Pam Wissman stood one afternoon last week outside the small, white prefab rancher where she and her husband raised their children, chatting with her neighbor and digging a hole for a new plant in the side yard.
If all of Baltimore County were melted down, if all of its horse farms mixed with its rowhouses, its suburban tract homes with its stately Victorians, its black neighborhoods with its white, its poor with its rich, its young with its old, it would produce a neighborhood much like hers. Wissman said she hopes she never moves.
"I've been absolutely blessed to live here," she said.
Welcome to Chartley, the most average neighborhood in Baltimore County.
According to census data, the racial balance of the Reisterstown tract, the mix of children and senior citizens, breakdown of owned vs. rented property, poverty rates and typical household incomes, education levels and age and size of homes, mirror the county average almost exactly.
Residents of the area, which also includes the Village of Timber Grove and, appropriately enough, a subdivision called Suburbia, said that if these neighborhoods are what Baltimore County is like, then the county must be a pretty nice place to live.
The split-levels, ranchers, Cape Cods and Colonials on its tree-lined streets are just now turning over from their original owners, and the new generation of residents has displayed a marked interest in becoming involved with the neighborhood.
But the truth is that, while the area is average, its mixing of races, incomes and other characteristics isn't typical.
Baltimore County has seen significant demographic shifts over recent years as its black population has swelled in some areas and city-style problems of poverty and low homeownership have crept into others.
The changes are not evenly distributed.
Even so, these three neighborhoods now have added significance.
James T. Smith Jr., who takes over as county executive next month, has pledged that the "renaissancing" of older communities is one of his top priorities - and one of the most important things for the county to do as it simultaneously ages and runs out of space for new development.
He also happens to live a stone's throw away from Chartley, on the other side of Reisterstown Road, in a neighborhood that is only slightly less average. When he thinks about strong, older communities, they are his frame of reference.
'All walks of life'
"The community where I live gave me a very good life for myself and my family," Smith said. "These average communities ... allow you to stay in touch with people of all walks of life, basically, and all cultural identities. It keeps you in touch with the real world."
Chartley residents were amused if not altogether surprised to learn how average their community is. After all, it looks distinctly average.
The homes, awash in the transition from Halloween to Thanksgiving decorations, are neither opulent nor run-down. Some are brick, some have siding. Some have two stories, some have one. Some have garages, some don't. In their driveways are Camrys, Accords, Tauruses and minivans.
Sidewalks run throughout the curving streets and cul-de-sacs, and yellow elm leaves infiltrate even the best-kept lawns.
The typical family in the Chartley area makes just over $50,000 a year and lives in a six-room house that was built in 1974. People there are slightly better educated than the county as a whole - 88 percent graduated from high school, 34 percent have college degrees - and the homeownership rate of 71 percent is slightly above the county average.
About three-quarters of the people there are office workers of one kind or another - businessmen, teachers, health care workers, salesmen and secretaries are more common than construction workers or truck drivers.
The area is also a bit younger than the county as a whole. About a quarter of the population are children, and slightly more than 11 percent are senior citizens.
The tract's most significant departure from countywide averages comes in its racial makeup. A little more than 13 percent of people there are African-American, compared with more than 20 percent countywide. The black population there has grown steadily over the past 20 years - it was 8 percent in 1980, 11 percent in 1990 - and the area has managed to grow more diverse without radical change.
That's not the case for other communities in the county. In 1980, Randallstown was 16 percent African-American. In 1990, 35 percent. Now it's 72 percent black.
Dunbar Brooks, a demographer with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, said it's unusual for a community to "stay mildly desegregated" and not tip once the black population reaches some magic percentage.
"If you look around the country, you really don't find a wide dispersal of the African-American population," Brooks said. "It's either a lot or a little."
Sue Donnelly, who has lived in Chartley for 23 years, said racial change has not been a major issue in the area.
If there is any general anxiety there, it's over some apartment and townhouse communities on the neighborhood's borders, and the fear that the more transient populations they attract will contribute to crime, she said.
Settling in
Fortunately, many of the young families moving to Chartley appear to be putting down strong roots, fixing up their houses and settling in for the long term, she said.
"They're coming in with families, and they're seeing what older neighborhoods really are, that your kids can come out and walk in the neighborhood, and maybe go to one of the older ladies down the street and mow her lawn or rake her leaves," she said. "That's what it is to find out what your neighborhood is about and to enjoy it."
In recent years, some community leaders and members of the real estate industry have worried that Baltimore County is losing out to developments in Carroll and Harford counties, where newly built homes better fit the contemporary tastes of young families.
But Reisterstown residents said their community continues to attract young residents.
Smith's son and one of his daughters live in the Chartley area, and Cookie Stone, a real estate agent in the community, said she sees a lot of young homebuyers who grew up there.
"My oldest lives in Anne Arundel County, but I have two other children, and both of them, when they went off to college, said they were never coming back to Reisterstown because nothing happens here," Stone said.
"Both of them have families, and both of them have bought homes in Reisterstown."