Back Door

I'll tell you what Nancy and I can't talk about without a huge fight: her hair.Hair sounds like an innocuous subject, right? Like the weather? Something you can kick around without anyone getting all huffy and stomping out of the room? Hah! Don't try it. Really. It's just not worth it.Here's what I mean. Nancy comes home the other day, right? I hear the car pull in the driveway and I look out the window and there she is. And then I notice something that just chills me to the bone. She's had something done to her hair.

YESTERDAY morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table and felt a breeze moving over my ankles. The back door and kitchen windows were closed, yet a chilly wind was a-blowin'. This was a sign that it was time to replace the back door screen with its glass storm panel.Pulling out the screens and putting in the glass is part of the seasonal switchover routine that homeowners go through at this time of year.Yesterday, I did my duty, but took little joy in it. In the springtime, when the screens go in and the air is full of promise, you are in a welcoming mood, thinking of ways to invite pleasant breezes into your house.

Alton and Geneva Smith were happy last summer when city crews cleared out the impromptu landfill behind the alley of their Aisquith Street home. But like a recurring addiction, the trash is back, even worse than it was before. Mattresses, a fender, toys, furniture, shoes, baby clothes, gum and candy wrappers, a TV, a cash register, and beer, wine and liquor bottles are some of the items the Smiths can see yards from their back door. Along with shards of glass, rats and a headache-causing stench, the mess had forced the Smiths to call the city four times since the cleanup.

An act of kindness toward strangers cost an elderly Baltimore County man his life early yesterday, when he was gunned down after inviting a couple complaining of car trouble inside his home to use the telephone.Harold Leon Webb, 75, was shot to death in the foyer as his wife, Joanne, 66, avoided a flurry of gunfire while chasing one person out of the back door after a foiled robbery attempt.The Webbs, whose 12-acre farm is in the 16000 block of York Road near Sparks, had gotten out of bed together at 12:45 a.m. when they heard someone knocking on their front door.

Where are the boys of summer?They arrived in the summer of my sixth year in the South Baltimore rowhouse. One evening, while cleaning up in the kitchen, I heard voices through the screen door. Young voices, eager, conspiratorial, free. I looked out the back door. Two boys stood in the walkway that runs behind the houses on my block. The passageway is barely wide enough for two people. But for any youthful rogue, the network of concrete lanes that runs from one street to another offers an easy escape route, a shortcut, a hideout.

It is getting to be door-closing season. When the weather is warm, I don't much care whether the doors in my house close snugly. But once the temperature starts dropping and the wind picks up, I feel the need to bar the door.Part of this feeling is hereditary. I come from a draft-conscious family. My mother has an uncanny ability to detect the presence of an invading wind. When I was kid, for instance, my mom would be sitting in the living room at night working the crossword puzzle, when suddenly she would announce: "There's a draft in here."

The four boys on their way to Roland Park Elementary/Middle School yesterday morning could hardly believe the horror that unfolded before them. As they walked along North Calvert Street to catch a transit bus to school just before 8 a.m., they spotted a man walking behind a woman, a gun pressed against her back.At first, the children thought maybe it was some kind of joke, but they got worried when the man forced the woman into a house. So the children -- ages 11 to 13 -- ran down the street, where they told a man what they had seen, and he called the police.

So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine, to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo. They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number)

HOW TO TELL if you're a '90s Guy:* A '90s guy is secure enough to wear an earring, although never one so large and ostentatious that it looks like something Blackbeard wore while swinging aboard a Spanish galleon off the island of Tortuga.* A '90s Guy is unselfish, solicitous and gentle during love-making, yet not above donning a Zorro mask, spraying champagne about the room and cranking up Ravel's "Bolero" on the stereo if the situation warrants it. Which it often does.* A '90s Guy does not hang furry dice or baby booties from his rearview mirror.

Wells and Covie Stanwick were practically born with lacrosse sticks in their hands. By the time they could walk, they were trying to emulate their older siblings Sheehan, Wick, Coco, Tad and Steele, who were beginning to lay the groundwork that would make the name Stanwick synonymous with Baltimore lacrosse. All five helped their high school teams win championships and went on to stellar college careers -- four as All-Americans who played in at least one Final Four. Wells, 19, and Covie, who turns 18 on Sunday, carry on that legacy.