Let Us Pause To Savor Dung Hill Road
One of my favorite place names is that of Dung Hill Road, which runs east-west between Foxtown Road and Bittinger Road, south of I-68 in Garrett County. I don’t know whose dunghill the name commemorates, but I know a surprising amount about dunghills in general. A dunghill was common on old-time farms. Before the advent of store-bought fertilizers, the livestock made the fertilizer, in the time-honored way of ingestion, digestion and excretion. Hence, the economic value of a dunghill. Whoever was tasked with replenishing the dunghill was also a good indicator of where that person stood in the farm’s hierarchy that day. Of course, like the words “sty” and “pigpen,” the word “dunghill” centuries ago left the farm to become a popular metaphor for anything “repulsive or degraded” (Merriam-Webster), “repugnantly filthy” (Dictionary.com), “vile” (YourDictionary.com) or “foul” (American Heritage Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary). As the folks at New Testament Baptist Chu...