Join us June 5 at the Hollywood Theatre in Arbutus as Welcome To Baltimore, Hon! hosts the area premiere of , an award-winning documentary by Minneapolis-based filmmaker and author Susan Marks that features the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

Of Dolls and Murder uses the Nutshell Studies as a springboard to explore forensic science, from CSI to the Body Farm at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Marks also followed Baltimore City homicide detectives as they worked a case.

At the center of the documentary are the Nutshell Studies and Frances Glessner Lee, the remarkable woman who made them in the 1930s and 40s. On display at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the hand-crafted dollhouse-size models reconstruct actual crime scenes. They were used–and still are–to train cops in an annual seminar.

John Waters loans his voice by narrating Of Dolls and Murder.

The documentary will be shown for the first time in the Baltimore area on June 5 at 7 p.m. at the Hollywood Theatre. A question-and-answer period with the filmmakers and members of the medical examiner’s office follows the filming. Tickets can be purchased in advance online for $8 and will be available at the door for $10.

Images: Susan Marks

Images: Susan Marks

Images: Susan Marks

Frank Lidinsky and wall of 45s. Photos by Caryn Coyle.

John Lennon’s autograph with the words, “Your friendly compére,” is rare. Add the autographs of George, Paul and Ringo on the same slip of paper — framed and authenticated by Frazer’s of London – and you have a valuable piece of Beatlemania. It hangs on a wall in Frank Lidinsky’s house with thousands of Beatle items.

“Collectors like to ‘one up’ each other,” said Lidinsky. “I can usually trump them with my ticket stub from the Beatles first appearance in Baltimore on September 13, 1964.”

Lidinsky’s fascination with the Beatles began when he was a student in the eighth grade at St. Wenceslaus School in East Baltimore. “Their music was so different than anything else on the radio.

The first Beatles magazine, which sold for 15 cents.

The first song I heard was ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ and it went right to the top of the charts, knocking off ‘There! I’ve Said It Again,’ a ballad by Bobby Vinton,” said Lidinsky.

Sitting on an aluminum folding chair of cornflower blue in the center of his Beatles room, Lidinsky played “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand,” the Beatles recording of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in German. His twenty by twelve foot room has three lighted display cases, two book shelves and walls covered with 45′s, their sleeves, album covers, publicity shots, posters and the prized autographs with the infamous quote from Lennon.

Lidinsky said, “Everything is chronologically ordered and organized by me.” Though, he added, he did not know how many items he had collected.

The first authorized biography, The Beatles, by Hunter Davies, McGraw Hill, 1968, is one of many on the bookshelf. In a dark wooden hutch are miniature Beatles instruments, including one of Ringo’s drum set with the signature “Beatles” logo, and baby clothes that carry John Lennon’s name.

There is a check — never cashed for $.75 — on display from Apple Records. It is a refund for the dues Lidinsky paid as a member of the Beatles’ fan club. The check was sent to him when the Beatles disbanded in 1972. “I was a member of the fan club from its inception in 1964 until they no longer performed as a group and the fan club was dissolved,” he said.

Display case of Beatles artifacts.

In one of his display cases is a black and white photo of the crowd entering the Civic Center in 1964 and Lidinsky’s ticket stub. Neither of the Beatles’ shows that day was sold out, he explained. “There were probably ten thousand at each show, but you could still walk up to the Civic Center and buy a ticket. It was the most exciting day to be in Baltimore.” At the Civic Center, Lidinsky recalled, “I was outnumbered by screaming girls, ten to one.”

Lidinsky maintains that he never lost interest in the Beatles, “By the mid seventies, most guys were into The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. I always remained loyal to the Beatles.”

Autographs of all four Beatles.

Word spread about Lidinsky’s collection and young women who had outgrown the Beatles, offered their memorabilia to him. “I’ve been doing this for almost fifty years,” he said, holding the first magazine he purchased for 15 cents at a drug store before he saw the Beatles perform at the Civic Center.

Lidinsky had his photo taken on Abbey Road when he visited Britain in1972. “The people at Apple Records were very nice,” he said. “They were blasé about the Beatles, though. Their fascination was with Elvis!”

He invites “believers,” not tourists to see his collection and listen to the Beatles. Along with “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in German and English, Lidinsky played “The Magical Mystery Tour” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” He reported that a member of the British House of Commons had come to visit. But not John, Paul, George or Ringo.

“I would love to show this to Paul or Ringo,” Lidinsky said. On the wall leading to the memorabilia room are collages of the newspaper coverage on the day George Harrison died. There is also a framed headline from The Baltimore Evening Sun: “Ex-Beatle Lennon Murdered in New York.”

“There is a Beatles museum in Liverpool,” Lidinsky said, sitting in a room that could possibly rival what is on display in Britain. “But none that I know of in the U.S.”

“Catch a cannonball, to take me down the line …” — The Band

Clarksdale, Miss. – First, a moment of silence for the soul of a great American, the Arkansas drummer and singer Levon Helm, dead of cancer on April 19, 2012.

Here in the upper Delta – home to the country’s finest blues museum – I began cruising for early afternoon ribs. I’d passed the morning some 75 miles north at Graceland, taking photos and buying postcards at the King’s Memphis manse and then headed south on the highway little Bobby Dylan revisited so well.

I’d been to the Delta Blues Museum several times before, the first on my maiden Mississippi voyage in 1984 when it was still located in a corner of the public library, anchored by a wax figure of Muddy Waters. The new museum houses Muddy’s entire Stovall plantation shack, reassembled board by board.

My destination is Los Angeles – from Crabtown to Tinseltown – and I always take routes through the Great Magnolia State, which I have criss-crossed a hundred times since figuring out in high school that Led Zeppelin didn’t write any of the songs upon which the dirigible was built.

I drove slowly along the streets near the museum: Choctaw, Catalpa, Pecan, enjoying a fabulous spring day, a lazy Thursday, windows down and Freddie King singing from the dashboard: “I could spend a month of Sundays, talkin’ about the places I’ve been …”

As I turned onto the 300 block of State Street, across the street from Hick’s Suprette, I saw smoke rising from the front yard of a derelict cottage sided with sky-blue wooden planks.
Tending a battered grill on the front walkway – the cast iron kind you find in state parks – was a middle-aged man of indeterminate age in a burgundy jersey with the name COAHOMA written in white letters.

I slowed to the curb near the open gate, opened the passenger window and – like a brazen suburban dope fiend rolling up to the corner of Denison & Edmondson and asked: “You selling?”

He was a very animated man – smiling beneath a blue ball cap the same light color of the house – and waved me into his yard.

“Come on,” he said. “What you want?”

“I was hoping you were selling ribs?” I said, pointing to the grill, which he fed with kindling, twigs and scrap wood from the yard.

It was clear immediately that this wasn’t a commercial concern. The man was grilling pork chops, the burning wood bathing a couple of chops with smoke, for his own supper.

“Ain’t got no bread,” he said, offering me a pork chop off the grill with his hands. I took it by the bone, blew on it a little bit and chomped. It was absolutely delicious, cooked just enough to be done without being dry and seasoned with the most secret of the world’s secret ingredients: salt and pepper.

He laughed while I tore into the chop, tickled by the sight of me enjoying the meal. He said he was a Vietnam veteran and when I asked his name, he just said, “You can call me ‘the Meat Man’” and offered his elbow to bump because his fingers, and mine, were too greasy to shake.

“I’m Ralph,” I said.

When I gave him $10 for his generosity the Meat Man began quoting Scripture, saying it was no coincidence – that there ain’t no coincidence in God’s world – that we had crossed paths.

He said he would use some of the money to buy bread to go with the rest of his chops. I think I can guess what else the cash was used for but to be honest, he did not smell of liquor. I really don’t know and I certainly don’t care. I also left him with three bottles of cheap bottled water.

The man’s high spirits got me so excited – licking sweet and salty pig fat from the corners of my mouth – that this Catholic boy was moved to quote some Scripture too. Pointing to the sawbuck in his hand, I bellowed: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s!”

The Meat Man loved that one!

“Hallelujah!” he cried as I walked back to the car. “Hallelujah!”

During the 1830s and 1840s, Samuel Morse had a workshop in Relay, a community near the Patapsco River, where he developed the single-wire telegraph system.

Samuel F. B. Morse

Morse initially planned to dig a trench and bury the telegraph line. (In the 1880s, when Thomas Edison developed his electric distribution system in New York, he also initially chose burying wires in tar-filled trenches).

The rocky geography in the area through Patapsco State Park to Ellicott City made trench-digging prohibitively difficult. Morse’s Plan B was to elevate the telegraph line off the ground by stringing it to a series of poles stuck in the ground.

This area had the first telegraph–later telephone–poles.

Demitrios Avgerinos has the look of a chef whose cooking you must try. His white apron is not spotless and he wears it like a man who “lives to cook.”

“From a young boy, I’ve worked in restaurants. I was thirteen years old and I helped the chef,” he said. Demitrios came to Baltimore from Chios, Greece in 1970. “A land of opportunity and good people.” Demitrios was the chef on a merchant marine ship before he landed in the U.S.

“Fresh” was the word my companion and I kept using to describe the food we ate at Demitrios’ restaurant, Acropolis at 4714 Eastern Avenue in Greektown. (Open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 AM to 10 PM, 11 PM on Friday and Saturday.)

Demitrios described the manner in which he selects the fish he serves at Acropolis: “The eyes of the fish must be clear. When I gut the fish, if it is not firm, it is not fresh.”

Demitrios Avgerinos

“Everything is homemade here,” said the Acropolis’ manager, George Avgerinos, Demitrios’ son, who started work in the family business when he was twelve. “I’ve been a busboy, dishwasher, waiter, you name it,” he said.

George played soccer at Catonsville Community College before he married Phaedra, a teacher and they had Dimitrios, six years old, Tsambika, three, and Kosmas, eleven months old.

George’s mother, Despina, makes and rolls all of the Acropolis pastries by hand. We ate several. The spinach pie, $5.95, which was baked in Despina’s flakey filo dough, was browned and piping hot. It had a creamy spinach taste. In fact, the blend of spinach and feta with the pastry was excellent.

Chicken souvlaki platter

Another of the specialties offered at the Greektown Reading Series is the Acropolis stuffed grape leaves, also called dolmathes. We tried them before our meal as an appetizer for $6.75. The dolmathes were served warm. The leaves were crunchy, tasted fresh and the rice and ground beef were deliciously blended with herbs.

George and Despina Avgerinos

Acropolis also serves Greek wine. We got to sample three of them. Demestic Red, which was light and full flavored, is $5 a glass. The Kretikos, an effervescent, drier red wine is $6 a glass, and it was our preference. A third glass of wine, sold for $5 a glass, is Maurodephe, a sweeter red wine, which reminded me of brandy. Our waiter, Vasilios Philippou, a Baltimore native with deep Greek roots, told us many of the restaurant’s customers prefer the sweeter wine for dessert.

Vasilios, whose cousin is Jason Filippou the executive director for development at the Greektown Community Development Corporation, surprised us with hummus and tirokafteri, each served with grilled pita bread for $5.50. Tirokafteri, a feta dip, had a taste that was just spicy enough to give it a kick and the pita was fresh and soft; perfect.

Blackened sea bass

The Greek salad, which is also offered in a small portion for $6.95 or a larger serving for $11.95, was beautifully presented with a gravy pitcher of Acropolis’ homemade creamy house dressing. The salad had tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, black olives, green peppers and generous slices of feta cheese with oregano sprinkled on them.

We picked a Sunday to dine at the Acropolis. Free honey balls, called loukoumades, are served with every meal on Sundays. The loukoumades tasted like fluffy doughnuts. Sweet and airy. Wonderful.

Greek salad

“It tastes a little like a wonderful homemade baklava without the nuts,” my companion said. “Very light. Not heavy.”

Opened on December 1, 1987, the Acropolis is celebrating a quarter century of serving generations of customers who have been coming from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and all over Maryland.

“My father has always been a chef,” said George Avgerinos, who works side by side with Demitrios in the kitchen.
“I dreamed about cooking here,” Demitrios added. “My grandfather told me how good America was.” Indeed, Demitrios met his wife, Despina, in Baltimore. Though both are from the same Greek island, they did not know each other. “I was from the north and she was from the south of Chios,” he said. They married in 1974.

Demitrios Avgerinos smiled, “From the first day I arrived in America, I have been happy here.”

Photos: Caryn Coyle

For those of a certain age, the name Hyman Pressman will conjure memories of an indefatigable public servant who wrote poetry. Baltimore’s comptroller from 1963 to 1991, Pressman liked to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade with a shillelagh.

Hyman Pressman

“He was a character,” said Bill Driscoll, who works for Baltimore City Hall President Jack Young. “He was an independent. He took on the utility companies. Hyman Pressman fought for the little guy.”

Each year on St. Patrick’s Day, Hyman Pressman proudly displayed his shillelagh which was given to him by a Jesuit priest, Joseph Dougherty and Joseph William Lanasa, who was from a family active in Baltimore’s politics. A metal band is secured to the knob of the shillelagh bearing all three of the men’s names.

This year, the Pressman shillelagh travels from Mt. Vernon, up Charles Street, left on Pratt and onto Gay Street gripped in the hand of Irish American Bill Driscoll.

“My granddaughter, Julianna Driscoll escorts me on one side and my niece, May Berger, on the other,” said Driscoll, a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Driscoll’s family moved to Baltimore when he was a child. However, Driscoll has traced his roots to the Driscolls of Baltimore, Ireland. His maternal ancestors are from nearby Clear Island, “one of the few places in Ireland where they still speak Gaelic,” he added.

Shillelaghs, immortalized in Irish songs–think of shillelagh law in “Finnegan’s Wake”–were used to settle differences, bataireacht, several hundred years ago. Made from black thorn or oak, shillelaghs were smeared with butter and placed on chimneys to cure, giving them their black, shiny appearance. Shillelaghs could also be hollowed at the knob where they were gripped and filled with molten lead to make them “loaded sticks.”

City Comptroller Pressman was a familiar site walking down Charles Street brandishing his shillelagh at the St. Patrick’s Day parade. On the photograph of him from the 1972 parade he wrote:

Bill Driscoll

I am City Comptroller
I write poems on city time
I don’t understand iambic pentameter
So I just try to make them rhyme
Erin go bragh!

In fact, when Hyman Pressman died in 1996, he was buried on St. Patrick’s Day. His service at Sol Levinson & Brothers in Northwest Baltimore began just as the Baltimore St. Patrick’s Day parade ended.

To honor Pressman, Irish American Bill Driscoll will carry his shillelagh, which was given to him by Frank Lidinsky, son of Richard A. Lidinsky, Pressman’s deputy for decades. “Hyman Pressman left his shillelagh to Frank’s dad and I am proud to carry it on St. Patrick’s Day,” Bill Driscoll said.

In 1974, Hyman Pressman wrote the poem, Irish American Day:

Every Irish heart beats gayer
Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day,
As the Ancient Irish prayer
Makes us all feel bright and gay.

May your arms be full of power.
May you have your daily bread,
May you get to heaven an hour
Before the devil knows you’re dead.

Carrier pigeon dispatches between my daughter Amelia and me on January 15, 2008 as I took my good old time approaching Austin, Texas from the west.

Me: “Hello from the hometown of Davy Crockett – Ozona, Texas. I’m writing an essay about the greatest seafaring movies of all time at the Ozona public library.”

Her: “Well that sounds . . . I don’t know how it sounds.”

Me: “It’s a nice life, wandering around, meeting people, writing what I want. I haven’t had to rent a hotel room yet. The Tacoma is really comfy with pillows and sleeping bag. Enough room to stretch out.”

Her: “Send greetings to the Ditzells.”

Me: “Will do.”

I spent the day visiting the Ditzells, who in a year would become my Amelia’s Lone Star sister-in-law and brother-in-law. As my Mom likes to say about folks for whom she has respect and affection: “Good people.”

Marcie Champion and husband Sam Ditzell live in Austin, often called the Third Coast, the Texas state capital and home to the LBJ Library, where the pens Lyndon used to enact civil rights legislation are on display.

It’s the town of where – over several months in 1968 – the great Johnny Winter recorded a live album at the Vulcan Gas Company at 316 Congress Avenue before the world found him. The population of Austin was less than 400,000 when Johnny made that record. It is just about 800,000 now.

The city has boomed several times in the past 40 years and as a consequence a lot of what used-to-be, both physically and spiritually, is gone.

“Believe it or not,” said Baltimore blues guitarist Pete Kanaras, keeping an eye on things back home on Macon Street as I criss-crossed the continent. “I have never played in the city that changed my life.”

These are the comforts of home, the opposite of the nomadic sojourn: indoor plumbing, refrigeration, a couch for napping in the sunshine; the ability to unpack all of your shit, spread it out on the floor and decide what is necessary for the next leg of the journey (what to wash, what to stuff in the back of the truck, what to shit can) and what is not.

All of the above are available on the road, of course – McDonald’s for bathrooms and coffee; the mattress and sleeping bag in the bed of my pick-up to sleep for free on parking lots; roadside picnic tables to go through one’s stuff while making a peanut sandwich; Laundromats crowded with more kids than a nursery school on the bad side of town.

But everything under one roof, where you can lock the front door and go about your business – walk in circles if you like, scratching your ass – that’s comfort, however un-poetic, and that’s what I got at Sam and Marci’s, the walls of their home hung with front pages of the 20th century’s landmark events.

Janis and Danko on the Festival Express

After my daily nap, I got a massage at Sam’s health club (thousands of miles behind the wheel, the body molding itself into stiff ropes of tension and pain) and joined the Ditzells for dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant downtown.

The food was very good, but the sort of place that didn’t exist when Stevie Ray Vaughn was honing his Hendrix meets the Alamo act at dives like the One Knife, music that would move fans to erect a statue of Vaughn near downtown a few years after his 1990 death in a helicopter crash.

Cruising by statues and reading the inscriptions – “Be sure you are right, then go ahead . . .” is chiseled on the Crockett statue on the Ozona town square – is often easier than accepting hospitality, however sincerely offered.

Unless it is an emergency or the destination is sacred, like the visits I have made over the years to my Aunt Dolores [born in Baltimore, 1929, in the city of Nelson Algren since the mid-1950s] – both timing and personalities have to be in sync to dock at an oasis.

If you have miles to cover and making good time (the coffee has kicked in just right; Dion singing about Elvis and Jesus; the sun or the moon is lighting the road in a way that draws you down the line) the person who lives beyond the passing highway sign has to be awfully special for you to stop.

[I like pulling over to take photos of highway signs for towns with the same names as friends or loved ones: Amelia, Louisiana; Norman, Oklahoma; Anna, Ohio.]

Other times you are dead tired, perhaps there is already 600 miles between you and the place you left at dawn. The folks that would let you stay a night or two are not bad people – neither mean nor stupid or especially boring – they are just people you’d rather not see.
This usually happens at places you’ve stayed once before and couldn’t wait to get back on the road. So you keep driving, droopy eyes peeled for the Golden Arches.

Port Arthur, home to my motorcycle riding, seafaring Roman Catholic priest friend Sinclair Oubre, is a natural gas and oil town. It’s most famous native daughter – Janis Joplin – once distinguished Port Arthur from Beaumont, the hometown of fellow blues shouter Johnny Winter, like this.
“Port Arthur is the asshole of the world,” Janis reportedly told a reporter. “And Beaumont is 20 miles up it!”

[Wanna see Janis warbling a drunken sing-along with Rick Danko to the old prison chant “Ain’t No More Cane?” Rent the documentary “Festival Express,” a Woodstock on rails.

Wanna hear a funny story about the house where Janis lived from the time when she was a junior Girl Scout to the year she dropped out of college? Keep reading.]

Poster for Johnny Winter show at Vulcan Gas Company

[In 1974, at the height of his pop stardom in the wake of the monster hit “Frankenstein,” Edgar was my first concert. I saw him at the old Baltimore Civic Center. A local band called Appaloosa opened the show. At the Gulf Coast Museum, I simply said “Thank you.”]

Janis’ birthday fell on a Saturday and I went to her childhood home – 4330 32nd Street – that afternoon. There, I saw the historical marker (once the ugly duckling persona non grata in her own backyard, the years, and tourist dollars, have softened attitudes) and I met the family who unwittingly bought the house of a legend.

“I lived next door for 21 years,” said Almu Cantu, standing with others in the front yard. “Her Mom and Dad were my neighbors for years after Janis died. People from as far away as Brazil would come and knock on my door and say, ‘I guess you know why we`re here.’”

Janis loved the arts, was devoted painting and spent time in the garage – a makeshift art studio – running the clothes dryer to keep warm. Her initials – or maybe her first name and hand print – are said to be in concrete somewhere on the property.

How’s this for an American story?

A young couple makes their way from Mexico for a better life in the United States, landing in California about the time the greatest white female blues singer of the psychedelic era dies of a heroin overdose in Los Angeles.

The couple works hard and does well, saving enough money over the years to finally buy a home. Decades later, they migrate to Port Arthur where there is work in the refineries and housing costs a fraction of what it does in Southern California.

Innocently – how could they know if no one tells them? – the Sanchez family buys a dead rock star’s house. Not any dead rock star but an icon of the rock era, the woman for whom Leonard Cohen wrote “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” whose name is respectfully mentioned in the same breath as Hendrix.

David and Alicia Sanchez bought the Joplin family home in August of 2007 and were immediately distressed to find people hanging out on the front lawn with cameras, peeping in the windows and knocking on the door.

No one thought it important to tell them what they were buying.

Now there is a state historical marker out front to let everyone know.

It’s the morning of January 11, 2012–a gray, cold Wednesday in Highlandtown–and as people wait outside for the bus on Eastern Avenue, Andy Farantos dumps a stainless steel tray of potatoes on the grill in the front window of G&A Coney Island Hot Dogs, the fried onions and chili sauce landmark started by his grandfather in the Roaring 20s.

Andy & Anna Farantos

And then the show begins, a cabaret of odd balls and life long customers who know that the best place to pretend it’s 1955 is the diner off the corner of Eastern Avenue and Eaton Street, next door to the lottery outlet/liquor store and across from one of the city’s first supermarkets.

The first guy in the door has a face like George “Goober” Lindsey on a bad day and some kind of not-from-around-here accent, maybe Crisfield or West Virginia.

Goober stands by the grill and bangs Andy’s ear about the weather–how it always feels colder in the winter if you’ve been caught in the rain. Affable as only someone with nothing better to do can be, he talks about the weather for a full five minutes before taking a stool at the counter.

Andy notes on the sly that such a man will often comes in, ask for nothing but a glass of water and never shut up. The man promptly proves the Greek wrong by ordering a cup of coffee. Running between the grill and the cash register, Andy has an off-the-menu discussion with a much slower speaking young man–good hearted to the point of naivete, an unsettling, tapered shape to his head–who has saved up to buy himself a New York strip steak on Friday.

Farantos unwraps a rectangle of aluminum foil to show the young man a defrosting slab of prime beef and the regular leaves with a breakfast sandwich in hand and dreams of eating like a king in less than 48 hours.

By this time Goober has befriended a middle-aged African-American woman on the stool next to him.

“My son, he’s been sick,” says Goober to this perfect stranger. “He’s got nerve trouble. Who doesn’t have trouble?”

The woman nods–mmm-hmmm–and somehow the conversation turns to Goober’s art work–how he’s been getting back to it lately, how the quiet sketching relaxes him, how, if she doesn’t mind waiting for a moment or two he’d like to show her some recent drawings.

He runs across Eastern Avenue and returns with a large sketch book, opening it on the counter while Anna sets a blueberry pie into a see-through cake dish and dear old Dad lays out the first wave of the day’s hot dogs, described as “all the way” when served with mustard, onion and homemade chili.

On the counter: drawings of barn swallows, magpies and tree swallows while egg sandwiches fly out the front door.

Beauty shared.

Beauty found.

Tom Strawser has been to Indonesia. Germany. The United Kingdom. In all, he’s worked in six foreign countries and five different states opening more than eighty restaurants. But the Cumberland native is most proud of the restaurant he opened six months ago, Bill Bateman’s in Perry Hall. Strawser is the owner of the franchise at 9629 Bel Air Road.

Crisfield crab soup

I had the grilled oysters; six for $8.99 that were served with bacon, fresh goat cheese and barbeque sauce. They were exactly as Strawser described them, “Very different.” The flavors blended together. They were spicy and warm and the cheesy flavor added a little kick to them.

Strawser, who works nine to twelve hour days, opened the Perry Hall Bill Bateman’s last June. “We’ve been open just six months,” he said. “We are serving three to four thousand people each week.” Add the three thousand weekly carry out meals he also serves and Strawser’s franchise is one in which Bill Bateman, himself is very proud.

Bateman, who is a good friend, “takes a lot of pride in his food, he made it all himself,” reported Strawser. Bill Bateman’s homemade Crisfield crab soup, which sells for $5.99 a bowl, is his personal recipe. Hearty, the soup is considered a tomato based Eastern shore favorite. It has crabmeat, fresh carrots, potatoes, corn, peas, onions, green beans, a spicy tomato stock and a generous garnish of crab meat. It is one of the best traditional Maryland crab soups I have ever tasted.

Wings of all varieties are also featured on the menu. From Old Bay to Kentucky Bourbon with southern sugar and spices. Strawser also serves wings so hot they are called “wings from hell.” They start at five wings for $4.79. Ten wings are $8.99, twenty are $16.99. The burgers are all fresh certified Angus beef, served on a toasted Kaiser roll with French fries and they start at $7.49 for “just a plain old fashioned burger.” A burger topped with crab dip, cheddar cheese, crabmeat and Old Bay seasoning is $10.99 and the double-stacked burger with American cheese and bacon is $12.99.

A sampling of the chef’s specials that Strawser serves — along with the enormous Bateman menu — is unusual. White corn, grilled and sprinkled with old bay and feta cheese is $2. Lobster and crab mac and cheese; jumbo lump crab mixed with lobster and a rich artisan cheese sauce, cavatappi pasta and a parmesan crust is $14.99. The trio of dips for $11.99 includes crab, Rueben and spinach and artichoke with tortilla wedges, celery and carrots.

I had Chef McClure’s chicken stuffed with roasted red peppers, spinach, bacon and pepper Jack cheese. It was served with roasted garlic mashed potatoes for $12.99. The chicken was tender and spicy with the warm, blended flavors of the stuffing. The potatoes melted in my mouth. Delicious.

Strawser, who began working at Bill Bateman’s in Towson seven years ago, opened three of Bateman’s restaurants before he bought the franchise in Perry Hall. He took a break to sit down with Christy Carpenter, his girlfriend, who helps with the bookkeeping. Strawser constantly scans the room; jumping up to help someone serve a dish or select a wine.

For me, he recommended the Blackstone Merlot, which was smooth and enjoyable at $6 a glass. From time to time, he would disappear into the kitchen, and reappear to reveal more about his restaurant. “We gutted this place and redid it, blew out the walls and gave it more freedom,” he said, pointing to the bar area that he expanded. Strawser added that he has spent twenty years in the restaurant business and smiled, obviously enjoying himself.

In Greektown, East Baltimore, the blues are alive and well. There may be more than 25 years between them, but local guitarists Pete Kanaras and Robert Frahm share an equal passion for traditional blues from Mississippi to Memphis to Chicago.

They live two houses apart in what they’ve coined “the compound,” adjacent row-homes with a joint backyard, where the generation gap is just a technicality.

Frahm, left, and Kanaras fine tuning their game in Greektown. Photo: Philip Edward Laubner

The respect between them is mutual.

“[Pete] is an incredible guitarist,” says Robert. “And he was always willing to show me a lick.”

“They’re both superb musicians and great guys,” says Glenn Moomau, who plays harmonica with both guitarists regularly.

Glenn first saw Pete play with the Nighthawks in Washington, D.C. over ten years ago, and has been playing with him regularly ever since. For the past two years, he’s been playing with Robert and is always impressed.

“[Robert] just gets better all the time,” says Glenn. “He’ll be world famous some day.”

The timelessness of traditional blues puts Pete and Robert on common ground. Both cite B. B. King as their supreme influence, and both realized their love of the blues in their early teens. Pete can pin down the specific moment when the blues hit him hard.

Pete Kanaras minding the grill. Photo: Philip Edward Laubner

Pete’s family, who owned a diner in upstate New York, discouraged him from pursuing music as a career.

He went to culinary school to respect his family’s wishes, but he never put down the guitar. He took off with the instrument, and about 20 years ago he had the opportunity to open for B. B. King with the band The Knockouts.

“My mom realized then that I was very serious about my…change in vocation,” he says of that night. “One of the greatest nights of my life.”

Robert’s love of the blues developed in Fairfax, VA, where he grew up. At home, he was exposed to artists like Chuck Berry and Robert Lockwood at a young age. His mother had a respectable record collection and played her favorites often.

Robert’s family didn’t resist his dream to be a blues musician. Despite his decision to drop out of high school to pursue music seriously, his parents were supportive. But Robert insists he could never have succeeded without mentors like Pete to show him the ropes.

“There are a lot of good players out there, but Pete was always looking out for me. He was always incredibly kind and generous with his knowledge.”

Speaking to Pete, it’s clear that Robert’s passion and determination encouraged the older musician to take him on.

“He was and is as serious as we all are, and he was that serious at 15 years of age. Remarkable. That’s why we embraced him with open arms; you can’t fake that.”

To Pete, Robert is proof that great blues music can transcend generations well into the future. As an experienced musician, he happily accepted his duty to mentor the next line of up-and-coming blues guitarists.

Over the years, Pete has helped guide other aspiring musicians like Pat O’Shea and Chris O’Leary, who both played in Levon Helm’s blues band.

“Super fine musicians both, and they’re like kid brothers to me,” says Pete.

Kanaras’ optimism about the future of the blues stems from the successful young artists that he’s influenced. But he admits that there’s something special about Robert.

“He has developed his own distinct voice on guitar, which is not an easy thing to do at all in a tradition-based music. I’m as proud of what Robert has accomplished as a parent would be, and he’s only just getting started.”

Robert and Pete both play regular gigs at the Cat’s Eye Pub and Bertha’s in Fells Point. The Pete Kanaras Blues Band will be at the Cat’s Eye on September 4th and the Robert Frahm Trio gigs there on September 17th.

Frahm’s debut CD — “The Robert Frahm Band” – was released when he was 18. It is available online or from the bandleader at any of his gigs.