Woman gets an A for persistence

Souvenir given before demolition of old house

Friday, Sept. 4, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JESSE YEATMAN Developer John Parlett gives an iron A to Pam Arnold in front of the Abell house at the corner of Shady Mile Drive and Route 235 in California. Scavenged for parts with permission, the house is coming down any day now to make way for the Park Place development. Arnold grew up in the area and knew the Abell family. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

The old brick house is the last vestige standing at the corner of Shady Mile Drive and Three Notch Road in California. The old general store is long gone and the field has been graded to make way for Park Place, a new development bringing in sit-down restaurants and office space.

The house should be coming down any day now, while ground has been broken for an Olive Garden restaurant. That should be open by February 2010, said developer John Parlett. A Red Robin should be open in the spring after that, followed by a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant.

The old brick house, built in 1948, has essentially been recycled as Parlett allowed people to take things from the inside and outside of the house. "We tried for a year and half to give this house away," he said, for free. The house could have physically been moved down Shady Mile Drive, but not on Route 235 because the house is too high for traffic lights and overhanging wires. Two people were looking for a suitable lot down Shady Mile but were unsuccessful.

Since then, "It's really been picked clean," Parlett said.

On Tuesday afternoon at the site, he said its demolition is imminent.

The floorboards have been removed. The shingles made of slate have been salvaged. "We started giving the house away. The stairs are gone, the floor is gone, the slates are gone," he said.

The house belonged to the Abell family. The chimney facing the south was home to a large iron A, embedded within the brick, and it wasn't easy getting it out.

That iron A "was a big topic of discussion in this community," Parlett said, as he had at least three different parties requesting it.

He gave it to Pam Arnold, who grew up across the street from the house and now lives in North Town Creek Manor.

Arnold said of the iron A, "It is very sentimental to me."

Arnold's grandparents, Ruth and Ollen Barefoot, lived across the street from the Abell house at the south side of Old Rolling Road and she spent much of her childhood there. That lot is now vacant, though the neighborhood called Barefoot Acres is back on Old Rolling Road.

Ruth Barefoot was postmaster of the California Post Office out of the home on the corner from 1942 to 1964, the year that she died.

Across the street in the two-story brick house were Benjamin and Beatrice Combs, "They were a very sweet family and they always treated us so special," Arnold said. Beatrice was daughter of George Abell, who owned the property. The north side of the Abell field was home to the old California one-room school house as late as 1959. It had been out of use as a school since 1930.

Park Place was approved for residential use as well, but those 19 homes have been dropped, Parlett said. "I believe Park Place will become the casual dining destination in St. Mary's County," he said. There are still other pad sites to be leased.

A three-story office building and a church are planned on other parts of the project.

Parlett could have had the Abell house burned down, but learned from neighbors they wouldn't be happy with that. So he allowed volunteer firefighters to practice on it last weekend without torching it.

It would be significantly cheaper to burn it down than to have the debris hauled away, he said.

"We really tried to be a good neighbor with this project," he said.

jbabcock@somdnews.com