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Monkton

Jarrettsville Pike

February 17, 2013

23. Sweet Trees

On a blustery, biting Sunday afternoon, Sheryl Pedrick is leading a Maple sugaring tour—mostly parents and their young kids—at Ladew Topiary Gardens and she explains that other trees produce sap as well, just with lower sugar concentrations. According to legend, a Native American squaw first discovered the sugar maple’s precious sap after her husband left a tomahawk planted in a tree, Pedrick says.

Fifty years ago, the gardens’ founder, Harvey S. Ladew, placed several sugar maples up the hill purely for aesthetic reasons. But blowing seeds from those trees produced other maples in the woods away from the gardens—now, decades later, old enough to be tapped.

Jocelyn Weinbaum and sister Courtney Nurre, who grew up in Vermont, have brought their husbands and children. Each fills a gallon jug of Maple sap to turn into syrup at home. “My mom made syrup in our kitchen,” Courtney says. “We used to pour it into the snow and eat it like candy.”

Traipsing through the mud, Pedrick shows the kids how to use a hand drill to make a hole in a tree and insert a tap, known as a spile. Another volunteer demonstrates how the watery sap is traditionally boiled over an open fire, down to a sweet-smelling consistency.

But it’s the parents, reconnecting to their childhood memories, who remain more engaged than the kids. A towheaded girl repeats for a third time, “My toes are freezing” and finally, Pedrick asks everyone if they’re ready to go inside to eat pancakes with 100 percent Ladew maple syrup. The group enthusiastically nods their heads. Except for Courtney’s son.

“I’m still my chewing my gum,” he says.

Towson

Osler Drove

March 2, 2013

24. Basketball Diaries

Towson trails Hofstra, but former Tiger forward Chuck Lightening isn’t worried. “These guys can play,” he assures another alum. “This is their last game and they’re feeling that.”

Lightening’s referring to the Towson mens’ final game this season, but it is also the last ever at the 37-year-old Tiger Center Arena. Next year, the team moves into a $75 million, multi-purpose facility. With two dozen other former players, including several from the first team to play here, the 1976-77 squad that went 27-3, and former coach Terry Truax, who led Towson to three straight conference titles and back-to-back NCAA tournaments, Lightening is among those introduced at halftime.

There are other memories, too, of this gym. Ray Charles, Styx, and Bill Cosby all played the Towson Center. Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin

Hagler’s 1987 fight was shown here on closed circuit TV, and President Barack Obama came last season to watch Towson play Oregon State, which is coached by his brother-in-law.

Ultimately, the Tigers rally, completing the greatest turnaround in NCAA history, going from 1-31 mark last season to finish 18-13 and in process, give the Towson Center a proper send-off. As he watches the comeback, Truax reminds former guard Quintin Moody, who, of course, doesn’t need reminding, that his three-pointer on this floor sealed Towson’s epic 1995 upset of Louisville.

“The fans stormed the court,” smiles Moody.

Meanwhile, Lightening recalls Truax, at his family’s kitchen table, telling his mother that he was offering her son a college scholarship. “I wasn’t sure what to do after high school, then I transferred and sat out a year,” says Lightening, an explosive, if occasionally inconsistent performer, who once scored 29 points in a near-upset of Syracuse and hung 26 on Ohio State in the NCAA tournament. “Good players were arriving and he could’ve given away my scholarship, but he kept his promise.

“He yelled at me every day in practice,” continues Lightening, a Towson Hall of Famer and Ellicott City IT staffing agency owner today. “Some things he said probably would bring [criminal] charges today,” he adds with a laugh, “but I’m grateful he did it.”

Did Truax, who built a reputation as a mentor who cared as much about his players’ grade-point average as their scoring average, actually yell at his star forward at every practice for three years?

The retired coach doesn’t turn his head from the game. “He needed it.”

(Postscript: Tery Truax passed away in 2015 after suffering a stroke.)