An upcoming annual picnic at Guilford Park is advertised in the Ellicott City Times listing the events of the day long affair including a "Grand Tournament" beginning at "12 M" with a $75 in premiums.

At the word "tournament" I wondered if it was perhaps a special display of jousting, as it's the state sport. But reading farther down I find that of course it was baseball, with games throughout the day. (There were jousting tournaments held back then, but usually in southern Maryland. I know of one church that still holds such a tournament and festival, this year's will be its 142nd).

FYI: The "M" after the tournament time of 12 stands for meridies, Latin for midday. Its general use waned over the years, often replaced by12N for noon or the more efficient 24-hour clock where noon is 1200 hours and midnight 2400 hours.

The Guilford Day info also informs that there will be "First class refreshments, diversions and amusements of all kinds." And of course watermelons and dancing, with a live band. "EVERYBODY WILL BE THERE THIS YEAR," the ad continued.

Since the annual Howard County Fair wouldn't begin until 1945, town picnics were a good place for Howard countians to see old friends and acquaintances.

Much later, in 1955, the movie "Picnic" came out, depicting a small town picnic on Labor Day replete with three-legged races, watermelon and dancing under the stars. You don't hear much about town picnics today, they seemed to have been replaced by carnivals.

But movie fans loved "Picnic," and that memorable summer scene with Kim Novak and William Holden briefly dancing by the pier, swaying to the music under the Japanese lanterns, until that is, Rosalyn Russell threw her (critically acclaimed) fit!

50 Years Ago- Alarming news

"Central Alarm Approval Is Seen Near" was a headline on the front page of the Times.

"Final approval of a government fund allocation of the Howard County central alarm system may come in less than a week, a spokesman for the alarm committee has predicted. ...

The central alarm system will be located on the top floor of the Howard County Jail. It will consist of a switchboard for receiving emergency calls from the public, plus radio transmitters to contact fire companies, police cars, roads vehicles and civil defense. The switchboard will also take care of routine business calls for the various county government offices around Ellicott City, creating a single telephone number for all these departments.

At the present time, Howard County's six fire stations handle their calls on an independent basis. The civil defense transmitter is now located on the second floor of the Court House."

Get in the vote! - As 1958 was an election year, county officials worried that the county's 31 voting machines wouldn't be sufficient to handle the county's voters come November.

"A request for authority to acquire six more voting machines has been made by the Howard County Board of Supervisors of Elections. The commissioner said on Tuesday they will find out the current selling price of the machines before proceeding further.

The law requires at least one voting machine for each unit of 500 voters."

In the primary election held in Howard County that spring of 1958, 13,059 people voted. Considering there were only about 35,000 people, in total, living in the county then, the relatively rural county had some pretty civic-minded folk!

user comments (0)