My Maryland

(“Celebration” doesn't quite apply to every December 31st catalogued. On more than one occasion, I was alone—both happily and not—when the clock struck 12, once watching Casablanca for the first time; in other years, sound asleep when the grey beard handed the reins to the newborn.)

There are 34 consecutive entries (the Ark & the Dove went to press too early to capture 12-31-10), from a honeymoon outing to see John Lee Hooker in Montreal to rocking out at the old Sticky Fingers saloon on East Cross Street to, not so long ago, an afternoon talking to a childhood friend of the King in Tupelo, Mississippi.

One year, I just sat in the Denny's near the MVA on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, watching the hopeful drunks come and go as my buddy John Elliott V banged out plates of pancakes, club sandwiches, and cheeseburgers in the galley.

Many of the milestones—particularly those on the far side of 40, when getting bombed and being squeezed between hundreds of other bombed people had lost its charm—were spent with my mother and father over simple, early evening meals.

An especially memorable New Year's Eve a few years ago encompassed nothing more dramatic than a long walk: from here to there and back again.

According to the manila folder (not beige but dark brown, reminiscent of tree bark), "After steamed shrimp with toasted garlic baguette and salad on Orchard Road, Dad and I walked to the Linthicum shopping center…"

(Skip Booth, the historian of northern Anne Arundel County, notes that the Linthicum Shopping Center was built in stages between 1948 and 1954 and was once anchored by Wayson's Gas Station.)

My father, a good-timer who danced away half a century of New Year's Eves with Mom when "singing and swinging" and swaying "cheek-to-cheek" were in vogue, accompanied me through back roads to High's Dairy Store.

We looked at Christmas lights along the way, remarking on neighbors long gone (the good and the meddlesome), the ancient Benton-Shipley Cemetery, and cul-de-sacs that were once woods.

At High's—a Maryland institution, founded in the Old Dominion as an ice cream parlor in 1932 and now headquartered in Hanover—the clerk brewed a fresh pot of coffee and I bought a couple of lottery tickets, which proved to be worthless.

How lucky am I?

A warm, dollar cup of coffee and the old man by my side, walking under our own power along the cold and quiet curves of memory lane.

Back on Orchard Road, I tuned in WETA-FM, the volume down low (the radio remains more of a marvel to me than the Internet, especially in the dark), and commenced the ritual of perusing the journal of the year just past.

In 2010, that included spinning yarns for you about everything from Eastern Shore Hall of Famers to Eastern Avenue popcorn queens.

And this: As January fades into February and Opening Day seems more distant than the ball Frank Robinson hit completely out of Memorial Stadium in 1966—last winter, more than five feet of snow fell.

It came like a combination of punches, one storm after the other: bang, bang, bang.

My Dad's grandfather clock—promised to my son one day far into the future—chimes a dozen times, and I wonder where I put the shovel.

More works by Rafael Alvarez can be found at his website www.alvarezfiction.com

He can be contacted via orlo.leini@gmail.com