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Emmitsburg Monologue

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ZURGABLE'S “So, do you know the man that owns Zurgable's hardware store at the top of the hill south of town? Of course you do.” A librarian at the Emmitsburg branch library laughs. “I love his patois.” More than a little confused I ask, “You mean Mark?” “Yes. That's his name. Has he always lived around here? I don't know anyone else around here that speaks with such a wonderful patois.” What the hell is a “patois”? It sounds French. And where might Mark have gotten it? And is it contagious? (That's the trouble with librarians. They occasionally cause me to think.) Googling “patois” confuses me even more. So I drive out to the hardware store to take a look at Mark and see if I can spot his patois. I have vague memories of being taken along to Zurgable Brothers' farm store when we visited this area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mostly I remember the candy bars on display behind the counter …show more content…

All at once it was possible and practical to drive to bigger towns for higher paying jobs. Emmitsburg went from a nearly self-sufficient small town with a car dealership, factories, mom and pop grocery stores, a clothing shop, bowling alley, movie theater, two colleges and a TV/radio repair shop to a bedroom community feeding worker bees into such far flung places as DC and Bal'm'r'. People driving down-the-road to work began exploring the commercial offerings elsewhere. It wasn't long before shopping at bigger (higher volume/lower price) stores began to hurt Emmitsburg's local businesses, Zurgable's among them. Gasoline was cheap and the highway led to the promised land, the Frederick Towne Mall! The offerings were vast and mesmerizing! Why, people could walk all day in the air-conditioned mall and with the concurrent issuing of plastic money cards to nearly anyone with a job we could bring our new found treasures home and brag about how much we owed on

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