Friendsville.

BY: andrew bucket

Just before the American revolution, a man named John Friend arrived in Maryland with his wife Mary Friend and by presenting the mere payment of their friendship,  they got the Shawnee Indians to let them build a cabin near the Youghiogheny River, known as the “Yough River,” to many locals, and the “Yo! River” to many local teens (really.)

Though over 200 years have passed, there are still many Friends still living in their own Friendsville; direct descendents of the original Friend: John. The town motto is “the friendliest little town!” To get there you take Friendsville Rd, and if you’re a friend of a Friend, like I am, then you get to attend a reunion of the Friends, which is put together by the Friend Family Association of America. Friends from all over the country come and get together to have burgers, throw some horse-shoes, and generally goof off in Friendly kind of way.

The Friends are a very old family as you can gather, as old as America.  But after World War II, the MD state government built a dam upstream of the Yo! River, causing the railroad to be all but abandoned. The loss of this railroad would destroy the timber industry that had allowed Friendsville to be the once thriving and bustling community with many businesses, hotels, and restaurants. The community was forced to get creative, slapping together a new economy by taking advantage of the local geography: rivers and streams, woods and hills.

Kayaking, white water rafting, fishing, and camping are now the chief components of commerce in Friendsville, whose economy is now built around a sort of outdoorsy tourism. If you grow up there and plan on staying, you’re either slinging campsites or you got a wicked side cast. Some Friends leave, and pursue a different dream, but often to the dismay of other Friends, who want to keep the circle of Friends alive in the town that bares their oh-so-punnable namesake.

So what Friend is my friend? Chuck Friend, 42. The son of Rasmus Friend, Chuck is a former tackle for the North Garret Huskies, and is the now-owner of a private school uniform design boutique and manufacturer in Michigan. I worked for a short while in the private school uniform business when I was 18 and I dealt with Chuck often. When he called my store I’d say “what’s up-chuck?”

Chuck left home at 19 with some money he had inherited from the late Rasmus Friend. The money was in the form of 75 year old savings bonds which had acrued formidable interest. Chuck drove west in a truck , also formerly belonging to Rasmus, and made it as far as Nevada before it died. He bussed himself to California and lived near the beach in San Fransisco for 7 years until he met his partner Phil. It was Phil who had just finished graduate work in business management, that would convince him to move to Michigan where jobs awaited them in the exciting field of private school uniform fashion.

“I told that queen he would see me flagpole sitting on top of the Georgia capitol in confederate chaps before I would move to fucking Michigan. But…look at me now!”

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I feel a real sense of arrival when we reach the first signs for Friendsville after a glorious but long drive from D.C to the western most point of Maryland, the whole way listening to Chucks favorite band: Long December by Counting Crows, unplugged.

Any guess what gets old faster than Counting Crows? Acoustic Counting Crows.

Oh, but right, I felt a sense of arrival. It is indeed the constant appearance of the word “friend” that makes you feel like this town abides by a gilded rule that somehow protects your well-being, and ensures you’ll have a nice time in this far off ville.

It’s no Greenland; the name is no false attraction. Friends do await you. But when you get there you may at first think you’ve been had.

Once Chuck and I are in town, the desolation is unignorable. It was Saturday, the peak day for tourism, and we drove through the empty streets like a team of astronauts surveying the moon.

Chuck showed me the place where he stood and tossed his “real doctors stethoscope,” a boyhood treasure, into the stream on the day of his fathers death. He says he threw it because he had used the thing to listen to his sick fathers heartbeat every day, and wanted his heart to be the last one ever listened to through the toy instrument.

“I know, god, I was a dark child. So…poetic don’t you think? Like a regular Jewel or something…have you read her poems?” Chuck squeezes pretend nipples and pumps his crotch outward much like Jewel would do.

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The Friends that await you are amazing. The town has 539 residents, and they say everyone definitely knows at least one Friend. Some Friends know everyone, like these guys:

Jordy Kaye Friend had stayed in Friendsville after high school to be close to her boyfriend Cal. She knows everything about the local flora and fauna which makes her many tourists favorite guide on treks through the woods, and she also gives tours to ecology and environmental science students from WVU, UMD, Frostburg, and a few other schools I can’t remember.

Steve and Sharon Friend own a kayak rental shop that also sells a number of Friendsville souvenirs. Steve met Sharon, a former nurse, when he was injured on a kayak run. He was unconscious for 3 hours, and for all of which she read to him from Charles Darwin (a favorite author in this town of nature lovers.)

Their son Chas was allowed to invite his friend Brandon to the reunion.

These two both aspire to be professional skateboarders and hate Friendsville because

“…we went to Colombia, MD and they have a skate park. It was legit. I built a ramp here but my friend Lucas broke it. It’s cuz he’s not good at all.”

“Yea, Lucas sucks.”

Deal Island.

BY: Andrew Bucket

In the early 2000′s, the bus company then known as The Somerset Commuter decided to remove the line that ran into Deal Island. The only way there is by taking MD route 363, a scenic road punctuated by cemeteries and churches. As Elijah Rundell would tell me “lot’a people take to boats only because this ground here is cold, like the very dirt of this place was full of old, angry things.“

In March, when I contacted Sam Barls, the dock supervisor,  about visiting the town he asked if I would need a guide. I thought it could definitely help me since my cursory research had revealed this town had no commerce other than seafood and real estate. There were no restaurants, local businesses (other than general stores), no museums, no bars, nothing– except boats and cemeteries and lots of water. It seemed the pulse of this place was indeed somewhere under the skin, and a local would need to take my hand and guide it to the radial artery, so to speak.

He suggested I link up with a sailor that Sam Barls had known for 20 years . A guy who had been a friend of Sam’s late father, Leonard; also a sailor.

The elder Barls had been a skipjack captain but retired in 1986 after a particularly strange voyage to the Florida Keys during which a member of his crew had suffered what investigators supposed to be a nervous breakdown  whent the ship was anchored about 6 nautical miles offshore of Key West.  According to the final postulate of the detectives: the crewman had never gone to bed, had smoked at least 14 cigarettes in his quarters in one hour, and finally attempted to swim to the island of Key West at around 4 in the morning. Barls woke and rang the bell to wake the crew but searched the boat for his companion when he failed to report to deck. The crew only found a Deal Island patch ripped from a jacket and stuck to the helm with a old pocketknife.

His body was spotted days later by a young girl on a commercial cruise ship and cause of death was determined to be of heart attack, though the man was 35. Leonard Barls believed that sailors from Deal Island were cursed, and would never take a voyage beyond Maryland waters again.

Another sailor aboard that ship was my guide, Elijah Rundell, 63, a now skipjack captain with over 50 years on the seas, and hundreds of voyages, reaching as far as the tip of South America, and coldest reaches of Canada.

We met near the docks where we had a “Deal of A Meal”– a local dish that is named as such since it is composed only of things plucked from the water, for free: clams, crabs, and oysters. The questions for Elijah blooming in my head were definitely of a darker hue. My conversations with Barls had always seemed to be morbidly pointed, as if he wanted to politely express to me that Deal Island was a place with a long history of mystifying, and troubling events.

Elijah was quiet during the meal. He ate very quickly, but nursed his coffee with a thousand yard stare out into the water. The sun was up only an hour.

We finished up and he walked with me around the docks, pointing out the different kinds of boats, the different depths they traverse, and their function on the sea. His voice was slightly gruff, and sandy, with every sentence ending with a mantra-like “hhmpph.” But his accent di not have the rural inflections of working class white males, nor the Baltimore influenced upturn of the O sound, or the drawl of the OW sound that is typical of this region. It was nondescript and blank, like the top of the water.

I was convinced he thought I was a gaylord. I would repeat the names of what he identified as “sloop” “rolling hitch” or “gunwale” but failed to feign a deep interest in these minute things. Was it so obvious to this old fellow that I had my own particular, maybe sinister,  interests in these docks, and his life? He steered our conversation toward the town history, and the rest of the day would be a long and tragic story, as told by this salty Captain.

“I remember learning to swim around this pier here. That had to be the summer my brother died…now that I think of it. I had only just learned but I was terrified of this water after that.”

Elijah took his hat off and with a leathery hand, smoothed his bald head and watched a skipjack head for the distance. I wanted to ask more about the brother but his eyes were somewhere out to sea. He rejoined me by telling me the story of Lee Tierney Wilkes.

“Around 1965, a new ship had docked here and they sold these big oysters from around Solomon’s Island. A father and his two boys, Lee and P.J. Two hulking bastards, teenage and full of it. They made after my sisters and after Lenny’s cousin Trish. That’s Lenny Barls, my old friend. He past.”

We continued toward the dock office.

“Well the older one Lee made a date with Trish to meet real late by the boats and go walking. That’s what we called fucking back then. Well they get to it. Right on Trish’s daddy’s boat and that old bastard sure enough found them there.  We heard all this shit happening from the dock office. That’s where we got shitfaced at night. We step out to watch. Lee goes running off into the dark and then we just hear “OW SHIT FUCK BASTARD”  Well that moron Lee had run right through some fishing tackle and got a bunch of rusty hooks in his feet. Aint think much of it. But, you know, week or two, that shit turned into tetnis or gangrene or something and that poor bastard lost both his legs up to the knees. He never showed up here after that.”

He walked me to the cemetery, as I had asked to see the section for sailors which dates back to early years of colonial settlement.

“This island isn’t really Deal Island, you see. It was a prison for British criminals during colonial times. They sent them here to do hard labor. This was called Devil’s Island, and you see that building over there, that was the hookers quarters. Well they called it the Dame’s Quarters, but really they called it the Quarters of the Damned.”

I asked him if he thought the island was a scary place.

“It’s not some kind of haunted house thing. There aint a ghost hooker running around. I can tell you, this place has stories and they mostly end in a bad way. It’s not like there’s just one ghost we can chase out or what have you. It’s the way this town feels from your feet up to the top of your head. I always thought that lot’a people take to boats only because this ground here is cold, like the very dirt of this place was full of old, angry things.”