Variety Store

Traffic thundered by on Route 30. Flower baskets lined the sidewalk outside Bob's Variety Store. Time ticked away at Roy's Never Stop Clock Shop.But an undercurrent of uneasiness ran through Hampstead yesterday, as residents tried to comprehend the three slayings that have taken place here within two weeks.This is Hampstead, after all, where the local police force is more accustomed to dealing with speeding and the theft of lawn furniture in a town with 4,100 residents."It kind of scares me I've always thought of this as a little tiny town," said Jeff Bradford, 17, while working at the Tropical Sunset Shaved Ice stand on Hillcrest Avenue.

An hour after opening yesterday, there was only one customer inside Pumphrey's Variety Store.He was in the second aisle sifting through office supplies, searching through dozens of pen refills, erasers and Scotch tapes and glancing over file boxes of various colors.But on some days, customers from as far away as Dundalk trek to the Shipley Linthicum Shopping Center on Camp Meade Road to buy pieces of embroidery and doilies stacked on shelves that line the variety store's back wall.Owner Chuck Pumphrey recalls seeing two men in business suits come in last week.

For the regular customers of Bob's Variety Store in Hampstead, Mother's Day is not complete without a hanging basket of nonstop begonias or showy fuchsias that hang from the store's greenhouse ceiling like a rain-forest canopy. Bob's Variety Store is many things to its customers, but in the spring, it is Mother's Day Central, with potted miniature roses, geraniums, lupines and daisies waiting to honor mothers."I enjoy watching the people pick out flowers for their mothers or bring them in and let them choose," said co-owner Sue Klingenberg, who opened the store 40 years ago with her husband, Bob. She's especially cherishing the flower season this year.

JAMES MEARS sits behind the counter of the Independent Variety store these days. On this particularly gorgeous May afternoon, Mears sports his black kufi and matching black buba and peers out at you from behind black-framed spectacles as he chats up the customers who stroll in. He greets them all with a cheery hello and asks about their welfare. A woman who wants a pack of Newport cigarettes agrees that his are the cheapest in the neighborhood. A boy and man come in, and Mears jokes with the lad about always being the one who orders while the older guy pays.

Richard Andrew Surdel, 52, variety store ownerRichard Andrew Surdel, a longtime Dundalk resident and former owner of an East Baltimore variety store, died May 9 of complications from a stroke at Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary's County. He was 52.After serving in the Navy in the early 1960s, he was a salesman for Bestway Distributors. In 1980, he opened Surdel's Variety Store on Kenwood Avenue in Canton. He closed the store in 1989 and retired because of failing health. Born in East Baltimore, he moved to Dundalk as a youth.

Last Thursday on Hoffman Street in West Baltimore, in a raid considered so stunning that this newspaper devoted five entire paragraphs to it, Housing Authority police swept through what is laughingly called a Drug-Free Zone and arrested 25 people on narcotics-related charges.Five paragraphs.On the same day on Greenmount Avenue, in a drug raid considered so monumental that this newspaper devoted four paragraphs to it, city police charged into the National Variety Store -- Neiman Marcus, it ain't -- and seized enough narcotics-packaging materials to fill two prisoner transport wagons, while arresting more than a dozen people thereabouts.

Two boxes will arrive at Hampstead's door next year: One is called Wal-Mart; the other, Sweetheart Cup Co.When the boxes are opened, cars and trucks will stream out and come back in, sometimes as many as 623 more per hour than usual along congested Route 30.Residents fear not so much that things in Hampstead will change, but that they will get worse.The owners of Bob's Variety Store worry that the increased traffic will go beyond the rush-hour crawl that already keeps patrons from their doors.

When it comes to trains in Mount Airy, Walt Dennison has trackside knowledge of model railroading and local B&O Railroad history.Mr. Dennison owns Dennison's Trackside Hobbies, a model railroad hobby shop next to the old tracks where North and South Main Streets meet at the Mount Airy Train Station.Years ago, during his college summers, Mr. Dennison worked on Mount Airy's steel rails as a trackman. And, the railroad had brought Mr. Dennison and his family to Mount Airy when his father became supervisor of maintenance of way for the Old Main Line.

A stubborn fire that burned for hours yesterday morning destroyed two stores at Oldtown Mall, a struggling strip of retail outlets east of Baltimore's downtown that symbolizes failed urban revitalization.Wrecking crews knocked down the smoldering remains of a variety store and a hat shop in the heart of Oldtown Mall at lunchtime shortly after firefighters put out the smoky blaze that was first reported about 8: 15 a.m. The mall is near Ensor and Monument streets.The fire started in a four-story narrow brick rowhouse built at the turn of the century in the 500 block of Oldtown Mall, a part of Gay Street closed to traffic and turned into a red brick pedestrian thoroughfare.

Kathleen Notari remembers growing up in Linthicum, a close-knit community in northern Anne Arundel County, where she attended country fairs, church outings and sports activities.After she married, she didn't want to leave her "small town," so she and her husband, Pete, bought a 1920s American Four-Square home on a tree-lined street, where they are raising their three children."I love Linthicum. It's a very active community," Mrs. Notari says. "I like the proximity to a number of vicinities.