Weird Western Maryland

Credit: Snopes.com. Photos of a fawn and a beagle apparently resting cozily on a sofa together, reportedly somewhere in Garrett County, went viral in summer 2008 after being published online in the Deep Creek Times of McHenry. Snopes.com published one of the anonymous emails that accompanied the viral photo: A fawn followed this beagle home — right through the doggie door — in the Bittinger, MD area. The owner came home to find the visitor had made himself right at home. This hit the 6 o’clock news big time. Sure beats out the political news for a change. Viral emails often position themselves as a refreshing or welcome antidote to whatever the press is focusing on; that’s part of the reason people forward them. The “political news” of summer 2008 included the nominating conventions that chose John McCain and Barack Obama as presidential contenders; the Bush administration’s protest of the Soviet invasion of Georgia; the John Edwards sex scandal; and a U.S. Supreme Court ruli...

  One of my favorite place names is Contrary Knob, a 2,500-foot summit in Garrett County, between Deep Creek Lake and Savage River Reservoir. I know absolutely nothing about the origin of this name. Was the mountain itself somehow contrary, or did it become synonymous with a contrary person who lived on it? My ignorance would make this short entry even shorter, if not for the fact that “knob” is vulgar British slang for “penis” – and thus, at least since 1920, has been a British term for “an annoying, unpleasant, or idiotic person (esp. a man or boy),” so that an online search for the phrase “contrary knob” is likely to turn up a lot of insults.  The use of “knob” as an insult is becoming common in the States, too, and writer Ben Yagoda noted that it spiked online shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, “surely because so many knobs have been acting knobbish in this country in recent days.” “Maryland’s panhandle comprises a rolling succession of rises with f...

  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...

Henry Beitzel of Accident in Garrett County was, by all accounts, a savvy entrepreneur with multiple income streams (farming, mining, maple-sugar making), a hardworking craftsman who laid brick for the new English Lutheran Church building, an avid newspaper reader who sent six children to school. He was, in short, no dummy. Yet, when he and two friends traveled by train to Pittsburgh to sell a crop of home-grown Christmas trees in December 1892, they amused themselves -- and, doubtless, attracted business -- by playing wide-eyed, ignorant hillbillies, predecessors of the later stereotyped characters in Li'l Abner, No Time for Sergeants and The Beverly Hillbillies. Their rube act made good copy for the big afternoon daily, The Pittsburg Press , which for years had Pennsylvania's second-largest circulation, behind only the Inquirer of Philadelphia (and which would not add the "h" to its name until 30 years later). The Press headline told the story:     Visitors From M...