Making Maryland Biscuits—A Family’s Holiday Tradition

Dolores Hazel and Pat Lum beating the dough

Lum family. L–R: Mary, Melvin, Franklin, Pat, and Jack

Several weeks ago, when Jack Lum, my neighbor and Chesapeake City teammate, invited my girlfriend and me to his house for coffee and a special surprise snack, I wasn’t sure what to expect. When his wife, Barbara, let us in I heard almost at once a loud thumping and banging coming from the basement. So, concerned, I started down the basement steps, looked down and saw Jack and his brother, Pat, flailing away with the back head of heavy axes at a snake that had snuck in somehow. I mean, they were making his soon to be extinguished life miserable. But wait. I was wrong. No, it wasn’t a snake at all, and when I stepped farther down I saw that what they were violating was nothing but an innocent slab of white dough about 12 inches wide, 18 inches long, and an inch and a half thick.

It turned out that they were preparing that mysterious snack that we were invited down to eat and wash down with coffee. They were making Maryland beaten biscuits, employing the world’s most physically violent kind of activity that any recipe would call for. “Geez, Jack,” I said. “You’re sweating! What is this, some kind of weird therapy I’ve never heard of?” “Hush,” he hissed. So, wide-eyed with amazement, I hushed and descended the stairs. After a while they stopped, wiped their brows, and panted with exhaustion. “Sorry, Bob,” he gasped, “I couldn’t talk because we’d lose count. We have to bash this dough a thousand times apiece.  And, no, it’s not therapy; it’s what’ll make these biscuits taste so good.”

Eventually, after the punishment, the dough was processed further. Jack’s brother, Franklin, rolled up the dough, put it into a tub, kneaded it a bit, and rolled up pieces into golf ball-sized spheres. And then, after Jack baked them in the oven and let them cool a bit, we all, finally, with mouth-watering anticipation, sat around the table for the biscuit feast. “The reason we beat them so much is to work the lard into the flour, which turns the dough pure white,” brother Frank pointed out. “Yeah, the process for making these is pretty simple,” Jack explained. “And after they’re baked and sit for a while you can throw them right through that wall over there.” “You’re right,” Brother Pat piped up, “and you can also play 18 holes of golf with just one of them.” “You bet you can,” Barbara said, “but they don’t last very long around here.”

 Then we all sliced open our warm biscuits and saturated them with butter. On the table also were various jams, jellies, and even liverwurst. I chose the homemade strawberry jam, preserved from the berries grown in Jack’s large garden. And, do you know that, as good as that unique afternoon treat was, it wasn’t the best thing about the gathering. No, the best thing was the family’s conversation that enhanced it: an interplay of memories about old Chesapeake City and its historic canal.

Around the table were Jack, his three brothers (Melvin, Franklin, and Pat) and his sister, Mary. Also enjoying the fun were Jack’s wife, Barbara, Pat’s wife, Sharon, and Jack’s cousin, Charles. And they all expressed their own special memories. Melvin, the eldest brother, remembered the most: “Making these biscuits started with our great grandparents, Mary and Charles Carty. They lived on Biddle Street and I remember it well as a little boy. Mary used to feed the men who worked on the ferry, the pilot and the deck hands. In fact, she ran a boarding house for some of them. This would have been from 1943 until the bridge was opened for service in 1949.”

“That Gotham ferry replaced the lift bridge that was destroyed in 1942,” Franklin pointed out. “I have good memories of the old ferry, even though I was only in the first or second grade. I rode it to school and would always go up to the room at the top. The pilots knew my grandfather, so sometimes they'd let me in the pilothouse with them. In fact, I got to know some of the pilots boarding at Grandmom’s house pretty well.

            “Oh yes, I remember the ferry also, Barbara said. “Sometimes, after school, I would have to go to the post office, and I would be late and have to catch what we called the second ferry. That was when the post office was on First Street, right across from Mewhiter's drug store. Upstairs on the ferry was a big, open room, and there were metal poles down the middle of it. We kids used to play up there, swinging around those poles.” “Besides that,” Jack said, “I even remember getting on that little passenger ferry. It was the year I started school, 1942. I was six years' old and I recall the dock and how we used to get on it. On this South Side of town it would come in at City Dock, there where Capt. Hazel keeps his boat.

“You know,” Melvin explained, “I’m old enough to have vivid memories of when our lift bridge was demolished by that tanker, the Franz Klassen.” I was on the South Side at Postell's at the time. I used to deliver papers for Luther Postell. It was such a heck of a commotion. Old Luther came out of his store and said, ‘Goldarn, ain't this hail!’ And, my dad was in Elkton and they brought him down to Chesapeake because I was missing—they didn't know where I was. The family didn't have a telephone in those days, so Schaefer's people brought him across the canal to the South Side in one of their pilot boats. They came up to Postell's and found me. I also recall when the new bridge opened in 1949, how some people threw pennies at Governor Lane because he put on the Maryland sales tax. Lane was there to cut the ribbon that officially opened the bridge for traffic.” “I don’t remember that,” Mary said. “But I do recall that Mom walked me over that just-completed bridge to register for school when I was five years old.”

After a while, family members gave their hugs and said their goodbyes. And I remember being disappointed . . .  because I could have listened to those dazzling stories all night long. So these were just a few that were told that special morning, and just before we left with a bag of biscuits for home, as I sat there laughing with the laughter, I thought about the richness of that holiday tradition: a family gathering beginning with the physical exertion of creating the biscuits and ending with the enjoyment of eating them just out of the oven and, most importantly, the joy of telling once again the age-old stories of certain indelible events, events embellished by the sometimes hilarious antics of long-gone Chesapeake City characters.

Especially touching for me were the reminiscences, punctuated with laughter (always laughter), smiling faces, and body language that expressed not only their joy of being together but their genuine love for one another, highlighted by and permeated with an aura made especially meaningful because of the magical holiday season. And so, it turned out that my response when I first saw that biscuit beating was accurate. It was therapy, after all.

Editor’s note: Not long after this family gathering, Pat Lum, 64, passed away in the Christiana Hospital. Pat will be greatly missed by his wife, Sharon, as well as his other loving family members. Since he especially looked forward to reading this piece about his family, This story is dedicated to his memory. (Patrick Iler Lum — 1944-2009.)