Happy Days Indeed!

Mencken and his autobiographical account in Newspaper Days has much more to offer me but already I have learned of the public hangings the city held. City law required the sheriff to commit the act and Mencken mentioned that he had never seen a sober sheriff on hanging day. I learned that some cops had the job of scooping floating bodies out of the Patapsco as they floated by.
     "There was a sort of derrick overhanging the water, and on it the harbor cops would pull up the floaters that they found, and let them dry. Some of them were covered with crabs and barnacles when they were brought in, and Hackman (morgue supervisor) had a long pole for knocking such ornaments off."

He also described the lack of an adequate sewer system in the city.
     "The Back Basin, which made up into the town so far that its head was only four blocks from the main crossroads, received the effluence of such sewers as existed, and emitted a stench as cadaverous and unearthly as that of the canals of Venice. In Summer it took on extra voltage, and became almost unendurable, but the old-time Baltimoreans pretended that they didn't notice it, and even professed to believe that it was good for their sinuses and prophylactic against the ague."

Not only does Mencken describe a Baltimore rarely revealed, but he makes me feel smarter for reading him. His vocabulary requires me to sit with a dictionary on hand. His descriptive prose brings every character to life. Reading his descriptions of Baltimore life allows one to view The Block in a different and deeper way. Now I may envision the businesses on Baltimore Street bathed in the stench of rotting human waste and washed up dead animals in the Back Basin. Girls would be soliciting sex or hawking beer as the horse draw buggies filled the air with dust or mud and manure.


Mencken's Baltimore allows me to forgive the nostalgia of those who existed in these times. I certainly wouldn't want to admit I hung out with hookers on The Block while smelling like an overflowing public toilet. Read some Mencken and you too may have these delightful realities thrust upon your senses. It's worth it.