Chapter 1
THE BIG HOUSE ON BALTIMORE AVENUE
“Oh, if this old house could talk,
What a story it would tell."
This Old House - Loretta Lynn
i - The Third Floor
When I was little, my mother used to point to the big building across the street
from our house and say, "Billy honey, that's where you came into this world." While
it meant nothing to me then, evidently to Mother it was a fact of no little significance.
The building was the Western Maryland Hospital, situated atop a terrace on
Baltimore Avenue in Cumberland, Maryland. A pair of light posts at street level
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