THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605290596
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: 180 lines
IT IS MY good fortune, although I don't realize it right away, to get hooked up with a wench - her term, not mine - called Pat Wagner, who is showing me around Annapolis.
I have been here before, but this is my first in-depth look around. Nice to be with someone who knows the place. Certainly she does.
Annapolis is a rather fascinating small city, and a compact one, naturally defined by the Chesapeake Bay, the Severn River and their various inlets. It looks almost as if it were a movie set location, or several of them.
One part is the prototype Colonial capital, overlooking a prototype harbor filled with boats, with an elegant hilltop State House that was for a brief time our fledgling nation's capital as well, and more 18th century brick buildings than any other place in the United States . . . yet it is very 20th-century, with lots of places to drink beer and eat crabs and shop for very trendy things.
And over there, on land reclaimed from the river and the bay, is another totally different set: the sprawling shaded yard of the U.S. Naval Academy with its imposing French Renaissance buildings and grand domed chapel, aswarm with the future leaders of our sea service.
Marylanders like to call their capital city a ``museum without walls.''
This wench, though, has me a bit out of sorts. For one thing, she is about 250 years old and I'm having trouble understanding her.
She is a character actor, a period interpreter in the employ of Three Centuries Tours, the composite of an Annapolis working woman in common-folk garb - white apron over long, full skirt with a rather loose bodice, as befits a woman of her sort, rather than pulled tight, strait-laced so to speak, as a refined gentlewoman would certainly wear.
She looks at me with some curiosity, if not with downright disapproval, because I am not wearing knee britches with buckles on my shoes and am therefore terribly out of fashion.
Locked into a 1780s time warp, never stepping out of character as she purveys the wit and wisdom of the time, she is driving me to distraction as she points to this and that and calls it ``macaroni.''
Normally I can swallow my history on large bites and occasionally dish it out in large servings as well, but I feel like telling her she can take her macaroni and toss it in a pot. Fact is, I have come here to Annapolis - to the heart of the Chesapeake Bay region - mostly to eat crabs and rockfish, which these neighbors of ours prepare as well as anyone.
Here in Annapolis, and on Maryland's Eastern Shore (more about that on Page E5), seafood is about as good as it gets.
Come to find out as I listen to Pat ramble on about macaroni this and macaroni that, macaroni is to her and her compatriots something quite new to the Colonial palate, something most grand indeed. About as good, to their way of thinking, as it gets.
That is why, she explains, when Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap, he called it macaroni.
Now I get it. I think I am beginning to understand Colonial talk.
Pat is talking about Congress being in session up at the State House, so this must be 1783 or 1784. I must have dropped somewhere into that nine-month period when the Continental Congress met here.
She says the people of Annapolis have taken to firing off cannons to salute the arrival of important personages at the wharf. So much so that some of the townfolk have taken to calling these celebrities ``big shots.''
(Locals still call the slip into the heart of town ``ego alley'' for the yachtsmen who sail in to be seen.)
As we climb the hill to the State House, I am taken by the design of the city - one of America's first to actually be planned. The centerpieces are two circles, one for church and and another for state and quite separate, with streets branching off like spokes from wheels. Although people had been living here since 1649, it was in 1695 that the city began to take its present shape.
Credit goes to Gov. Francis Nicholson, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, who would return to Virginia as governor in 1698 and lay out another Colonial capital at Middle Plantation the following year. It would be called Williamsburg, where the streets flanking its main thoroughfare, Duke of Gloucester Street, would be called Francis and Nicholson.
The State House is the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use in the United States. It is an imposing Georgian brick structure with a cypress dome held together with pegs and topped with a huge carved acorn, symbol of wisdom, that was, alas, installed upside down.
It was here that the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the American Revolution, and it was here that Lt. Gen. George Washington came before his civilian superiors to formally resign his army commission.
That act could, and probably should, be considered one of the most significant moments in our history. Washington was at the peak of his popularity. A different sort of man might have chosen to remain in power, with the backing of the army, become a dictator for life. Washington could have. He didn't. He bowed, literally, before elected civilian authority and retired, although only temporarily, to private life.
In the Old Senate Chamber where this took place, there is a life-size mannequin wearing the uniform the general wore that day in 1783. On the wall is a larger-than-life, full-length portrait of Washington.
``Notice he has his hand tucked in his waistcoat,'' Pat points out. ``Portrait painters charge by the body part. This one was less expensive because one of his hands is hidden. That's why we say something expensive costs an arm and a leg.''
And speaking of legs.
``Notice how the general is standing, exposing his calf to the ladies?'' she asks. ``Very fashionable stance. Very gentlemanly. That's what's called putting your best foot forward.''
We move on to the Naval Academy to catch the noon formation. It is held in Tecumseh Court, a large quadrangle embraced by the gray-white standstone wings of Bancroft Hall, home of the entire brigade of 4,000 midshipmen. For years, until the Russians played one-upmanship, this was the largest dormitory in the world, with 1,873 rooms, five miles of corridors and 33 acres of floor space.
I found that I could walk right in. A midshipman's sample room is open to the public along with many of the other areas of the building.
With an assortment of commissioned officers watching from the stone steps leading into Bancroft, the midshipmen have fallen into ranks - row upon row of them in navy blue and white, some of them with the swords symbolic of their office - and are now reporting.
``All present or accounted for, sir . . . all present or accounted for, sir.''
Maybe you have to be in the military to appreciate this order and precision displayed by some 4,000 young men and women, but I don't think so. The crowd of civilians watching from behind the ropes stands silently at rapt attention, or what passes for attention, when they are not taking photographs.
These reports are called out crisply, from company to battalion to regiment and up to the brigade adjutant. He does an about-face, salutes, and reports to the brigade commander, who is standing at attention, backed by his staff.
``All present or accounted for, sir.''
To which the brigade commander, returning the salute, says, ``Very well, let's eat.''
No. I've got that mixed up. That's what my stomach is saying to me.
The brigade commander says something more military, after which the midshipmen march off to the dining hall.
I do the same, with significantly less precision - off to a lunch of delicate crab cakes and crab bisque at the Treaty of Paris restaurant, a Colonial-style eatery hard by the State House . . . and later off to a dinner of broiled rockfish at the Chart House, a waterfront establishment that was a former boatyard where the presidential yacht was built.
It's not macaroni, but it is most grand. ILLUSTRATION: STEVE HARRIMAN COLOR PHOTOS
The Maryland State House was for a brief time our nation's capital,
and the Treaty of Paris was ratified here.
The noon formation takes place in the Naval Academy's Tecumseh
Court. The quadrangle is embraced by Bancroft Hall, home of the
entire brigade of 4,000 midshipmen.
Photo
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Annapolis looks almost as it if were a movie set location, or
several of them.
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Getting there: Primary route is I-64 west to I-95 north to I-495
(Capital Beltway around Washington) to U.S. 50 east, exiting on Rowe
Blvd. (exit 24). Alternative route is I-64 west to U.S. 17 west to
U.S. 301 north (at Port Royal) to U.S. 50 east. Either way, it's
about a five-hour drive from South Hampton Roads.
Getting around: Annapolis is a pleasant walking town, and a very
difficult one to negotiate with a car. Look for public parking lots;
you'll have great difficulty finding a parking spot on the streets.
There are several lots downtown and one at the Academy Visitor
Center.
Eating and sleeping: Contact Annapolis & Anne Arundel County
Visitors Center for a complete list. I tried a boat and breakfast -
like a bed and breakfast, except it floats - at Port Annapolis. This
is more like ``luxury camping'' than anything else. A friend and I
stayed on the ``No Regrets'' (ha-ha), a 43-foot trawler-type
powerboat. It had two cabins. I drew the one with a five-foot bed
suitable for two short people who like to sleep close together; he
was left with the cabin in the pointy end with a narrow v-shaped bed
suitable for two people who like to sleep only with their heads or
toes touching, or for one who likes to sleep like a banana.
Info:
Annapolis & Anne Arundel County Visitors Center, 26 West St.,
Annapolis, Md. 21401; (410) 280-0445.
U.S. Naval Academy Visitor Center, Halsey Field House, Annapolis
21402; (410) 263-6933.
Three Centuries Tours of Annapolis, 48 Maryland Ave., Annapolis
21404; (410) 263-5401.
Maryland Tourism, 217 E. Redwood St., Baltimore, Md. 21298-6349;
(800) 543-1036. by CNB