I was born in Frederick, Maryland at Frederick Memorial Hospital. I lived in a small cottage on an estate in Frederick for my first few months in the world but the property ended up being sold for development, so my parents moved to a giant old farm mansion out on Ed Crone Lane - as my brother and I grew older we simply referred to it as "The Frederick House". We lived in this house for a few years until we hit the road to go tree planting (more about that adventure in another post).
My first memories are a surreal jumble of events that occurred at The Frederick House - including the time when the attic door blew open during a storm and a horde of bats flew down into the living room where we were watching TV and my father had to chase them out of the house. The property was sprawling and flanked by farm fields. There were some interesting landmarks at The Frederick House as well. Among the creepier ones was a path that led from the main house to the shed (back in the day, the slave quarters) which was made of stones, but not just any stones - they were actually slave gravestones! There were fireplaces in every room in the main house and it was so big and run down when my family moved in that we didn't even use some of the rooms. My parents actually put in a lot of work on that house. My father was working construction jobs at the time and he took scraps from work sites to build some things - he added a brand new porch on one side of the house and built me and my brother a playhouse in the back yard.
For awhile now I have been wondering whatever became of that house. I have been to Frederick several times in the past year or so because my good friend Trevor lives there and each time, I've thought about driving by the old house and seeing if it was still there or not. My father always told me that he didn't think it could possibly be still standing - Frederick has gone through a lot of development since we lived there 20 years ago!
The other day I got it in my head that I wanted to go see it, so i called my friend Ben (who also lives in Frederick) and got him in on the plan. I would drive to Frederick after work, meet at Ben's house, we'd get bundled up and grab some flashlights and head out there. Now most of you are probably thinking - Why did you go at night? It's the dead of winter! Are you out of your mind? Well... I can't really explain why I decided to go when I did... so just read on.
First we Google Mapped the area but you can't tell on Google Maps if a house is actually there or not so I had to download Google Earth and try to check it out that way. The house is kind of buried in a clump of trees and the Google Earth picture was from pretty far away so it was hard to tell if the actual structure was still there or just some trees disguising a foundation. In any event, the driveway was still there so I figured it wasn't paved over with a Wal-Mart just yet. After that we went to a liquor store next to Ben's place and bought some bottles of wine. Then we set out for Ed Crone Lane. It was freezing cold and snowy but luckily the farmland was well it by a full moon! (Creepy, I know.) We drove by the driveway once and there was a giant chain link fence blocking us from driving down. Not to be deterred, we parked the car on another street and then took our flashlights and wine and jumped the fence!
It was strange walking down the driveway - I remember going up and down it many times as a youngster - and the trees were sort of shrouding the area where the house would be, so I was a little nervous we'd get down there and see nothing.
But this is what we saw:
The house was there...still standing...but a burnt out shell. At first, I was just excited that it was still there but then the eeriness of the empty brick husk started to sink in. We walked around the whole house and even went into it. There were no floors or anything - just a collapsed roof and beams and charred bits of metal and wood piled up in the basement. The old slave quarters/shed was still completley intact and the path of stones was still there. My dad told me to look for the cornerstone that had the year the house was built etched into it but I never did find it. Perhaps they took it out before they burned the house down (I later found out that it was burnt as practice for fire fighters). I am glad there was at least something still there. The saddest part was probably seeing the porch that my dad worked so hard to build reduced to broken 2x4 planks strewn around and overgrown with weeds.
The full moon added an interesting light and made for some really great pictures (thanks to Ben's great camera and skills):
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