I discovered H L Menchen while a freshman in high school and fell in love with his iconoclastic attitude and even rode my bike to his home at 1524 Hollins Street in Baltimore. I had hopes he might come home while I was there and somehow I could think of a clever phrase to introduce myself but neither the phrase nor the man came about.
His autobiographical books Happy Days, Heathen Days and Newspaper Days gave me a glimpse of my hometown before the Great Fire of 1904 and when my parents were young and I was 30 to 40 years in the future.