Rite

The out-of-the-way little town of Priddy, Texas, is the place where an untold number of couples get their start. Where the makings of romance are ripe for the picking. Where kisses are conceived.This ranching community is home to one of the nation's biggest stashes of mistletoe. In what has become an annual rite, many people who live in the area trudge out to the countryside each fall to clip the mistletoe that grows wild and abundant on mesquite trees.They take it to a red-brick building on the main street, where they sell it to Robert Tiemann and his Holiday Mistletoe Co., which provides about 90 percent of the fresh mistletoe sold in the country.

With a flick of his wrist, a U.S. Naval Academy baseball player from Orlando, Fla., tossed an upperclassman's hat atop the Herndon Monument on Monday, leading his 2016 classmates to launch into cheers of "Plebes no more!" amid roars from onlookers. "I was considering jumping and making it a little more dramatic," said Patrick Lien - who is a catcher, not pitcher, on the Navy team, "but I didn't want to fall and make a scene. " The Herndon climb was itself a scene: hundreds of plebes, or freshmen, charged a slickened, 21-foot tall granite obelisk at the service academy in Annapolis.

A photo caption in Saturday's editions of The Sun incorrectly reported the time U.S. Naval Academy plebes needed to climb the lard-coated Herndon Monument -- an annual rite marking the end of their freshman year. A Silver Spring midshipman made it in 2 hours, 21 minutes and 37 seconds.The Sun regrets the error.

Klein's Family Markets will start construction Tuesday on a long-awaited supermarket in Howard Park in northwest Baltimore. A 10 a.m. groundbreaking will mark the start of work on a full-service, 68,000-square-foot ShopRite of Howard Park at 4601 Liberty Heights Avenue. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and other city officials are expected to attend. The neighborhood has been without a grocery store since 1999 when Super Pride closed. The Sun's Steve Kilar reported last month that Rite Aid of Maryland Inc., which held a legal restriction on part of the six-acre development site, had agreed to allow construction to move forward.

Super Rite Corp., a Harrisburg, Pa.-based grocery wholesaler, yesterday reported a 76 percent gain in profits for the nine months that ended in November. Sales rose 13.9 percent.Super Rite owns the Basics chain in the Baltimore area. It also has stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia.The company attributed the gains to a new supply agreement with Shoppers Food Warehouse Corp., a chain of 29 high-volume supermarkets in the Washington area.Three months ended 11/30/91.

The lowly plebes, caked in mud and sweat, jogged toward the "minefield" of cinder blocks, tires and sticks and began to holler wildly. Dressed in fatigues, some with painted faces and one sporting a freshly cut Mohawk, they'd already been warned to stop their whooping or face more "PT": more push-ups, more sit-ups, more leg lifts, more pain. Almost immediately and in unison, the 25th Company of plebes began, with respects to Walt Whitman, to "sound their barbaric yawps" in defiance. The minefield was only the latest challenge for about 1,000 Naval Academy freshmen, who awoke at 3:30 a.m. yesterday to begin "Sea Trials," one of many rites that mark their transition into fully respected midshipmen at the school.

Richfood Holdings Inc. will gobble up Super Rite Corp. in an acquisition valued at $320 million, catapulting the Richmond, Va.-based food distributor and retailer into the top echelon of the industry with more than $3 billion in annual sales.With the addition of Super Rite of Harrisburg, Pa., announced yesterday, Richfood would double its sales and move from 12th to fourth place among wholesale food suppliers nationally, serving more than 1,700 grocery stores in the mid-Atlantic region.The deal includes Super Rite's Randallstown-based retail arm, consisting of seven Basics supermarkets and seven Metro superstores in the Baltimore metropolitan area as well as a Metro in Dover, Del.Super Rite's major customers include Giant and Shoppers Food Warehouse among 238 supermarkets supplied in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.

It's called Project X, and it just might change the way America shops for groceries.The project, taking shape in three locations in the Baltimore area, has a real name, but executives of Harrisburg-based Super Rite Corp. won't disclose it until Sept. 29.But John Ryder, president of Super Rite's Basics grocery chain, has a good description. He calls Project X a "theater of food."The new grocery store concept, which Super Rite has been devising in strict secrecy for two years, will make its debut early next month in Perry Hall and at Perring Plaza in Baltimore County.

Super Rite Corp., a Harrisburg, Pa.-based food wholesaler and retailer, said profit increased by 15.6 percent in its first quarter thanks to lower interest costs and higher sales in its Baltimore-area Metro grocery stores.Super Rite earned $3.56 million, or 37 cents per share, for the quarter that ended June 3. Revenue for the period rose by 6.4 percent, to $373.54 million.The company said its wholesale business turned in a "strong performance," with a 6.3 percent increase in operating income and a 16 percent decline in interest expense.

Glenn Spalding got a kick out of putting on an Orioles uniform last year. This year, he doesn't know what the name on his team shirt will read. But that's OK with him. Glenn's only 6, and having any uniform is pretty cool. With spring arriving this week, fields are showing increased activity as youth leagues get their baseball, softball and soccer seasons under way. For any youngster itching to get out on the field, that new uniform is a big deal. "They're just beside themselves," said Tom Bushong, president of the Savage Boys and Girls Club.

Rite Aid agreed Thursday to allow construction of a ShopRite supermarket in West Baltimore's Howard Park neighborhood to move forward. The move appears to eliminate the final impediment to the long-awaited grocery store. A groundbreaking has been scheduled for May 7 and construction should be complete within 10 months, said Howard S. Klein, general counsel of Klein's ShopRite of Maryland. "We have been working on this project since I was a member of the City Council representing this district," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.

Leta Dunham got her breakfast order to go at a Roland Avenue Starbucks Wednesday morning: a grande triple skim latte in her cup and, on her forehead, an ashen reminder that we are all destined to become dust. Dunham was among Ash Wednesday observers who took advantage of Ashes to Go, a service offered by area Episcopal and Methodist churches at more than a dozen spots around the city and nearby counties, part of a national movement that began with an Episcopal church in St. Louis in 2007.

City officials are offering a trade: groceries for guns. This Saturday, Klein's ShopRite will give a $100 gift certificate to anyone who turns in a firearm. The "Goods for Guns" buyback will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Coldstream Homestead Montebello Community Corp. headquarters, located on the campus of City College. "Every single gun we get out of our neighborhoods is a success," said City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who helped organize the event.

The PriceRite discount supermarket planned for the Mount Clare Junction shopping plaza in West Baltimore will open Wednesday, the chain said today. The Sun's Steve Kilar reported in October that PriceRite had signed a lease to open in a 39,000-square-foot anchor spot in the Pigtown center, at the corner of West Pratt and South Carey streets. Other tenants are Family Dollar, Downtown Locker Room and Rent-A-Center. PriceRite, a wholly owned subsidiary of Elizabeth, N.J.,-based Wakefern Food Corp., said the location is the first in the city.

PriceRite discount supermarket is expected to open a 39,000-square-foot store in West Baltimore by the end of the year, according to the owner of the Mount Clare Junction shopping plaza. DLC Management Corp. announced Tuesday that PriceRite has signed a lease to be an anchor tenant at the open-air shopping plaza in Pigtown, at the corner of West Pratt and South Carey streets. “We are thrilled to welcome PriceRite to Mount Clare Junction. It was our priority to bring an established grocer back to this shopping center in order to serve a clear demand from the community,” said Adam Greenberg, DLC's associate director of Mid-Atlantic leasing, in a statement.

Peggy Conrad vividly recalls attending the very first Maryland Wine Festival, held in September 1984, at the Shriver Homestead in Union Mills, on a whim. "I just heard about it and thought I would check it out and see how much I liked it," said Conrad, who worked for the county government for 31 years and is now retired. "I was not a big wine drinker back then. " Suffice it to say, it turned out that Conrad enjoyed that first festival quite a bit - and also ended up developing a fondness for white wines.

POLICE LOG* Pasadena : Someone walked into the Rite Aid Pharmacy in the 8000 block of Edwin Raynor Blvd. Sunday and stole 15 bottles of Tylenol valued at $160, county police said yesterday.

Baltimore Aug. 6-8 Rite Aid Corp. convention, Convention Center. Estimated attendance: 5,000. Aug. 19-27 Orgill Fall Dealer Market, Convention Center. Estimated attendance: 4,000. Contact: Steve East, 901-948-3381, Ext. 314 Aug. 31-Sept. 2 Summer Antique Show, Convention Center. Estimated attendance: 8,000-plus. Contact: Frank Farbenbloom, 301-933-9433

Since its last movie screening in 1968, the historic Ambassador Theater in Howard Park has been a cosmetology school, a dance hall and a Baptist church - and in recent years a vacant shell. The Baltimore neighborhood's hopes for revitalization of the Art Deco structure are again up for discussion, after a two-alarm fire tore through the interior last week. An owner described the damage as "minimal" - up to $20,000 - and he and others nearby see an opportunity for the theater.

A local grocery chain and a Philadelphia-based nonprofit have opened a ShopRite in Parkville and are employing hundreds of local residents who had been jobless, the grocery store's owner said. "The community has been very positive about the store and about revitalizing an area of Baltimore County that has been underserved," Marshall Klein, chief operating officer of Klein's ShopRite of Maryland, said by phone Tuesday. The 56,000-square-foot ShopRite of Perring Crossing, in the 2400 block of Cleanleigh Drive in Parkville, opened Friday.