Rockville Pike aka Route 355

We discovered Miller’s NJ Alehouse in Paramus, on Route 4.  They have a fantastic chicken cheesesteak.  As it was, I found there are two Miller’s Alehouses in the DC area:  one in Sterling, Virginia, the other on Rockville Pike (355) in Rockville, Maryland, where Shakey’s Pizza used to be (so far as I know the only remaining Shakey’s is in L.A., and I went there in summer 2010).   Anyhow.  Here’s a blog which serves as a HEY YOU to my readers from Montgomery County, Maryland, and former classmates at St. Martin’s. 

Wishing to visit my mom in Frederick, I decided to avoid 270 and take the long way, up 355.  At this point in its life, 355 is called Rockville Pike.

Rockville.   This is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and the location of its courthouse complex.  The old red brick building is still there, a “newer” concrete block dating from the 1930s (the former District Court), a brand new District Court building across the street, and a newly expanded Circuit Court building next to that.  The original courthouse was Hungerford’s Tavern, a real tavern.  Imagine if the local Hooters or Buffalo Wild Wings served as a courthouse.   Mind.  Blown.

Wisconsin Ave./Rockville Pike/355.  What we think of as 355 is actually VERY old.  It used to be called Rock Creek Main Road, and stretched from what became Washington, DC, all the way to Frederick.  In June 1863, Confederate forces stopped by Rockville on their way up to get their asses kicked at Gettysburg.

It starts out under the Whitehurst Freeway in DC as Wisconsin Ave., goes up the hill, and proceeds northwest to Friendship Heights, in Maryland.   Further stops:

1.         Chevy Chase.  Not the actor.  No idea why they both have the same name.  This is a densely developed urban area with lots of fancy stores, including Mazza Gallerie and Saks Fifth Avenue.

2.         Bethesda.  Home of the Naval Hospital, where I was born in January 1969.  The Chinatown bus stops here, on its way to/from Arlington, VA to NYC, and we stayed here for a bit in summer 1990 waiting for our sea shipment to come over from Paris. 

3.         White Flint Mall.   Now it’s kind of run down and half empty.  I took my LSAT prep classes there in fall 1989.  There seems to be a mattress store every block around here. 

4.         Downtown Rockville, including the courthouse complex.  Rockville Mall was closed in 1994.  There’s some new development here and a movie theater.

5.         Gaithersburg.  Where we used to live (actually, Montgomery Village) and includes Lakeforest Mall, still alive.

6.         Germantown.  Home of Clutch.  The Cider Barrel is still there, but it has been closed the last few times I went past it.  Check out “Opossum Minister” on From Beale Street To Oblivion, as it seems singer Neil Fallon used to live in Montgomery Village.

7.         Clarksburg.   Here the road is two lanes and winds through old houses and no particular development.

8.         Hyattstown.   Likewise.  Now it’s a country road, going up and down hills with farms on either side.  And it’s 2016.   

Leaving Montgomery County…

9.         Urbana, first stop in Frederick County.   75/80 Drag-A-Way is closed down.  I brought my Firebird Formula here several times in the late 1990s.

10.        Frederick, passing by Francis Scott Key Mall, and ending at Route 26. 

Of course, driving this way takes time, but it’s also extremely calming and therapeutic.  Part of the fun is remembering what something used to be.

1.         Drive-in Theater on Hungerford Drive.  Gone.  The Giant across the street used to be a Hechingers.  My dad was big time into hardware, so whereas Best Buy and Barnes & Noble are my current favorite stores, Hechingers (old days) and Home Depot (more recently, up to his passing in 2004) were his temples.

2.         Burger Chef gone.   Now it looks like they’re ALL gone.  If they can bring Roy Rogers back from the brink of extinction, why not Burger Chef?  Or Red Barn?  Yeah, I know – all those horrendously unhealthy burgers and fries we used to eat back then.  Now everything is “gluten-free” and “healthy”.  We’re still dying, though.  Why is that?

3.         King Pontiac is now just King Buick GMC.   The King farm is still behind it, and my dad told me stories about their family.  I bought my first new car, a 1992 Firebird there, on November 22, 1992.  Reed Brothers Dodge, across the street, is still around, and is apparently one of the older car dealerships in the area. 

4.         Montgomery College is still around.  However, I had no occasion to go there, we went to UMCP.  Why no Montgomery County campus of University of Maryland?

4.         Lots of Asian food places too, almost as many as mattress stores.  Is there a connection?

5.         Chafitz – the TV and appliance store - is gone.  It’s a mattress store now.  Or a liquor store.

6.         Phineas, a prime rib restaurant, is gone.  That’s were my parents revealed to us, in September 1978, that by January 1979 we’d be living in Paris.  And my Dad wouldn’t have to mow lawns anymore.

7.         Congressional Plaza.  Now it’s fancied up, but that is apparently one of the older shopping centers.

8.         Shakey’s.  As noted, it’s gone, now a Miller’s Alehouse.  The Toys R Us across the street moved down to Nicholson Lane, and Montrose Road and that area is getting a huge development of high rises to make the older condo building (the Forum?) look small and lost by comparison. 

9.         St. Martin’s Catholic Church & School.  It’s at a crossroads with Summit Ave. – who figured that thing out?  We went there as kids, and I remember many Christmas masses there.  I still go there occasionally, out of sheer nostalgia.  Mind you, it’s a church and not a cathedral.  The pastor joked about reading it called that in the local paper, and remarked, “I missed the part when they made me a bishop…”

            I went to school here from first grade until fall semester (1978) of fifth grade, as did my brother.  At the time we left for Paris, January 1979, my sister was too young for school.  The first and second grade building is now closed up and used for storage.  The third through eighth grade building is completely gone, replaced by a different one.  Now my memories of recess and playing at the school are receding into oblivion, but I can remember the church, its basement, the school buildings, and the rectory across the street with its large field in front.  When I passed by they were selling Christmas trees on that lot.

10.        Corner with Montgomery Village Ave.  The Holiday Inn is still there, as is Lakeforest Mall.  Gaitherstowne Square is still there too.  The A&P is now something else.  For that matter, the A&P in Fort Lee, NJ only recently turned into an ACME, as did the Pathmark in Edgewater.  I point this out because ACME doesn’t sell beer, but A&P did.  At least the one in Fort Lee.  GF would refer to it as “The A and the P”.

11         From Gaithersburg up through Germantown and most of the way to Frederick, as noted before, are incredibly rural, and at that point the memories drop off from the past.  By the time we were kids 270 (70-S) was in place, so our few trips north of Gaithersburg were on the highway.  Besides which, 355 had long since stopped being called Rockville Pike, i.e. Hungerford Drive north of downtown Rockville.

Enjoy it up and down, thankfully as Montgomery County’s main commercial road it is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

Post Exchanges

Post Exchanges

. For those of you in the military, you’ll know what these are, the US military’s concession to shopping. They have name brand products at ultra low prices, and no sales tax. Thanks to our mother’s valiant service in the US Navy (LCDR-retired) we had access to the various PXes in the US and Europe growing up. Since I’m civilian now, and always have been, my access has been dramatically reduced since I turned 23 back in 1992 and could no longer go by myself. But certainly they form a substantial part of my youth, and I definitely look back upon them fondly.

History. The system was originally started in 1895, but only after it dropped the ball big time in WWI did anyone start to work on it. The term “PX” came from the Philippines (Fort McKinley) from 1910-20. In WWII the system took off. They further refined the system in Vietnam, a challenge due to the climate – but had to clear out everything in 1975 for obvious reasons; remarkably, the last PX closed on April 29, 1975 – the day before Saigon fell. The military expanded operations, added a catalog service, and eventually co-opted with fast food chains to put real restaurants into the PXes. Clearly the permanent bases overseas and at home have various facilities, but the challenge has been meeting the needs of troops closer to actual combat operations.

SHAPE. “Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe”, NATO’s HQ in Belgium after DeGaulle kicked it out of France in the late 60s. The PX itself was actually at Chievres, about 15 minutes away from SHAPE itself. In addition to the boring administrative buildings, the SHAPE base itself had the Officer’s Club, the bowling alley, the medical center (where I had my wisdom teeth taken out in June 1986), and the movie theater. It’s the closest US base to Paris, so we had special yellow permits to allow us access. Although we did go to Ramstein and Kaiserslautern, 4-5 hours away from Paris, in Germany, these were only 2-3 times, far less often than Belgium. Most often we’d go up for 2-3 days, although occasionally we’d go up for a single day.

Here was the deal: we would drive up from Paris to Belgium in the morning, leaving around 7-8 a.m. The base is very close in off the border – with a crazy tower. The total drive was about 3 hours. First stop: “The Four Seasons”, which doubled as the toy store and the lawn/garden center. My preference at this time was for model tanks and soldiers, either Monogram or Tamiya, usually German WWII. Second stop: Stars & Stripes (book store), for Archie comics, rock and gaming magazines, and other books (usually about war). Third stop: Burger Bar, for mozzarella pizza. We would also check out videos on the video jukebox (“Steel Monkey” by Jethro Tull, and “Learning to Fly” by Pink Floyd) or play video games in the small arcade. Fourth stop: PX, starting with the Sights & Sounds department (records, tapes, TVs, stereos, etc.), drifting off to shoes, clothing, and other boring stuff. This was the PX where we scored, among other things: our first VHS player, in 1980, and Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin, by Judas Priest, on vinyl, summer of 1984.
After a fun day of shopping, we’d head to the Raymond Hotel in Mons for mozzarella pizza and AFN TV. Note: this pizza was unique. I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere else or since. Is there a recipe? Somehow I doubt the Army would get anyone interested in its catering – or a chain of fast food places serving military food (“the Mess Hall!”)
The next day: commissary, for several cartloads of American food – expertly crammed into the trunk, or suitcases on the car room, by our father - followed by another run to the PX to catch anything which came in on that day’s shipment. For some reason the truck DID seem to bring CD players, VCRs and lots of great stuff at the last moment.
On the way back we’d be smushed, three of us, in the back seat of a Chrysler-Simca or Peugeot 505, reading comic books, with a thankful rest stop in northeastern France with plenty of cassette tapes to check out.

Raymond Hotel. Mons has the historical distinction of being the place in Belgium where the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) first made contact with the Kaiser’s army in World War I. So this is one of these medieval Belgian towns like Bruges. The Raymond Hotel is a US run hotel usually stocked with Americans waiting for their shipments to come in before moving to Brussels. We used it as a base of operations to allow us multiple days at the SHAPE PX instead of driving 3 hours back and forth each day. It was right across the street from the train station. Sometimes we actually went out and explored Mons itself, even to the point of scoring plastic FN-FAL and Thompson toy guns which shot little plastic bullets, with a lethal muzzle velocity of…3 feet per second. The Hotel had AFN TV, a cafeteria with that above-mentioned unique AAFES pizza, and even an activity room in the basement with an Atari 2600. I recall watching the Prince Charles-Lady Diana wedding in July 1981 on TV down there. ZZZ.

Armed Forces Network (AFN) TV. Lots of American TV in English, even if they might have been a few seasons old. “Dallas”, “The Tonight Show” etc. with the schedule in that day’s Stars & Stripes. Instead of commercials, AFN showed various public service announcements (“don’t drink and drive on the Autobahn!”) and Army news. Although French TV showed American shows, they were always dubbed into French, which spoiled the fun. AFN TV gave us the real deal.

Garmisch. Honorable mention for our trip to Garmisch in January 1990. My brother Matt, my friend Phil, and I, staying at the General Patton Hotel. We enjoyed a few days skiing on the Zugspitze, thanks to the Armed Forces Recreation Service, or something like that. We even did a day tour of Munich, which included the Olympic Stadium (site of the ill-fated 1972 Olympics and current home of Bayern Munchen) and the town square, even a trip to the Hofbrauhaus. The bar at the hotel closed at midnight but served 75 cent beers and $1.5 mixed drinks (tequila sunrises).

Bethesda. This is probably the US facility we’re most familiar with – hell, I was born in the hospital there. I can remember when the PX was a bunch of old buildings linked together by small passageways, and a generic “snack bar” type of restaurant. Now it’s a large, modern department store with a McDonald’s. I scored my motorcycle jacket here during college, for half the price of a civilian store.

Walter Reed. This is not the hospital itself (on 16^th Street) but the PX over by Georgia Avenue. This was a close second to Bethesda, especially since Walter Reed has a commissary and Bethesda doesn’t. I remember getting gas here when I was at college – the gas was much cheaper on base. This one hasn’t changed much; I don’t recall any earlier, old-fashioned style before the current format which dates from the 70s.

Cameron Station. Now an upscale townhouse neighborhood off Duke Street near Pickett Street, down the road from Landmark Mall. This was a huge PX, where we picked up the Intellivision AD&D Treasure of Tarmin game on one of our home leaves.

Fort Myer. In Arlington, right outside DC. Not as large as Cameron Station. I recall the commissary was HUGE.

Henderson Hall. Right next to Fort Myer and the Arlington Cemetary. The Marine PX. I scored Master of Reality (Black Sabbath) on tape here in 1984, again back when this place was a set of old-fashioned buildings separated from each other. Now they have a multi-story modern place with a Burger King inside.

Officer’s Clubs. I always considered them dull, as our interaction herein was fancy dinners. I’ve never been a soldier, much less an officer, so I was always some civilian kid enduring them.