a large tract of meadow had extended still, evolving to a retirement facility for a religious order of the Catholic Church in the 1960s, later sold for development. It is difficult to comprehend, given Rodgers Forge's current surrounding environs, how spectacularly unusual the neighborhood was in its earliest iteration - and in many respects, removed from the experiences of most Baltimoreans who had grown up in city row homes. In the 1940s people thought they were moving to "the country." On a clear October day, looking northward from The Immaculate Conception, across the expanse of slightly rolling, green and brown fields, accentuated by the occasional scurrying of rabbits, York Road's concrete 2-lane meandered north into the nothingness of Pennsylvania and - if you were lucky - one could catch a sapphire glimmer of Loch Raven through the yellow, gold, and browning autumn leaves. Since shopping centers were nonexistent on the East Coast before 1960, residents of Rodgers Forge were limited to patronizing small retailers on York Road into Towson, Gittings Avenue at Bellona, Charles Street at Bellona, Belvedere Avenue at York Road, and the large "flagship" stores in downtown Baltimore - Hutzler's, Hochschild Kohn, and The Hecht Company - in short, the traditional opportunities afforded by urban development to the south. Shoppers could ride the York Road "#8 Streetcar" (an electrified trolley on tracks) north into Towson and south all the way into Baltimore; or they could board the #11 Baltimore Transit Co. Bus (Dunkirk, Pinehurst, et al., to Stevenson and Bellona, across from the farmette) for stops to downtown, primarily via Charles Street. There was a brief period when, incredibly, the #11 Bus traversed Dunkirk with parking on both sides of the street. This was possible because many households lacked an automobile, and since the bus didn't run at night, those households with a car had vacant parking spaces during the day, as breadwinners increasingly used autos to get to work - in the era well before the introduction of the SUV. Blue collar workers, as well, were out-the-door by 5:00 a.m. and the Sealtest or Cloverland Farms milk delivery trucks arrived as early as 4:00, long before the first buses started running. Every now and then, the peace and quiet of the night might be interrupted by cursing and the crash of glass, as the milkman dropped a bottle: prompting an obligatory retaliatory phone call to the business