Madison Street

I HAVE BEEN HAVING a little trouble this week stopping at traffic lights and dialing the telephone. These are symptoms of a guy who is trying to re-enter the hurly-burly world of work after spending two weeks in the lazing-around world of vacation. I have no idea how widespread these re-entry problems are, but I do know a lot of people go on vacation during August and grumble when they return to work.While driving to work on my first day back from vacation, I stopped for a red light on Madison Street.

The land is free and at the end of a road with no houses, and Department of Public Works officials thought they had found the perfect spot for a western Howard County salt barn. But some residents think the Lisbon site is a terrible choice. The road is narrow, a stream runs nearby and the area occasionally floods, they say. One man -- upset that folks found out about the salt barn only when workers starting building it recently -- is waging war. Mike Smith of Lisbon called every county official who has anything to do with the project or could put a halt to the proceedings, and he brought in the Maryland Department of the Environment to look at alleged violations.

RUNNING OUT OF research space, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine will begin construction next week on a $140 million tower that will house more than 400 researchers and administrators and define a new gateway to the East Baltimore medical campus. Hopkins has set Monday as the date for a ceremonial groundbreaking for the building, part of a large investment in research facilities in East Baltimore and the most expensive building constructed for the medical school. Other recent capital investments by Hopkins include the $59 million Bunting-Blaustein Cancer Research Building on Orleans Street and the clinical research areas of the $125 million Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Comprehensive Cancer Center at Orleans and Broadway.

Here's what to look for while traveling in the Baltimore metropolitan area this week. This list of highway projects includes only newly announced work, not continuing construction, which is extensive on several highways, including Interstate 95, U.S. 50/301 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.New highway projectsThe Bloomingdale Road bridge is closed for two weeks for paving. Use Poplar Grove Street.The northbound Jones Falls Expressway at Cold Spring Lane is reduced to one lane until 6 a.m. Monday.

THERE ARE those who step forward every time to offer a helping hand no matter how busy they may be.Herbert N. VonWachter is one. This sociable communicator lights up like a 250-watt bulb when he speaks of others, their needs and the pleasure he gets out of giving.''I'm the winner there. I get more happiness out of volunteering than anything else. It is my hobby,'' he says.He serves breakfast to the homeless, coaches basketball and softball and is a hugger for the Special Olympics. He also gives time to the projects of the Corporate Volunteer Council, a coalition of businesses and organizations working with non-profit agencies, of which his company is a member.

AROUND THE time when most people were talking about the sun and the rare transit of Venus, I observed that big orange ball casting its spell over East Baltimore. It was a warm evening, a night when out of nowhere, an old friend from Carroll County asked if I could join him for dinner, preferably at a non-yuppie Baltimore place that, in affirming our affection for the city, would make us reminisce about the good times we've enjoyed here. Suddenly his Buick was heading out of town on Monument Street, past Hopkins Hospital, the old State Theatre and the Northeast Market.

Man accused of child sex abuseA 46-year-old city man was arrested and charged with four counts of sexual and related child abuse offenses following a search and seizure raid at his home in the 400 block of Daniel Drive.Westminster police said Richard T. Mercer gave alcoholic beverages to a 15-year-old boy whose parents had given him permission to stay overnight at Mr. Mercer's home. Between midnight and 2 a.m., the boy became sleepy and was invited to go to a second-floor bedroom to lie down, police said.

The pumpkin patch that the Rev. Roger Scott Powers and his fellow congregants built doesn't offer hayrides. It has no view of rolling pastures or grazing cows, no corn maze, no quaint country shop selling jams made from fresh berries grown on the farm next door. Instead, visitors will likely hear the roar of ambulances, the lurch of city buses stopping nearby and the click-click of fashionable heels hitting the well-traveled sidewalk. There is a lovely view, but it's of 19th-century townhouses.

The marchers who trekked north on Port Street on Saturday evening sure were an eclectic bunch. There were guys in their 20s wearing T-shirts that read "Operation Safe Streets East." There were tykes as young as 4 years old trudging along. There were men and women in their 40s and 50s. A young woman who looked to be in her 20s pushed along a baby in a stroller. Youngsters of middle school age rounded out the mix. The procession crossed first Monument Street and then Madison Street before hanging a right on Ashland Avenue.

One of the more reassuring sounds of my youth was that of a hickory night stick tapping the pavement.Some 40 years ago, the city seemed more quiet. And about once an hour came that sound made by Officer Joe as he tapped the cement sidewalk with his nightstick as he walked his beat. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.Baltimore was then a city of foot patrols, corner police call boxes, gas lamp lighters and neighbors who saw and heard everything.The sound the walking cop made seemed to bounce all over the neighborhood on a hot and humid July night.