Ride # 3 actually happened the day before ride #2, but I forgot to post about it, so now things are out of order. Not much to report on ride #3 anyway…just did a nice loop from the hut down to Watersedge neighborhood, then back up Dundalk Avenue through the old Dundalk Shopping Center then sort of doubled back to the hut. It was an early morning ride just to get the blood going before heading out to a wedding later that day.
Ride #4 actually happened on monday. It had rained that morning but the news said i the rain was over, so I decided to brave it and headed out on Ye Olde Talera into the crazy wind. My route took me down Peninsula Expressway towards the Sparrows Point industrial area. This area used to be one of the largest employers in Baltimore due to Bethlehem Steel and Bethlehem Steel Shipyard. Pretty much all of the males in my family have worked at the steel mill in one capacity or another at one time, and I after I was born, my first home was in “The Bungalows” right across from the plant, which were basically the company town.
Just before I got to the steel plant though, I took a left down a side road to visit the plant that my dad actually worked at for about 20 years before it closed and they gave him his retirement.
When he worked there it was called National Can. They made cans for soda companies like Shasta, etc. My dad drove a forklift. I used to love going inside that place…there were these huge ovens that baked lithographed printing onto sheetmetal, which would eventually be punched into the shape of a can. The lacquer smelled so good to me.
They also made the “ends” of the cans. When I was very young they were still making the 3 piece cans, with actual removable pull tab. Those pull tabs were all over the ground everywhere around town and pretty sharp, so you had to be careful not to step on them. I remember one day he came home with a “new kind of end for the cans”, which is the pull tab that does not disconnect from the can, …the kind that is still the industry standard today.
The old plant isn’t much to look at now. It has ben bought up by some other company and I think they use it for a cross docking operation or something. The lacquer smell is gone. So is the wonderful rhythm of the machinery. The parking lot used to be filled over capacity with employee cars and those three bay doors would be stuffed with trucks that my dad was unloading or loading. Seeing the whole thing now and what it has become made me kind of sad. That plant pretty much paid for my entire childhood.
Moving onward, I headed back out to Peninsula Expressway to head towards the steel plant. After making a left I came upon one of my favorite signs ever:
I just love the patina, and how the woods has grown up around it. I am sure this sign has been there for at least 30 years. I can only imagine how many steelworkers passed by this thing every day on their way to the mills.
Finally I came down the hill and the steel plant came into view:
The place is huge! These pics are only of a small part of the plant that you can see from the road I was on. There is also a huge furnace which I am pretty sure was the largest in the western hemisphere for a while, or at least in the top three. When they would pour a load of steel at night the entire sky would light up orange which I found to be absolutely amazing. Here is what the blast furnace looks like:
You used to be able to drive right up next to it but now there is all kinds of security, and you can’t really be hanging around taking photos of the place. I’ve always wanted to go in there and watch the steel making process. Did you know that they take all the confiscated guns and such from crimes and toss them into the molten steel once they are done being used as evidence? Also, there have been many deaths where people have fallen into huge vats of molten steel…one of which my dad witnessed first hand when he was working there. He said that after he saw it happen, he took of his hard hat, punched out, and never went back.
I have a real emotional connection to these places. I guess thats why it used to piss me of when hipsterdom was going through that phase where all the trust fund arty farty types with 60k or up design/office/non-manual labor jobs were trying to dress down and look all blue collar with the trucker hats and shit. I mean, I grew up around REAL workaday guys who made money working abusive amounts of hours so they could log overtime pay, busting their asses in hot, dirty, stinky, badly lit warehouses so that they could make sure their kids could have a better life than they did. Those guys didn’t do that so some fucking asymetrical $120 haircut toting “artist” could ironically mimic the look, and I definitely know of at least one case where a real truck driver got pissed at some -high fashion type- for wearing a Cat diesel hat. The trucker guy asked the kid if he drove or worked on Cat equipment, and the kid said “no” and kind of sneered at the guy. The guy responded by saying “well you better damn site take that hat off or I will knock your fucking head in”, which I absolutely LOVED. This happened in line at some carry out restaurant back in the 90′s when I still lived in Baltimore, so it wasn’t your late 2000′s brand hipster, it was a post goth “when Ministry went all metal on us” type. The kid promptly removed the hat. It was the same principle though.
The rest of the ride was fun…up North Point Blvd to Wise Ave. I stopped for a sec on the Bear Creek bridge to see how far of a drop it was to the water, and wondered what I was thinking the day I jumped off it with my cousin. I never dove off it, but those crazy asses were doing flips and shit. It isn’t too terribly high, but it is high enough.
Wise Avenue turns into Holabird Avenue once you pass Merritt Blvd, and about a mile up Holabird I turned into the neighborhood to wrap up a great nostalgia filled ride. It was a route I had been looking forward to taking ever since I knew I was bringing bikes on the trip.
