??" Or the time my running buddies and I bowled each other over in a mad scramble to leap into the bushes and hide before the lacrosse team saw us all red-faced and sweaty. And the list goes on.

Oh, and to any former teachers who may come across the blogosphere and read this, I totally learned stuff, too. Like from my football coach/calculus teacher who punched holes in walls when he got excited about math, and my history teachers who made us climb under our desks and threw "shrapnel" at us to teach us about WWI and stole me from another class to put me on trial at a Red Scare hearing (and turned on the news on 9/11 because they knew how important it was, despite or to spite the administration's mandate to keep tvs turned off.) And the theatre teacher who made me realize what I wanted to do with my life, and the English teacher who still invites us over for tea every year. There's a whole other post in what some of my high school teachers did for me as a person, so I'll leave it at that.

My high school experience was a fitting metaphor for teenagehood, with awesomeness interspersed with absurdity and pain, and an overwhelming sense of relief that it's all over. Calvert County high school: God Bless Y'all Real Good.


*SoMD is what the natives affectionately call Southern Maryland, sometimes going a step further to call themselves SMIBs, or Southern Maryland InBreds. Clearly no one else is allowed to call us that but us.

Where I Lived (and Left): Culvert Cowntee

"God Bless Y'all, Real Good"

- Louis L. Goldstein

Yep. Should one choose to exit Calvert County at its southern-most tip, crossing into St. Mary's via the Solomon's Island Bridge, a casual look to the left will reveal this brick-laden farewell in all of its grammatically deficient splendor. Unbeknownst to him, former Maryland Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein managed to capture the quintessence of Southern Maryland in only five words - and he presented it perfectly. Welcome to bumfuck.

Calvert (also referred to as "CC," "Southern Maryland, and, "Uh, it's near D.C./Annapolis. Sort of.") is a peninsula bordered by the Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River. From top to bottom, it is approximately 45-50 miles long, and borders counties Anne Arundel, Charles, and St. Mary's. There are about 5 main drivable exits - the most notable being Route 2-4 as the primary pipeline in and out (non-drivable exits include helicopter, water travel, and death).

Calvert County is split into three main areas - Northern (North Beach, Chesapeake Beach, Owings, Huntingtown, and Dunkirk), Central (Prince Frederick, Dares Beach, Port Republic, and Barstow), and Southern (Brooms Island, St. Leonard, Lusby, Cove Point, and Solomons Island) - each with a corresponding high school. You could say that Northern is "where the money is" - noteable that their region now has (count 'em) two* public high schools named "Northern High" and "Huntingtown High." Prince Frederick is the central "town center" - a collection of strip malls and living communities - home of Calvert's oldest high school, Calvert High. Southern Calvert boast proudly of the nationally famous "Tiki Bar," claims the closest Nuclear Plant to Washington D.C. as its own, and is home to this author's alma mater, Patuxent High. If you ever visit Southern Calvert, I advise driving straight to Solomons Island. It's this author's personal favorite.

The most interesting thing about Calvert is its pattern of urban development. For all intents and purposes, Calvert County is predominately rural, but maintains its own sub-urban flair. Driving from end to end, you'll be bombarded with isolated residential communities and market centers contrasting with long stretches of country roads, farmlands, old family plots, and watershed protectorates. Formerly cheap land, an exploding population, and steady immigration combined with the residents' desire to maintain the county's rural aesthetic, watershed laws, and building restrictions coalesce to form Calvert's impression as contradiction manifested. Hence, another Gentleman's coining of the term "ghetto country" might not be such a misnomer - representing Calvert as an odd combination of backwater boonies and urban sprawl.

Interestingly enough, despite said booming population there hasn't been a sufficient concentration of people over one particular spot to form an entire "town" (exceptions: North Beach and Chesapeake Beach are technically considered towns). Instead, what you have are select districts (some mentioned above) of residential areas that are assigned to different post offices around the county - some labeled as "town centers." As opposed to having the same municipal standing as full towns, these "town centers" are simply zoned for residential and commercial use. Their infrastructure is designed to ultimately curb urban sprawl and preserve agricultural and rural areas. In essence, this equates to there being, "not a whole lot to do," in the conventional sense. For those over 21, this means a lot of seedy bars spread out across long distances, bars in restaurants, and bars in hotels. To contrast, it also means a lot of local owned establishments once you get away from "town centers" - which are more likely to run the gambit of chains. The town center thing actually worked and kept away a lot of the amenities you might find with place of higher population density.

To demonstrate my point I'll tell a story:

One point during college, I drove down to St. Mary's to a friends party, passing through Calvert on the way, where I was accompanied by another Gentleman and a former roommate from the area. Said Gentleman started flipping around on the radio looking for a local station, when I looked at him confusedly. "Well, we get DC 101 or 98 Rock," I said, returning to driving not knowing what else to tell him. I would have mentioned HFS, but this was 2007 and HFS had long since dissolved. Clearly, that wasn't what he was talking about and he continued to ask for a local station where we played songs from bands around the area. He explained that most places have this sort of thing and he wanted to know what the station number was. Still confused, I tried to explain further that the closest thing we had to that was a whole-in-the-wall station that praised God every time the DJ spoke and played old-timey, twangy country. The Gentleman wasn't buying it and further tried to explain what he was looking for when our backseat companion chimed in with, "Uh, well, there's the Rocket." "What's the Rocket?" I asked, baffled. "It's like a modern rock station, I guess? It's new. Local," he said. I was dumfounded. Apparently, I had been away for awhile - in 2006 said old-timey station had switched over and changed its branding to "97.7 The Rocket," playing contemporary rock, possibly from local bands. I had a slight moment of shock, but I don't think it was apparent. It ended up being an OK station. Not great, but certainly not horrible. Also, I was still in shock.

"So, what do you do for fun in a place like this?"

Well there's not a whole lot to do, as I mentioned before. However, if you like solitude, relaxation, or the outdoors, it's a great place to visit. Local activities include your usual gambit of sports (soccer, football, basketball, baseball/softball, etc.), crabbing and fishing, boating and sailing, kayaking and canoeing, running and hiking, beaches and bonfires, and horseback riding. We have nature preserves Cypress Swamp and Flag Ponds, as well as the Marine Museum, which serves as our own, public mini-aquarium. There's Anne Marie Gardens, if you like outdoor art. You used to be able to visit the Nuclear plant (before 9-11). Of course, there's the Tiki Bar, which opens on Solomons Island every spring and shuts down before winter hits. Local bands (of which there might have been 3**. Maybe.) might play at bars, the Clubhouse in Lusby, or the St. Leonard Volunteer Firehouse. Outside of that, get ready to spend a lot of time in friends' houses and basements. For many, this leads to a lot of a) illicit drug use (It was rumored that the Ranch Club, a residential district, had either a heroin addict or dealer on every street and that, in this particular region, heroin was cheaper than pot) or b) deviant sex (boredom is the mother of invention). If you did neither, you were left to make your own fun - just hanging out and having a good time with your pals. Sometimes, we went across the bridge to the Ihop in St. Mary's because it stayed open late. A selection of my friends began making movies for fun - which usually wasn't a bad idea. Note, however, that going and "doing something" takes time - most places worth traveling to are between 15 min-30 min away. Traveling to Baltimore, D.C., or Waldorf meant gathering a day trip involving an actual reason to go.

And that's Calvert County for you. The essence captured. I actually had a pretty decent time when I lived there. But, I admit, I only go back under very limited circumstances.

* - the running joke: since Patuxent High was in the "poorer" part of the county, yet was relatively new, ran great programs, and had the heads of the Advanced Placement commission as teachers, the "money got mad" and pushed for a new school in their district to entice PHS staff up towards the north.

- Another running joke: There's a Patuxent Elementary School and a Patuxent High School. Patuxent Middle School, however, does not exist - because the administration doesn't want to have to deal with a school with the initials "PMS."

** - On Local Bands: I only remember two of them - There was Hydra FX, who everyone liked because they actually were pretty decent and everyone knew them, and the Flinging Ferrets, who everyone hated because they sucked, were annoying, and, also, everyone knew them.