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The Caper – April 2018 Edition

It’s so hard to talk about spring right now. Mother nature can’t seem to make up her mind on whether she wants to warm up or stay cold. Winter doesn’t seem to want to let go as snow is in the forecast again.

It is April 5th, right?

In this issue of the Caper, Beau reminds everyone that for those who have paid their yearly lot fees, stickers should be arriving in your mailbox this week. He also wants to remind everyone that the Quarterly Membership meeting is going to be held on Tuesday April 24th, 2018. We will be hosting our State Senator and three State Delegates for a 2018 Legislative Review.

Because it’s chilly out, I wanted to take this time to remind you that the 60th Anniversary of the Strawberry Festival will be held on Saturday June 2nd. To start things off, we revamped the Strawberry Festival website and even added a strawberry hunt. Finding strawberries on the site will reveal some history of the festival. Check it out!

In Community news, Goshen Farm will be holding their Spring Open House on April 21st, 2018 from 11-4. You can learn about its history, visit the sharing garden and high tunnel and learn about the importance of soil health. The Garden Club is hosting their Annual Plant sale on May 19th from 8-2pm. Make sure you mark your calendars. Cape Conservation Corps is congratulating their first Habitat Hero winner. Laura & Don Schrank have spent many hours removing invasive and nonnative plants and replacing them with natives. Read more about them in this issue. It also isn’t too late to get involved in Project Clean Stream, which is on April 7th, AND the Cape Conservation Corps itself. See their website and this issue of the Caper for more details.

Spring IS COMING! Might as well prepare for it and enjoy it when it does. See you around the Cape!

Happy Birthday Cape!

June 30th, 1949. Russians were in the news that day. As it turned out, they had been seizing trucks outside of Berlin. Also that day, the papers announced that Truman’s housing and slum-clearance bill was passed by the House the previous night. It effectively started up the government subsidies for rental housing.

We could’ve picked up a pair of rubber beach sandals for only $2.50 or a diamond ring for $100… or both, they were running a pretty good discount at S and Katz in downtown Baltimore. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to swing by The Hub’s downtown store to grab a $14.88 Seersucker Suit.

We could’ve gotten our shopping done on the way to the very first Cape. St. Claire board meeting, held in the 1208 Munsey Building, now an apartment complex, in downtown Baltimore. It began promptly at 11am. There were 3 people present. James G. Rouse, James C. Morton, and George W. Baker. Was the room hot and stuffy? Were they sitting around and sipping from a bottle of $2.84 Kentucky Whiskey? Probably not, it was only 11am. Perhaps they were just sipping from their .15 cent Canada Drys. After driving their Studebaker’s? to the meeting, maybe they were thinking about Harry Truman’s message about expanding the program of highway safety. “Last year, 32,000 people were killed in traffic accidents and more than 1,000,000 people injured.” Maybe not. They couldn’t have been thinking about the Orioles as we know it today, they didn’t get here until 1953. The Yankees though, led by Dimaggio had topped the Red Sox 9-7 the night before.

That night maybe they watched Stop the Music by Bert Parks, a name that tune type of game show… it was on at 8pm on WJZ. What we do know was that the Cape St. Claire Club was incorporated on the 29th of June, 1949. They had to pay a bonus tax of $20 and a recording fee of $10. At the first meeting on the 30th, the bylaws were then adopted. They each elected themselves to the board. Due to the correspondences they were expecting, the secretary needed to hire an assistance to help out. $10 a week. After designating the Annapolis Banking and Trust company as a depository for the funds, they adjourned. Maybe they sat around and talked about what they had just done. Maybe they quickly dispersed into one of the scattered showers scheduled for that day.

Either way, I thank them.

The rest is history.

To read the meeting minutes from that historic meeting and the rest of 1949, see below:

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