Handria, Then and Now

Art Car--what a thing to do to a Porsche! (Wikipedia)

I can't honestly say I've ever had or ever wanted an art car. I've had bangers, that's for sure. And some really swell cars, like the huge silver Mercedes I leased to get me through the social/business barrier in Palm Beach County when I lived there. "You are what you drive" is the local motto. If you want to do good business, you'll shell out for a swell car.

So I did. Truth be told, I loved that car. But it was the 1980s, and repairs on it came in only three prices: $300, $500 and $700. The first was for windshield wiper blade replacements.

Anyway, years went by and I ended up in Baltimore. I was writing books and needed some information about the Irish Potato Famine, otherwise known--in my house anyway--as the British Genocide Exercise in Ireland. Online, I found a man named Conrad Bladey, owner of Hutman Productions, publisher of books and other fancy stuff.

If there is anything about the Genocide he doesn't know, it probably is hidden somewhere deep in the British annals of their perfidy at some swell university or other.

Anyway, Conrad and I got along famously during our phone discussions; he had kindly offered to let me pick his prodigious brain extensively for my book. After I finished the book, I invited him and his wife to dinner. I also invited my friend Noeleen, a bona fide Irishwoman from Swords, the place outside Dublin where Brian Boru is said to have died.

Excuse me, please, but I must do a bit of scene setting now. Noeleen has a wicked sense of humor; of course she does, she's Irish. We were once waiting for our table at the Baltimore Museum of Art's restaurant when a lady came in for drinks for a party on the terrace. It was a wedding shower, and all the attendees were wearing funny hats and had things attached to their clothing with clothes pins, or pegs as they say in the UK. The lady who came in for the drinks had a TON of clothespins on her. Noeleen said, "They must have hung her out to dry." Yeah. So you see....

Anyway, I guess I knew, when Conrad and I were nattering about the Famine, that Conrad also created art cars, but having never really seen one--as far as I could recall--it didn't scare me. 

It should have.

More scene-setting. I lived in a large apartment complex on the edge of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. While most of the buildings fronted on Western Run, a small stream flowing through the north side of Baltimore, my building was the only one that fronted on a street of single-family homes, virtually all of them lived in by lovely, quiet, respectful Orthodox Jewish families with tons of kids.

It was a Friday night that we were having dinner with the Bladeys. Had I remembered what Friday meant in my neighborhood, I'd have planned it for ANY OTHER night. Not that the families walking by to shul--synagogue--for Friday services were a problem.

Conrad's CAR was the problem. 

Noeleen and I were looking out my huge front windows (damn, I LOVED that apartment) across my big front balcony (seated 8 for dinner comfortably) and remarked on the wonderful behavior of all the children going by, and how quiet they were.

And then the Bladeys arrived, in an art car called Handria. Why that name? Because it had plastic mannequin hands stuck all over it. And hanging out the rear driver's side window was not only a hand, but a whole forearm, poised there forever. Obviously, the car was only useful in the summer.


Attached to the forearm was an upper arm, a neck, a head and, descending, a pair of huge naked boobs.

Holy shit! Noeleen and I were dying, really, part laughter, part horror. All those nice, conservative Orthodox families, and I had to prove that I was one of the great unwashed! It was embarrassing.

But the dinner went off well. Conrad Bladey is a great raconteur, for one thing. And after a few snorts...well...you get the picture.

Still, if I ever meet art car artists again, I'm going to request photos before I invite them to dinner, unless they promise to take the bus.

On a calmer note, Handria was simply the nascent form of a "handy" car Bladey worked on for years, until it finally won the big prize in Baltimore for art cars. Here is its final incarnation, known as The Epicentral Temple of the Helping Hand.

I guess I should be thankful the car was parked in my quiet neighborhood when it was still a baby.





Copyright 2020 by Laura Harrison McBride

Panettone--Breakfast of movie stars!

December 21, 2019

We've had a large panettone, still in its box*, on our kitchen counter for about two weeks now. It won't be opened until after Christmas, not for any reason except that we went a bit nutty on Christmas goodies to eat this year, and simply haven't got there yet. And we won't, until after two days of traveling to see friends and two days of feasting with them.

Panettone is not something I grew up with. In fact, I had only seen it in bread cookbooks until a day about 15 years ago in Baltimore. I had a friend who lived in Charles Village, a part of Baltimore tucked in behind the Johns Hopkins campus and the rougher parts of downtown, to be very unfocused about it. It was close to Roland Park, too, a fairly upscale neighborhood. Itself? Well, Charles Village has much to recommend it including a stock of lovely brick and stone Victorian and Edwardian houses. My friend lived in one with her two sons and her husband, who is an Italian doctor who is generous in treating her horse-riding buddies, most of whom are usually broke. At the time, I was among those.

Anyway, she and I and her mother and her two sons went out for lunch to Rocco's Capriccio, a well-thought-of Italian restaurant in Baltimore's Little Italy. Rocco was a friend of her husband, who had helped him get started in business.

It was a great lunch. We three ladies sat at one table and the two boys at another one where they happily talked about whatever it is a 13- and 15-year-old talk about over pizza. We adults, naturally, had some more complex dishes and wine. Of course.

I'd like to tell you about Rocco's menu, but I can't. It turns out that it closed in 2013, after a time, apparently, of sliding downward on the culinary “must visit” list, having been, for a long time, the recipient of five stars on the social media opinion pages.

As we left, Rocco greeted us, and gave my friend, her mother and me each a box containing a small panettone.

I didn't open the box right away. I was fairly broke at the time and thought it would be a nice thing with coffee as I banged the keys after Christmas to sell enough writing to keep from starving in the spring. But then I did.

What a treat! It was a lovely yeast bread, sprinkled with lemon and orange peel and vanilla. I ate as much of it as I could before it went stale. When it did, I made it into French toast, buttered and sprinkled with icing sugar and fresh lemon juice.

I've always loved Rocco for that gift, not that I knew him well as my friend did. But he gave me something just as precious on an evening a year or two later. By that time, I was dating the man who is now my husband. He worked in Frederick, MD, lived near Westminster, MD, and drove the hour+ to see me a few nights each week. One Friday in the fall, we decided to go to Rocco's. I dressed as I usually did for that sort of romantic but laid-back evening: black silky dress trousers, a white semi-sheer shirt, and dangly earrings. I had had my hair styled that day, though, and it looked quite extravagant. So I applied some red lipstick to complement the hair. And then I flung a dark red pashmina around my shoulders in case of a chill later.

Simon was dressed as always for work: khaki trousers, white dress shirt and dark blue double-breasted blazer.

When we walked in the door to Rocco's, Rocco himself was standing at the end of the bar. He greeted me warmly, remembering me from visits with my friend over the previous year or so, and said, “You look like a movie star.”

Well, that was good for my ego.

Then he looked at Simon, who is 6'2” and not scrawny, and said, “And you...you look like a bouncer.”

A masterful verbal assessment, fully accurate, but not one most people would blurt out.

And Rocco wasn't even a New Yorker!

*This year's panettone is genuine Italian, ordered via an Italian imported foods company in the UK.

 Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride Please feel free to quote up to 25 words without asking; beyond that, please email me for permission via this site. Thank you.