Dairy Queen

Tucked between fast-food restaurants and a shopping center, the small, white building stands as a last frontier, offering the sweet taste of old-fashioned America to those speeding by on Route 175.Bright '60s-style neon lights advertise the main attractions. Dripping ice-cream cones and hot chili dogs. Flame-broiled burgers and thick, chocolate milkshakes. Service with a friendly smile.It's all still there at Anne Arundel's last surviving Dairy Queen.Twenty-five years after opening in Odenton, the Dairy Queen on Route 175 still draws faithful crowds seven days a week.

WASHINGTON - Winston Cup driver Tony Stewart showed up at the National Press Club on Tuesday decked out in a dark-gray suit, blue shirt and gold tie, looking every bit the champion of his sport. "I'm only the second driver ever to be invited and following in Dale Earnhardt's footsteps is an honor," said Stewart before heading to the podium, where he and NASCAR chief executive officer George Pyne spoke to the media. "But I can't wait to get home and get back in my jeans and T-shirt that's really who I am."

In the sprawling parking lot of contemporary American culture, the one with the wadded-up Burger King bags skittering across it like urban tumbleweed, Kmart is a Winnebago straddling two spaces. It's way too big to ignore. From the perky preamble of its in-store public address system announcement - "Attention Kmart shoppers!" - to the moniker for Kmart's get-'em-while-they're-hot bargains - Blue Light specials - Kmart resonates. But the most significant cultural contribution of the company, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this week and faces an uncertain future, may be its status as the only business establishment in American history to have served as the label for a major literary genre.

In the sprawling parking lot of contemporary American culture, the one with the wadded-up Burger King bags skittering across it like urban tumbleweed, Kmart is a Winnebago straddling two spaces. It's way too big to ignore. From the perky preamble of its in-store public address system announcement - "Attention Kmart shoppers!" - to the moniker for Kmart's get-'em-while-they're-hot bargains - Blue Light specials - Kmart resonates. But the most significant cultural contribution of the company, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this week and faces an uncertain future, may be its status as the only business establishment in American history to have served as the label for a major literary genre.

County police called to investigate a complaint that someone was selling stolen goods from a car on Telegraph Road early Tuesday arrested a Harwood man on a handgun charge after they found a gun in the man's car.Officers Daniel A. Sereboff and Jeffrey J. Fratantuono were walking toward a house in the 8200 block of Telegraph Road in Odenton about 1:30 a.m. when they saw a red Oldsmobile fitting the description they had been given drive past and stop in...

When the shine is goneFOR THE late-shift worker or just those who'd rather avoid the summer sun and heat, there's nothing like an outdoor lighted public tennis court, so my daughter and I recently checked out the facilities at Sawmill Creek Park along Dorsey Road near BWI Airport.As are many of the county's public courts, the surface is deteriorating with long fissures -- some with grass growing through. (Hey -- it's free, what do you expect? Maintenance?) And you have to contend with the occasional roar of jets arriving and departing at the airport.

"Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," by Larry McMurtry. Simon and Schuster. 204 pages. $21.Larry McMurtry loved his father.Now a real west Texas cowboy would never just come out and say such a thing. He might talk about his horse in affectionate terms, and he might cry at his old man's funeral, but you'd have better luck stealing his boots than getting a true cowboy to wax sentimental.McMurtry was almost a real cowboy. He spent 20 years helping his father raise Hereford cows on land more suitable for buffalo, but his passion was herding words, not cattle.

FORT MEADE -- Sgt. Elizabeth A. Quaine, her eyes brimming with tears and a smile never leaving her face, stood in the middle of Gaffney auditorium yesterday, clutching the 6-month-old niece she had never seen to her desert camouflage fatigues.Sergeant Quaine was surrounded by her family and more than 200 men and women of the 85th Medical Battalion who turned out to welcome back the last seven soldiers from Fort Meade to return from the war in the Persian Gulf.But after nine months in Saudi Arabia, what was on her mind?

The musical "Grease" has always had a cartoony feel, so the team behind the Broadway-bound revival at Washington's National Theatre made a logical choice in turning it into an exaggerated theatrical cartoon.In our first view of the fictitious Rydell High class of 1957, the actors' faces look out through holes in a huge black-and-white cartoon of a graduation class portrait. In subsequent scenes, a school bus is represented by students carrying two-dimensional yellow panels with cut-outs for the bus windows, and the cafeteria line is depicted by two actors standing in front of a cartoon of their tray-toting classmates.

WASHINGTON - Winston Cup driver Tony Stewart showed up at the National Press Club on Tuesday decked out in a dark-gray suit, blue shirt and gold tie, looking every bit the champion of his sport. "I'm only the second driver ever to be invited and following in Dale Earnhardt's footsteps is an honor," said Stewart before heading to the podium, where he and NASCAR chief executive officer George Pyne spoke to the media. "But I can't wait to get home and get back in my jeans and T-shirt that's really who I am."

"Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," by Larry McMurtry. Simon and Schuster. 204 pages. $21.Larry McMurtry loved his father.Now a real west Texas cowboy would never just come out and say such a thing. He might talk about his horse in affectionate terms, and he might cry at his old man's funeral, but you'd have better luck stealing his boots than getting a true cowboy to wax sentimental.McMurtry was almost a real cowboy. He spent 20 years helping his father raise Hereford cows on land more suitable for buffalo, but his passion was herding words, not cattle.

The spirit of Holden Caulfield is alive and living in northeastern Illinois, where Michael Hornburg's second novel, "Downers Grove" (Morrow, 256 pages, $23), unfolds. Hornburg's heroine, 17-year-old Chrissie Swanson, is the picture of Salinger-style disaffected youth, chafing at the limitations of her dead-end hometown and irked by her drifting family.Chrissie's dad left years ago, gunning his pale blue Pontiac over the shards of his totaled marriage. Her lonely Mom is hoping for salvation in the arms of a creepy Christian used-car dealer, while her brother has retreated into "the warm loving arms of heroin."

When the shine is goneFOR THE late-shift worker or just those who'd rather avoid the summer sun and heat, there's nothing like an outdoor lighted public tennis court, so my daughter and I recently checked out the facilities at Sawmill Creek Park along Dorsey Road near BWI Airport.As are many of the county's public courts, the surface is deteriorating with long fissures -- some with grass growing through. (Hey -- it's free, what do you expect? Maintenance?) And you have to contend with the occasional roar of jets arriving and departing at the airport.

County police called to investigate a complaint that someone was selling stolen goods from a car on Telegraph Road early Tuesday arrested a Harwood man on a handgun charge after they found a gun in the man's car.Officers Daniel A. Sereboff and Jeffrey J. Fratantuono were walking toward a house in the 8200 block of Telegraph Road in Odenton about 1:30 a.m. when they saw a red Oldsmobile fitting the description they had been given drive past and stop in...

The musical "Grease" has always had a cartoony feel, so the team behind the Broadway-bound revival at Washington's National Theatre made a logical choice in turning it into an exaggerated theatrical cartoon.In our first view of the fictitious Rydell High class of 1957, the actors' faces look out through holes in a huge black-and-white cartoon of a graduation class portrait. In subsequent scenes, a school bus is represented by students carrying two-dimensional yellow panels with cut-outs for the bus windows, and the cafeteria line is depicted by two actors standing in front of a cartoon of their tray-toting classmates.

FORT MEADE -- Sgt. Elizabeth A. Quaine, her eyes brimming with tears and a smile never leaving her face, stood in the middle of Gaffney auditorium yesterday, clutching the 6-month-old niece she had never seen to her desert camouflage fatigues.Sergeant Quaine was surrounded by her family and more than 200 men and women of the 85th Medical Battalion who turned out to welcome back the last seven soldiers from Fort Meade to return from the war in the Persian Gulf.But after nine months in Saudi Arabia, what was on her mind?

The spirit of Holden Caulfield is alive and living in northeastern Illinois, where Michael Hornburg's second novel, "Downers Grove" (Morrow, 256 pages, $23), unfolds. Hornburg's heroine, 17-year-old Chrissie Swanson, is the picture of Salinger-style disaffected youth, chafing at the limitations of her dead-end hometown and irked by her drifting family.Chrissie's dad left years ago, gunning his pale blue Pontiac over the shards of his totaled marriage. Her lonely Mom is hoping for salvation in the arms of a creepy Christian used-car dealer, while her brother has retreated into "the warm loving arms of heroin."

Tucked between fast-food restaurants and a shopping center, the small, white building stands as a last frontier, offering the sweet taste of old-fashioned America to those speeding by on Route 175.Bright '60s-style neon lights advertise the main attractions. Dripping ice-cream cones and hot chili dogs. Flame-broiled burgers and thick, chocolate milkshakes. Service with a friendly smile.It's all still there at Anne Arundel's last surviving Dairy Queen.Twenty-five years after opening in Odenton, the Dairy Queen on Route 175 still draws faithful crowds seven days a week.