Celebrating 200 Poetic Years

Rob Lass and I have shared many an adventure. We have embarked on a number of multi-day cycling trips. He accompanied me on a crazy U-Haul road trip to the Canadian border to retrieve a 1.5 tonne pallet of IBM servers I had acquired. We have masqueraded as lawyerly fat-cats at whiskey festivals. We both share an unnatural fascination with the life and works of Leslie Lamport. We were once collectively mooned and subsequently chided by Jello Biafra. Yet another time, we shared drinks in the hotel bar of a Holiday Inn in Monmouth, NJ, sitting next to Ron Jeremy. We have also shared a number of moments in close proximity to RMS (an activity which, incidentally, I recommend only in moderation).

I was not in the least surprised, then, when Rob approached me about going down to Baltimore for the bicentennial anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, followed by a stakeout of Poe’s grave to catch the Poe Toaster. The intervening hours were to be filled at The Horse You Came In On Saloon, which was supposedly one of Poe’s favorite hangouts, and is said to be the last place he was seen before his death. I heartily endorsed this plan.

The first matter of business was to make our two hour road trip as pleasant as possible. This obviously entailed gratuitous electronics.

Upon our arrival at Westminster Hall (the location of the bicentennial ceremony), we first set out to examine Poe’s grave in what remained of the daylight.

Please ignore the two fops and focus your attention on the fence in the background: this is the one over which we suspect the toaster makes his entrance. The building behind the fence is the Law Library of the University of Maryland. The courtyard between the fence and the building is secured and only accessible from either the interior of the library or by scaling two consecutive fences in an adjacent alley (more on this below).

Charm City Cakes (of Ace of Cakes fame) created a cake for the event.

The cake was raffled off to the guests, and I am sorry to report that neither of us won.

I’d also like to report that many Poe fans are certified weirdos. Some also have extreme dedication.

In this particular case, however, to what the dedication is I am not sure (the ceremony overlapped with the Baltimore Ravens’ unsuccessful bid at the Super Bowl).

The celebration as a whole, however, was quite fun, including a number of very good performances. Rob and I also got to get to know John Astin, which turned out to be somewhat of a letdown. But he’s ancient, so it’s okay.

Afterward we got a bite to eat and caught the tail end of said Ravens game at The Horse You Came In On.

I learned four things from this experience:

1. Yuengling seems to be as popular in Baltimore as it is in Philly;
2. in Baltimore, Yuengling is not pronounced “lager;”
3. despite the fact that Baltimore lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers and my car has a PA license plate, no one mistook my car for that of a Steelers fan and flipped it over in a riot (as would undoubtedly have been the case if Baltimore were populated by Philadelphia sports fans); and
4. the “frat” scene seems to descend on The Horse You Came In On immediately after the completion of sports games.

We got back to the graveyard around 00:30 on the 19th to find a crowd of about 60 people. We really didn’t know what to expect; apparently neither did anyone else, as wild rumors started to fly. One rumor claimed that the toaster often made rounds to the fences surrounding the graveyard to say hi (and undoubtedly sign countless autographs and pose for pictures). Another rumor claimed that the toaster was none other than Poe House curator Jeff Jerome himself. This is all complicated by the fact that Poe actually has two graves (he was exhumed in the late 19^th century to make way for his monument and re-buried in the back of the graveyard—a location not visible from the sidewalk/gates). The grave in the back is the one in which Rob and I were photoed above. Some people thought the toaster visited the monument (which is visible from the street), while others thought that he visited the grave in the back. There were therefore two groups of people each clustered around the gate closest to one of the graves. The “monument” group seemed to be a mix of the aforementioned weirdos with a healthy dose of hipsters. They spent their time reading poetry. The group at the other gate (closest to the back grave) was decidedly more hardcore; spirits flowed from many a hip flask.

At this latter gate, Rob and I met up with a guy who had actually attended this thing before; in fact, he claimed to have attended every year since 1983. He and his son (a teenager) come every year to try and get a picture of the toaster, most likely to sell to a magazine (there is only one known photo of the toaster from a 1990 issue of Life magazine reproduced here). He said that the toaster almost always goes to the back grave. The toaster gets no cooperation from any authorities; neither the Westminster Burial Grounds nor the UMD Law Library provide him with any assistance. Jeff Jerome camps out in the church every year to simply confirm that the toaster is the same person as the year before (i.e., there is not an impostor) and also to ensure the identity of the toaster remains secret (because if his identity were ever revealed the magic of the tradition might be lost). Jerome does not know who exactly the toaster is, however, and he does not want to know. Once the toaster arrives, does is toast, and makes his exit, Jerome goes into the graveyard, collects the bottle of liquor, flowers, and any notes the toaster may have left, puts them in the church, and leaves. It is Jerome’s exit that cues the hordes of weirdos, hipsters, alcoholics, and amateur journalists that the toaster has come and done his deed.

At around 01:30, the man’s teenage son came up to his father saying that he had been surveiling the alley adjacent to the graveyard that I mentioned above. Three guys had gone in, but he only saw two of them come out. Rob immediately walked down to the alley and I followed close behind. Rob got there first and apparently saw two guys on the other side of the two fences (one fence of which was about 10 feet tall). One fellow jumped over the brick wall to the graveyard. The other hid behind a small half wall, peeked his head out to look at Rob, and then sprinted over the wall to follow his companion. About five minutes later, camera flashes could be seen reflecting off of the walls of the law library, seeming to emanate from the area of the back grave. We assumed this was the Poe Toaster having pictures taken for his own record. We waited for another hour or so but nothing happened. It was cold, and the toaster had likely already come and gone, so we drove home.

All in all, it was an awesome adventure.

You can read Rob’s account of it here.