2024 Emmitsburg

Jack Deatherage

(1/2024) It's been a few years since I sat in the newly finished basement cafeteria of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Whitehall, Columbus Ohio contemplating the year 2000 and the mystery meat we'd been served for lunch that day. My math skills at the beginning of the second grade weren't impressive and sixty-three years later they are even less so. However, after much debate among the second graders around me we eventually determined we'd all be in our forties come the year 2000. Forty was an unimaginable age. Our parents, as old and incomprehensible as they were were not yet forty!

While I'd been hauled across the country and back, lived in Florida and in or near Emmitsburg a couple of times, about one square mile of Whitehall was my world in autumn of 1960. What friends I had lived within two mud-ball throws of our house. School and church were slightly more than half a mile from our door. A public library was even closer and much more interesting than either the church or school. The supermarket was half mile in the opposite direction. Mason Run was a couple of blocks south of us. We played in that water (Flat Run looks like a river in comparison) as often as we could. Time passed, as did I, somehow.

I was two months into learning to hate the French- the Sisters at Holy Spirit Elementary School were evidently a French order. I was struggling to learn English when the abdominal French language was crammed down on me. President Kennedy was assassinated and Dad retired from the USAF. We celebrated Christmas at my Grandfather Cool's outside of Emmitsburg and moved across the state line to begin 1964 half way between Emmitsburg and Fairfield. Come 1968 we were back in Maryland, a mile east of town. Eleven years later I found myself alone, living in a town I barely understood.

What was in Emmitsburg of interest to twenty-five year old me?

Some of Dad and Mom's clans lived in town. Mom's church was in town. There was the little factory on the edge of town that employed me. A library I hadn't set foot in in a decade, a supermarket, a bar I frequented and several liquor stores I patronized.

Town was a place I visited- to see relatives, to buy food, to get drunk and stagger home to the grain fields and woodlots, the lowing of cows. To Middle Creek, whose water I beat with line and lure. The soaring hawks hunting the same rabbits, doves, quail and pheasants I hunted. Depression waited for me in Emmitsburg- it wrapped me tightly for years. My role models were the town drunks and brain damaged drug users- most all of them some years in the cold, cold ground now. Some of them are probably missed by family, some are likely forgotten, except by me.

Reading a Washington Post article (1981) about Emmitsburg I realize I only recognize one family name among those people working for the town or holding elected office at that time. That's how out of touch with the community of Emmitsburg I was in those days. However, a cousin on Mom's side of the family is quoted-

"This is really a unique little town. Its character hasn't changed in my lifetime," said Phil Topper, vice president and branch manager of the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank and an Emmitsburg native. "The town just isn't ready for any major changes. For some reason, if anything destroys their peaceful way of life, they really resist it."

Since I moved into Emmitsburg the town has changed, drastically. Nearly all my drinking companions, those who had lived all their lives in Emmitsburg, have long since moved away. As their parents aged out, the old home places were sold, often to out-of-towners who in turn have been renting to other out-of-towners (often university students). The mom & pop shops that I used to patronize are gone. (I recently listed 51 businesses in, or close by Emmitsburg that ceased to exist since Dad moved us to this area in 1964.)

There are new neighborhoods I've not bothered to explore. Some residents in one of those neighborhoods told me they've never bothered to explore the rest of the town. I'd not be surprised if all the developments have similar residents- people who eat and sleep here, but don't see the town as their community.

I doubt a current high schooler could say, "To hell with this," and find a job after dropping out. That was not uncommon when I was in school. There used to be businesses in town, including nearby farms, that could accommodate those of us who weren't suited for education much beyond middle school. If there are any such places left I'm unaware of them.

Probably the most startling example of how things have changed in Emmitsburg is me- a one time candidate for the title of "Town Drunk" and the current "Village Idiot" of record. Prior to commissioner elect Buckman being sworn in as commissioner, I believe 2016, my rare encounters with select members of the town staff and/or the elect generally left me cursing the rudeness and incompetence I unexpectedly encountered. At Ms Buckman's request I attended her swearing in ceremony- the first of many town meetings I've attended.

Afterward, I began wandering into meetings- Citizens Advisory Committee, the Green Team, Parks and Recreation Committee, the Planning Commission where the head of that commission asked me if I was lost, and possibly a Board of Appeals meeting. Evidently no one without business before these committees and commissions ever bothered to attend them. Staff and some of the commissioners began asking me to volunteer to sit on various committees and commissions. A prospect that horrified me. Ninety-nine percent of what they talk about at those meetings doesn't even connect to anything I understand.

No longer able to waste away in a bar, or walk to waters I can thrash with a fly line, I kept lumbering into town meetings until one of them struck a chord- the first 2025 Comprehensive Plan Update workshop.

For the love of this town's children. For the sake of those who've bought homes here and plan to stay past retirement. For those thinking of moving or working here, I implore you- make time to attend the 2025 Comprehensive Plan Update workshops. At the very least fill out the surveys on the town's official website and email, snail mail your thoughts, wants and desires for this place's future to the town office!

The last person this town needs making suggestions for the town's future is me!

I'm still trying to figure out what that mystery meat might have been.