Wontons

Can I have some of that heavenly chicken fried rice right now? With the weird neon-green pickled thing on the side? And any one of the copious selection of gourmet sodas? Warhol on the walls, lines out the door, friendly staff…I love this place. Too bad they don’t deliver to halfway across the state.

We took a boat trip here from Negril. (This was maybe 15 years ago.) The snorkeling was wonderful. The clothing was optional. Our guide-a local guy with his own glass-bottom boat, not some corporate person-made us a barbecue lunch. It was a delightful, relaxing afternoon in the lush wildness of Jamaica.

I went here on a tour (http://www.gumbopages.com/festivaltours
-highly recommended). Lovely little town, nice people. I shopped at a local thrift shop-one of my favorite pursuits. Visited the KBON station and the music hall of fame. Had a nice lunch at Ruby’s—funny that I can’t remember what I ate! Paid ten bucks for a cotton-gauze dress that I wore to a crawfish boil that very night. I’d like to spend more time here.

I grew up here in the 1960s, a child of very conservative parents. Had I not ended up, by sheer dumb luck, in such an eclectic place at such a progressive time, I’d be a different and much poorer (culturally) person.

On the other hand, I also lived there as an adult, and if I still did, I’d be a much poorer (economically) person, between the cost of living in the D.C. area and the temptations of such places as the House of Musical Traditions and Glad Rags.

If I were British, I might call this my “local.” Not that I can get a real ale here (you’ve got to go up to Annapolis, 20 minutes away, to get anything resembling British-style ale). But it’s definitely my hangout.

It first opened as an antique store, then evolved into a combination antique store and coffee shop just over a year ago. The congenial proprietors serve a full line of coffee drinks-sans the labels that some folks disparagingly call “Starbonics”-including three good coffees (one decaf) each day. There are a variety of baked goods (try the raspberry scones). And there’s wireless Internet access, so you can come and have your java and surf the Web and browse the tchotchkes and listen to the wide variety of recorded music. I actually do some of my work here, and I know others do as well.

I’m sure there are coffee shops like this in many lucky towns around the world. You would not leave Paris to visit this place (despite the ad out on the main road which cheekily offers the pedigree “Milan…Paris…Deale”). But if you’re anywhere in the region, it’s a lovely place to stop into. (Or patronize the drive-thru window.)

The proprietors sometimes put on pass-the-hat-type concerts, and I’m still hoping that the rumored pub-quiz night will happen, especially if they reward the winners with tart-lemonade smoothies and Kahlua coffee cakes.

I visited a friend in southern Anne Arundel County, Maryland-an area we call “South County”-one afternoon a few years ago.

A week later, my house in a sought-after suburb of Washington, D.C., was on the market.

Within three months, I was living in a ramshackle, cottage-style house right on the water. (In between was Hurricane Isabel, but that’s another story.)

I loved that this place is convenient to both Washington and Baltimore, that it’s got some touches of sophistication but is basically ungentrified, that it’s friendly but laid-back.

I can smell the water. The Chesapeake Bay is down the block. In the winter, I have swans on the creek behind the house. Yesterday, there was a blue heron standing, statue-still, in the boat ramp.

I’m not in Deale; I’m in what I jokingly call a suburb of Deale. Deale is where what business there is is located: a small but adequate grocery store, a small library that’s part of the county system (the shelves are stocked pretty well, but you can order books from anywhere in the system), an excellent bluegrass-music store, a lot of marine-related businesses, and a coffee shop that’s become my home away from home.

I am serene and delighted daily.

I don’t want this place to change. Of course, the influx of people like me-people who can overpay for waterfront houses that don’t even have laundry facilities-is changing things. And one thing about areas like this that a lot of people don’t understand: It’s often the yuppie influx that fights for limited growth, whereas the less economically blessed longtime residents are the ones who want the benefits of commercial growth.

But I’m generalizing. And it’s hard to generalize about a place like this. It’s full of independent souls. The library has a surprising number of books on earth-centered religion—right next door to a hardware store with a decidedly right-wing perspective, as evidenced by the newspaper clippings all around. There are as many liquor stores as churches. (Last winter, one of the liquor stores sold airline-sized bottles of booze in a hopper labeled “Deale Flu Shot.”) We have some big-deal politicos and journalists. There are rich horse farms and expensive marinas and plain old houses like the ones most people live in. There are people of all political stripes.

Maryland has been called “America in Miniature.” Deale, in a way, is Maryland in miniature. Come hang out at a waterside bar, sip a drink, smile at friendly strangers. You’ll get why Maryland is also called the Land of Pleasant Living.

Oh, and I didn’t mention the seafood—because I don’t like seafood! That’s OK; they seem to have accepted me anyway.