Ocean City

It's been said that there are Ocean City people and there are Deep Creek Lake people. We have no idea who said this or what it even means. This much we know: Both these classic Maryland destinations lure visitors with sun, sand and water. So, decide for yourself where your vacation loyalties lie. Are you a lake person or an ocean person? Memorial Day weekend launches the summer vacation season with travelers packing cars, trailers and suitcases with sunscreen, bathing suits and towels, and scrambling out the door with neither map nor Mapquest directions in hand.

OCEAN CITY -- Perched at the top of his chair, the lifeguard swooped his orange signal flags, signing the letters of a little girl's name. "S-A-R-A," said Crew Chief Ben Davis, interpreting the code from his spot several hundred feet down the beach. His sun-bleached eyebrows bunched in a squint. "S-E-V - she's 7. Her trunk color is ... blue." And so Sara7Blue became the first lost child of this shadeless Ocean City Saturday. She would soon be joined by IsabelAbout4- Orange, Ian6Spiderman and Ashley4Pink, not to be confused with Annie4PinkPolkaDot, and many others.

OCEAN CITY-- --On a rainy day, a beach town deflates. The whole myth of escape, of ceaseless fun and respite from reality, turns as sodden as day-old cotton candy. Yesterday, the rain drew the tourists inland, and the talk was all about the dead babies. Some vacationers headed to Ocean City's latest and most unlikely attraction - the 200 block of Sunset Drive, where yellow crime tape circled the home and yard of Christy Freeman, arrested in connection with the death of an infant, one of four whose remains have been found in and around her house.

OCEAN CITY -- To Ocean City's tourist trade, Classic Taxi co-owner Christy L. Freeman presented herself as a flirtatious NASCAR mom who could keep her customer's secrets. "We have hauled everyone from famous singers to the general lay worker," she wrote on the five-year-old company's Web site, which features an image of Freeman as a suggestive sorceress. "Everybody has a story and we hear it all ... but you didn't hear that from me." But the story police told about the 37-year-old woman yesterday - that she had stowed the remains of a stillborn baby and at least three more small bodies in and around her house - was so disturbing, so discordant with even her detractors' perceptions of her, that it has scandalized a devil-may-care beach town.

OCEAN CITY -- Three women in sunglasses and flowered bathing suits sit side by side on folding chairs at the water's edge: Carol Romano, 69; her daughter, Karen Romano Young, 47; and granddaughter Bethany Young, 23 (yes, named for the beach). The golden crab dangling from a necklace at Romano's tanned throat glints as she gestures toward the Boardwalk. "My parents' bench is right up there," she says. "Its plaque says, `Thanks for the Ocean City memories, your loving family.'" There are 152 dedicated benches on the 2 1/2 -mile-long Ocean City Boardwalk.

A New Jersey-based company wants to build about 150 wind turbines, each more than 40 stories tall, in the Atlantic Ocean 12 miles from the tourist-packed beaches of Ocean City. Bluewater Wind proposed a similar project last year off Delaware, which could be the nation's first offshore wind farm if it receives state and federal approvals. The developers presented the broad outlines of their concept for Maryland's coast yesterday during a closed-door meeting with members of the state Public Service Commission.

For Marylanders heading for the beaches, the mountains, the front stoop or the backyard barbecue on this Memorial Day weekend, warm, sunny skies and cool, pleasant nights mean the summer season has arrived and winter is but a distant memory.The weekend marks the beginning of the weekly pilgrimage to Ocean City, with the requisite frolicking on the boardwalk and the ritual traffic backup at the Bay Bridge, and this year is no different. By 4: 15 p.m. yesterday, there was a traffic jam five miles long as weekend vacationers waited to pay their toll.

Weeks of hot, sun-drenched days that baked the Ocean City beaches this summer have produced what may be the best season the resort town has ever seen.Although it's too early for final tallies, the signs of success are visible everywhere, from solidly booked hotels and brisk condominium rentals to increased bus ridership to businesses surpassing their annual projections."Ocean City is having a banner year," said Jay Knerr, president of the Chamber of Commerce and chief executive officer of the Kite Loft, a Boardwalk business that already has topped last year's $2 million in sales by 15 percent.

OCEAN CITY -- In a town that bills itself as America's family resort, officials are saying "enough already."Enough with body-piercing shops, enough with music blaring from boardwalk vendors, enough with counterfeit Pokemon merchandise, enough with the first pawnshop, which recently opened on 26th Street.But most of all, enough with tattoos.With a long-standing restriction on tattoo parlors apparently in jeopardy, the mayor and Town Council are scrambling to hold the line against what they say is a cumulative assault on the town's cherished wholesome image.

OCEAN CITY -- After an anxious week of weather watching, merchants and city officials at Maryland's beach resort think they have dodged another Atlantic storm.Now they are beginning to turn their attention to the bottom line -- how much the gray skies, high winds and pounding surf churned up by wayward Hurricane Dennis will affect the turnout for Labor Day weekend.Yesterday, as Dennis was downgraded to a tropical storm and meandered south, again threatening the North Carolina coast, Ocean City officials relaxed their vigil.

17th annual Winterfest of Lights Where: : Northside Park, 127th Street and the bay, Ocean City When: : 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, through Jan. 2 What: : Ocean City's seasonal event kicks off Thursday with an opening ceremony featuring holiday songs, children's performances and an appearance by Santa. Winterfest takes place throughout the park, with thousands of twinkling lights outlining hundreds of displays. The Winterfest Village, located inside a heated and decorated tent, offers hot chocolate, a gift shop and photos with Santa (through Dec. 23)

The International Space Station is back in our evening skies tonight, flying high over Baltimore (and almost directly over Ocean City) on its way up the East Coast. Look for a bright, fast-moving "star" rising out of the southwest horizon at 6:14 p.m. It will climb above brilliant Jupiter -- brightest object in the southern sky - by 6:17 p.m., just before vanishing into Earth's shadow. Up-to-the-minute local data and radar at marylandweather.com

J A Mass of Christian Burial will be held 11 A.M. Saturday at St. Lukes Catholic Church at 100th Street and Coastal Highway in Ocean City. Reverend Richard Smith will be the celebrant. Friends may call from 10 to 11 A.M. before the service, and on Friday evening from 6 to 8 P.M. at Burbage Funeral Home in Berlin. Letters of Condolence may be sent to the family at burbage burbagefuneralhome.com In lieu of flowers donations may be made in his honor to the American Cancer Society c/o Gerri Harrison, 337 Winter Quarters Drive, Pocomoke City, Md 21851, or to Doctors Without Borders, 333 7th Avenue, 2nd floor, New York, N.Y. 10001.

Michael David Pastore, Cremation followed his death. A service will be held at a later date in Ocean City. MD.

The State Highway Administration will close one of the two bridges leading into Ocean City for two months so work crews can replace a damaged girder that has already prompted the agency to prohibit truck traffic on the span. Highway officials said the full closure of the Route 90 bridge will begin next week or early the following week. Traffic will be diverted to the U.S. 50 bridge, which leads to the resort's downtown. The Route 90 bridge was closed to all vehicles weighing more than 6,000 pounds last week after inspectors found that the concrete lining of an 85-foot girder had eroded, exposing the underlying steel to potential corrosion.

The State Highway Administration closed one of the two bridges leading into Ocean City to truck traffic Wednesday afternoon after inspectors found deterioration of one of the girders that supports the structure. Highway Administrator Neil J. Pedersen said he ordered the emergency restrictions, which will bar vehicles heavier than 6,000 pounds from the Route 90 bridge, after receiving recommendations from staff and consulting engineers. He said the bridge remains safe for passenger vehicle traffic but that anything larger than a pickup truck would be diverted to the U.S. 50 bridge.

The approval Wednesday of the first slot machine gambling license in Maryland is more than just an important milestone in the long-running debate about gambling in the state. The grant of a license for Ocean Downs is also the first promising sign we've seen in more than a year for the state's coffers. A temporary facility with as many as 800 machines could be running in time for next summer's tourist season in Ocean City. That may not make much of a dent in a $2 billion budget shortfall, but it helps.

OCEAN CITY - There are many things to admire about the recently concluded White Marlin Open, a fixture here for 36 years. The first is that it's a homegrown product - not some contrived corporate vehicle - conceived by a man who likes to fish and carried out by friends and relatives. It runs so well that founder Jim Motsko can actually motor beyond the horizon to the fish-rich underwater canyons 30 miles offshore to participate. That's like Bud Selig shagging flies before a World Series game.

At least Maryland is not New Jersey. The recent federal indictment of politicians across that state shows that government contracts there are up for sale to the highest bidder. They hobnob with purveyors of illegal organs. Another bonus: Taxes there are even higher than in the Old Line State. Also, Maryland's landscape is beautiful. But politicians here still behave as if the rules of law and economics do not apply to them. Case one: the betrothal stunt pulled by Del. Jon Cardin, a Baltimore County Democrat and nephew of Democratic U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin.

Take away the boardwalk fries, the crowded streets, the saltwater taffy, the "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts, and what do you have? Pocomoke River State Park. Granted, there are some other trade-offs involved in swapping Ocean City for the greater Pocomoke City metropolitan area. But if you didn't get around to planning the specifics of a late-summer camping vacation (that is, lodging) until now and would still like to fish and hike, with a day trip or two to mingle with the boardwalk hordes, then the state park 25 miles south of Ocean City could be the answer.