Avalon Memories: Helen Chappell

Avalon Memories

by Helen Chappell

All sorts of local landmarks have anniversaries this year. As Tidewater Times turns 70 and the Avalon celebrates a century, I, too, passed a milestone birthday. I have witnessed at least some of this history, even if it was from a very young age. I’m not saying I was around when dinosaurs roamed the Shore (and I’m too lazy to look up whether they were over here or just around Calvert Cliffs), but I have seen both my favorite magazine and my favorite performance venue evolve into the institutions they are today.

Both stories start at the Tidewater Inn, which back in the ’50s, when I was a single digit, was a place I considered the very apotheosis of Shore glamour and adult sophistication. Which probably wouldn’t be hard when you were operating from a Hereford breeding farm up a Neck outside of Cambridge. Those John Moll murals, now sadly painted over, were an inspiration when I was a kid. The Tidewater was also where I first met the late Douglas Hanks Sr., who owned the Avalon building and ran his real estate business out of what is now Banning’s Tavern. Doug and my father were great friends, and sometimes he would join us at the Tidewater for a drink and a tale from his long and interesting life in Oxford.

I was fond, and slightly in awe, of Doug from middle school age. He was a legendary log canoe racer and a sailor so intent on the challenge

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Douglas Hanks, Sr.

that it was said he hurled a full case of beer at a competing boat. He was a handsome man, as I recall, and a charmer. He also drank me under the table one grown-up afternoon after I’d sold my first big novel and decided to leave New York for the calmer pastures of home. I’d turned to Doug to find me a place to rent for a year because I thought I’d only be down here for a year to write the novel, then scoot back to the City. Little did I know at that time that I’d spend most of my career covering the waterfront, but that’s another bloviation for another time.

So, my first memories of the Avalon were of Doug’s office, with a loudly ticking antique clock and a lovely lady who essentially handled

Avalon Memories a perfect place for a small sleepy town like hundreds of other small his real estate business. I’m sorry town the-a-ters. You could still I can’t recall her name, but these smoke in Maryland theaters then, days, I have to scrape memory to re- so a nicotine fog hung in the air like call my own. Doug owned the whole a miasma. The walls were gray and red brick building. As Andrea noted sooty, paint and paper peeling, the in her excellent history of the Ava- seats so ancient the padding poured lon, it started out as a vaudeville out of them, and during the run of house, but by the time Doug owned Star Wars, one of the bats that ocit, the Avalon was a movie theater. cupied the place died in the sink The Shore wasn’t gentrified in in the ladies’ room and lay there those days, and the Avalon was a for quite a while. I’d wish for those proudly shabby, none-too-clean funky days back, except the Avalon second-run movie palace, the sec- was then, and had been for decades, ond or third place a film would run segregated. African Americans after a major urban opening. It was were supposed to sit in the balcony,

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Avalon Memories der 50 gets the reference anymore. Which may be just as well. So, the while the White folk got to sit down- Avalanche had the dead bat, some stairs. doors in the back that no longer ex-

The balcony was so precariously ist and, yes, I swear there’s at least ancient that it might have lost its one ghost in that theater, and posmoorings and tumbled down. So, we sibly more. all called the place the Avalanche, One of the ghosts might be Jack, and some of us still do, even though a cigar-chomping manager-custowe’re aging out fast and no one un- dian-vendor of stale popcorn who sold and tore up the tickets. The first time he saw my pass from Doug, he shifted his cigar butt from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “That name is as good as gold here.” It amused Doug to give me a lifetime pass to the movies, a strip of cardboard that said, “Good Until Hell Freezes Over.” I got to see a lot of free films. I wish I still had it. I

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Avalon Memories magic that took that venue from the dead bat in the sink to the beautiful might, actually, given my packrat palace it is today makes me proud traits. I saw a lot of good movies in to have witnessed the transition there and smoked a lot of Newports. and to have been even a tiny, tiny We all smoked and drank back in part of it. those days. And in those days, you Even I have trod the boards at the could go down Dover Street to Hill’s Avalon. My usual appearances were and have a soda or a sandwich at the with literary events and variety counter. Dr. Hill was also a friend of shows, where I’d stand up on stage my father’s, so I had a lot of contacts and do dramatic readings from my on that block of Dover Street. Oysterback column, which used to

Fond memories of that place appear in the Baltimore Sun. I did stretch into today, having watched it the regional accents, the voices, evevolve over the years from a threat- erything. You could barely hear the ened conversion into offices to the quiver in my voice. I can’t believe I beautiful venue it is today. Even used to be such a ham, but if I could friends from NYC and performers get a laugh, I’d figured I’d done my have told me what a great place it job. Seen from the other side of the is. And it should be, considering all footlights, performing is a whole the work and planning of hundreds different thing. I used to literally of people that went into restoration shake before I went on, so filled I and renovation. Having worked the was with stage fright. Even after I’d

done my little dog and pony show for years, and never bothered to go off book, I’d still have stage fright. I’m glad I retired from that. I felt slightly better when I read that Laurence Olivier had such performance anxiety he threw up before every live performance.

I was also such a ham that I did some community theater there. Tim Weigand and Mark Mangold produced my favorite, their version of A Christmas Carol. There were about ten adults and about 100 kids in the show. Marie U’ren, whom many of you will know carried the arts in Talbot County almost singlehandedly, wrangled all those kids, but she couldn’t wrangle my late pal Pete Howell and me, who played Dickensian characters as if we were doing film noir. Pete loved the Avalon, and he loved performing AND being in the audience there.

One of my fondest memories of my friend is rehearsals of Carol. I got in trouble with Marie for encouraging the kiddie actors down in the Green Room to do “Baby Got Back,” that immortal rap from Sir Mix-a-Lot, while there were people working onstage upstairs. So, she designated Pete my handler and had us sit on the dais landing between the Green Room and the stage. Since Pete’s character had considerably more to do than my pathetic three lines as a venal cleaning lady, I got to sit there by myself for long periods. That was the time I became absolutely convinced that a ghost haunts that landing. I felt it then, and I still think that theater has more than its share of spooks. The late David Smith and I both saw a phantom in the stalls during rehearsals for The Lion in Winter. But I have a vivid imagination, and the Avalon is a place for creativity.

Mostly, I have enjoyed and continued to enjoy being in the audience at the Avalon and letting someone better equipped than I do the heavy lifting. I’ve seen so many great performers and events there. Here’s to a century of Avalon history ~ and thanks for everyone who has made it possible.

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.

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