When I was a few months shy of turning 5 years old, my parents and I
moved into our new house at 321 Gailridge
Road in January 1963.
I still
distinctly remember living there in the winter months. We had a series
of wooden planks that traversed our front
yard across the mud and out to the street. There were not yet any
sidewalks on Gailridge Road and there was still
a good deal of work to be done on the streets. My parents were
particularly taken with all the trees in the area.
Quite different from the Rogers Forge apartments from where we had
moved.
I recall being in our backyard in the spring and summer months playing with our newest family member, a beagle I named Checkers. At that time the sound of power saws cutting down trees to make way for more housing was almost constant. I remember men laying down the sod in our yard, being fascinated with that - now I knew where grass came from!
There was a time when Timonium Road was only one lane both ways. My mom told me about how some residents who lived on it were upset about the widening of the road. One woman in particular was upset as her well-maintained garden would have to be moved. You could drive out Timonium Road to go to the Peacock Inn, which became Ameche's which later became a Datsun dealership. In what is now the Timonium Shopping center, there was a store called Tower, I believe. It became Robert Hall's (and my dad would get the odd phone call from folks thinking our number was the store's), then Topps and later Murphy's Mart. And I STILL miss Toy Barn!
But there was still plenty of farmland to the west of I-83 and only the immediate areas were being developed. Over the next few years I would enjoy exploring the areas in progress.
I remember going with a bunch of friends on a trek up what became Presway, mostly a wide dirt road with houses in development. We used to dare each other to walk across the wooden planks that lead to the entrances to the houses. They were several feet above large pits that were dug for the piping systems.
Even as late as 1966, my then girlfriend and I would journey into the vast fields that lay beyond the end of Forest Ridge Road which at that time didn't even connect with the unfinished Presway. I recall one night in particular in October we were up there looking for field holly. I looked back over the neighborhood nestled in the valley from where we came and seeing the lights of Timonium in the distance with a warm glow at dusk. There was a Halloween costume contest at Pinewood that year, too. I went as The Green Hornet.
Of course there was the Blizzard of 1966 when the snow was incredibly deep, particularly if you were a short 8-year-old looking for a lost beagle, the only sign of which would be the tip of a tail sticking out above the snow piles.
Pinewood Elementary School had a very important place in my life as well because it is there I met my future wife, Lora Moss, in Mr. Florian's 4th grade class. Pinewood was so new then and lacked all the future additions and extensions it would acquire in later years.
Like some of my friends I am a nostalgia buff so I always enjoy coming back to Pine Valley-Valleywood and reminiscing because every street has an important memory for me. Several of my close friends still live here and I still visit Mr. Hasslinger, whose piano lessons were a major influence on me since I now earn my income from composing and recording music. I many ways indeed, PVVW molded me into the person I am today!