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Maryland Cracker Barrel Magazine
Celebrating 50 Years
Reflections: Changes Coming to Hub City
By Suanne Woodring
Reminisce with us as we look back on the memories of a few of Washington County's residents. Excerpts featured here are from the current Summer 2024 issue.
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Maryland Cracker Barrel Magazine: Sentinel of Washington County's Heritage
"Along with a new stadium, Hagerstown has a new baseball team with a new name. The new name is the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars honoring the long standing aviation history of the area. The team is a member of the unaffiliated Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. The team mascot is “Stryker”. According to Wikipedia the mascot is “a fictional man whose parents were technicians at Fairchild Aircraft in Hagerstown where the C-119 Flying Boxcars were manufactured....”
"People who have kayaked, canoed or fished on the Potomac River might be familiar with the boulder structures which form a downstream oriented “V”. They can be a hundred or more feet long and are constructed of boulders plucked from the riverbed. They are also visible from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath if you hike or bike. I can recall one at Dam number 4 vividly, though I haven’t been in the river there for about 50 years. Launching a canoe, a hundred yards or so downstream of the dam, we would encounter this structure shortly after putting our Grumman aluminum watercrafts into the river. The mid and late 1960’s were a time with very dry summers; the Potomac
responded with very low flows. Low river discharge meant that the fish weirs, fish traps, or fish pots, I’ve seen or heard all of these terms, were within just inches of the stream surface and care had to be exerted in passing over them, otherwise we’d get hung up. We would look for a bit of a low spot in the weir with a bit more flow. Usually we scraped bottom anyway. We often could see aluminum “plating” on the sandstone boulders making up the fish weir. Fortunately, these vessels were very sturdy and watertight...."
Window to Yesterday
Fish Weirs on the Potomac
By Bryon Middlekauff
"Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, on May 12, 1892, William Preston Lane, Jr., was the son of William Preston Lane and Virginia Cartwright Lane. He attended public school in Hagerstown. He went on to graduate with a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1915. He joined the law firm Lane, Bushong, and Byron in Hagerstown. Lane was a captain in the Maryland National Guard during the Mexican Border Campaign (1916). During World War I Lane joined the 115th Infantry Regiment as a captain and served in France during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He continued service in the military after the war as Assistant Division Adjutant of the 29th Division with the rank of major. Lane resumed the practice of law after returning from the service and began looking at a career in politics. He ran for Washington County State’s Attorney in 1919 but lost. After his defeat, he tried his hand at business. He served as the president of a small newspaper company, as president of a tannery, and married Dorothy Byron on January 17, 1922, and had two daughters, Dorothy and Jean. Lane didn’t give up on politics. In 1928, he was elected to the school board of Washington County...."
Pausing to Ponder:
Governor Preston Lane’s Legacy Benefits Today’s Traveler
By Suanne K. Woodring
Nostalgic Moments:
Oh the Good Old Days
By Carla Kann
"Most of us remember when our parents and grandparents complained of how things had changed since they were young. My generation is no different. When my husband and I get together with our friends, we usually talk about how life has changed since we were kids. Thirty years from now, our children will no doubt be doing the same. Yes, things have changed since we were young; some worse, but some better....
...I believe life changed drastically in this country the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was frightened to see my mother sit in front of the television, hour after hour, gently weeping, with a tissue box by her side. That was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry. There was silence everywhere we went that first week, like the silence a blanket of snow brings to the landscape in the winter. Adults spoke in whispers and stood at storefronts watching the display televisions inside the windows, wondering how someone could kill such a handsome, young president. Children spoke quietly for fear of upsetting adults who already were very distressed. In the years that followed, there were rumors that our own government had conspired to kill Kennedy. These rumors were rampant and only further stoked the fires of mistrust in our own government. The Warren Commission, after years of investigation, eventually concluded that there was no conspiracy by our government and that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman. I personally believe there was much more to that event than any of us suspect but will probably never know...."
