By Michael Olesker
Think of this as a shout across a highway. It’s a shout for a man who had a paintbrush and a dream. After all this time, I miss him still. He is the “Hon Man.” He should have headed Baltimore’s unofficial welcoming committee, but political nonsense got in the way.
Remember the “Hon Man”? Back in the ‘90s, he’s the guy who sneaked out there when nobody was looking, out along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway a few miles before you get to the city’s two great ballparks, and he put a paintbrush to a municipal sign that said, “Welcome to Baltimore,” and he changed it with three little hand-painted letters to, “Welcome to Baltimore, Hon.”
Oh, what a beautiful gesture! Oh, what a sweet way to welcome all visitors to a city otherwise too often associated primarily with mayhem and murder — to offer a comic example, instead, of the municipal mother-tongue, a good-natured greeting characteristic of an unaffected Bawlamer sloughing off all manner of formality.
Read the rest from Michael Olesker over at Jmore.
Thank you, Michael, for remembering me. Those were fun days ~ ones I’ll always remember with a smile. BTW, I never painted ‘HON’ on the existing sign. I printed each letter of the word and used a heavy-duty stapler to attach them under ‘Baltimore’. Also, Ethan, thank you, and ‘Welcome to Baltimore, HON’!
The ‘HONMAN’
I was just thinking about that when I drove up BW Parkway last week and remembering how it always put a big grin on my face. Thanks for making so many people happy, Steve!