Weird Western Maryland In General

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C&O Canal: The voyage of the Sometub. During World War I, the John Pryor Cowans traveled the canal’s full length in a homemade motorboat christened Sometub -- as in, "That's some tub you got there" -- and wrote a book about the trip that is now free to read online via Project Gutenberg: Sometub’s Cruise on the C. & O. Canal: The Narrative of a Motorboat Vacation in the Heart of Maryland (self-published, 1916;  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43909/43909-h/43909-h.htm). See also John Kelly, “A canal trip from a bygone era.” The Washington Post. 4 May 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-canal-trip-from-a-bygone-era/2013/05/04/c7dd2fae-b3fd-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

Conspiracy: The “most useless” Mr. Savage, whom Providence saved from cannibalism. Our many Savage place names (Mount Savage, Savage Mountain, Savage River) derive not from a racial slur but from the eighteenth-century surveyor John Savage, who helped map the headwaters of the Potomac. One of his contemporaries, the slaveholder William Byrd of Westover, wrote this about him: 

And here I think I ought to do Justice not only to the uncommon Skill, but also to the courage and Indefatigable Industry of Maj. Mayo and two of the other Surveyors, employ’d in this long and difficult Task. Neither the unexpected Distance nor the Danger of being doubly Starved by Hunger and excessive Cold, could in the least discourage them from going thro’ with Their Work, tho’ at one time they were almost reduced to the hard necessity of cutting up the most useless Person among them, Mr. Savage, in order to Support and save the lives of the rest. But Providence prevented that dreadfull Blow by an unexpected Supply another way, and so the Blind Surveyor escapt. 

Byrd was a professional surveyor himself, and this passage in his notorious History of the Dividing Line was almost certainly meant as a prank on a colleague, an in-joke among Byrd’s small readership of witty gentlemen. But the joke entered the oral tradition, where it was taken for scurrilous truth and arguably became Western Maryland’s original conspiracy theory. Two hundred years later, Hamill Kenny still felt the need to debunk it: “A doubtful tradition has it that Savage was blind, felt himself expendable, and offered his body to be eaten by his starving companions.” See Kenny, Hamill. The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984. Second printing, 1999. Page 233. Byrd quote from the 1866 Richmond, Virginia, edition via Google Books.   

Omens, portents and tokens: Death knocks. A classic story of an audible token, an omen of death, was collected in 1948 in Western Maryland by folklorist Dorothy Howard’s students. The location is unclear. 

Both my parents were very religious people, and I know this is an actual happening because I’ve heard them declare it true. 

It was on a cold winter night around 1880. All the family were asleep, when all of a sudden everybody heard this knock, loud and clear. My father got out of bed and went to answer the door. But there was no one at the front door or at the back door either. 

The knock had waked up all the children. … Everybody was all excited, but my father persuaded them all to go back to bed and go to sleep. But my mother and father couldn’t go to sleep; they were too worried. 

Well, about two hours later, they found their fears were right. A second knock came at the door. This time there was a man there and he told them that my brother Lloyd had been killed just two hours before in a train accident. 

See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 46. 

Urban legends: "Gang initiations" on I-68 and I-70. A classic modern myth about big-city criminals targeting random drivers on rural highways as a “gang initiation” went viral in Western Maryland in July 2007, with I-68 and I-70 being the latest supposed kill zones. “DO NOT FLASH HEADLIGHTS AT OTHER VEHICLES!” the email warned. “DO NOT STOP TO HELP BROKE DOWN VEHICLES! DO NOT PICKUP HITCH HIKERS!” It’s a broke-down hoax, the Maryland State Police quickly said. The lousy proofreading was one tipoff; another was the similarity to the 1998 slasher movie Urban Legend, in which the flashing-headlight yarn is explicitly referenced and then re-enacted, along with a dozen other oft-told tales. This particular legend dates at least from the early 1980s, when the kill zones were supposedly in Montana and the villains were claimed to be Hells Angels from California. See Mikkelson, David. “I-68 and I-70 Gang Initiation Warning.” Snopes.com. 13 July 2007. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/i-68-and-i-70/. See also Mikkelson, Barbara. “Flashing Headlights Gang Initiation.” Snopes.com. 30 November 1998. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lights-out/ 

Weather lore: "Mary's gone over the mountain." For centuries, July 2 was observed by Catholics and Anglicans as the Feast of the Visitation, commemorating the pregnant Mary's visit to the pregnant Elizabeth, as recounted in Luke 1:39-56. In Western Maryland, this day became important in weather lore, in Groundhog Day fashion: Whatever the weather on July 2, that will remain the weather for the next six weeks--or, speaking more biblically, the next forty days. "The Virgin Mary goes over the mountain to visit Elizabeth and returns after forty days have passed." Hence a common saying every July 2: "Mary's gone over the mountain." Whether regional weather data demonstrate this over the years would be an interesting research question. See Whitney, Annie Weston, and Caroline Canfield Bullock. "Folk-lore from Maryland." Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society Volume 18 (1925): 121.

Western Maryland Railway vs. the CIA. What claim did one of the region’s major railroads make in November 1948 against the 14-month-old Central Intelligence Agency, and how much money did the CIA pay to settle? These questions are raised by a terse, redacted one-page document in the agency’s own online database of somewhat declassified documents. We know, however, that the railway served Camp Ritchie in Washington County, where much military intelligence work was done during and after World War II; the camp also housed Axis prisoners of war, who presumably needed interrogation. Perhaps the CIA, in shipping personnel and materials to the camp, simply neglected to pay a bill. The Western Maryland Railway is long defunct, but its Western Division headquarters in Cumberland is now the showpiece Canal Place headquarters of the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, which uses WM track between Cumberland and Frostburg. See “Claim by Western Maryland Railway Company.” 30 Nov. 1948. Central Intelligence Agency’s Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. Posted 12 Dec. 2016. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp57-00384r001300080150-6. For Camp Ritchie history, see James Rada Jr., “Camp Ritchie: America’s Secret Weapon During WWII.” Hagerstown Magazine. March 2022. https://hagerstownmagazine.com/2022/03/01/camp-ritchie/