They risk their lives to fetch the mail, sacrifice sleep to high-speed smash-ups and mourn pets lost to the asphalt where their lush orchards once grew.
Such are the perils of life in the median of a state highway.
For more than 40 years - since the State Highway Administration plowed through backyard gardens to create southbound Route 3 - about a dozen Anne Arundel County residents have lived on a median strip in Gambrills about a mile long and 400 feet wide.
Many feel stuck there, unable to get the commercial zoning that would allow them to sell their homes, yet unwilling to continue living there as daily tasks become life-threatening risks.
"It doesn't pass the common-sense test," said Harry Sinclair Jr., who grew up in the median and whose octogenarian parents still live on the island stretching from Route 175 to St. Stephens Church Road. "What kind of people do you think want to live in the middle of the road?"
Now, homeowners - who have long complained to the county and the state about their plight - might have their best chance in decades for relief.
County planners, who review countywide zoning plans every 10 years, are considering a major Route 3 median rezoning early next year, which could help those looking to sell to commercial buyers. And the State Highway Administration, which has spent millions to study Route 3 upgrades, once again is considering the options.
Del. David G. Boschert, who grew up across from the median, said the county and the state must stop "the bureaucratic shuffle and two-step nonsense." The Crownsville Republican added, "I hate to say it, but some of these people are going to die waiting."
Many median residents are old enough to remember a time when northbound Route 3 was a slow, two-lane road where children rode bikes in the middle of the street. Farms and forests surrounded the well-kept country homes. Sinclair's grandmother, Louise, ran a tavern anchoring one end of the strip. The Anderson family's soda fountain and gas station sat on the other, where Routes 3 and 175 meet at a point still called Anderson's Corner.
Lucille and Benjamin Jerman Sr. bought their first house in the 700 block of Route 3 in the early 1940s. Newlyweds Harry Sr. and Mary Sinclair followed when the elder Harry returned from his tour with a tank destroyer unit in World War II.
The road arrives
In 1958, the state announced it would put in a road where the elder Harry had planted a vegetable garden and where the younger one had built a log cabin from the nearby woods.
"They paid us $300 for going through our garden," Mary Sinclair said with a grimace. "Then we got a lawyer, and we got $300 more."
Lucille and Ben Sr., like most of the Sinclairs' early neighbors, have died. But their children vividly remember the summer their mother took them to Kansas for a month to visit family. When they returned, the state had plowed through their apple and peach orchards.
The two families still pay property taxes for plots on the other side of the highway - though they have never been able to use them. Some in the area say the state should have bought out the entire median when it built the road, but the state has said it never intended to buy more than the bits it needed for its right-of-way.
"It's no fun, living between the lanes," lamented Charles Jerman, who lives in the white clapboard house where he grew up. "It's not fair, and it hasn't been fair for a long time."
Over the past 20 years, Route 3 has become a major commuting road, connecting fast-growing Crofton to Interstate 97 on the north and U.S. 50 on the south.
Median residents must endure motorists tossing cigarette butts and fast-food wrappers from car windows, and speeders despite the 45-mph limit in that area. They cross the busy northbound lane to retrieve their mail; they don't like to open their windows or sit on their porches because of the fumes.
The state mows the grass only a few times a year, which forces Mary, an 84-year-old grandmother with curly gray hair and thick glasses, to clear the state's right of way. Harry, who can't mow because of hip replacement surgery, worries as he watches. He doesn't like to see his wife so close to the road's edge.
When guests visit, Mary Sinclair gives risky directions - make a U-turn, then a left into oncoming traffic, and stay on the shoulder as traffic flies by. The Sinclairs are on the left.
"Oh, my, it's so scary," Sinclair said. "It used to be beautiful."
No chance of selling
A few years ago, a vehicle slammed into one of the Thompson family's homes next door. The Thompsons, who paid about $100,000 for their property in 1982, are among the newest homeowners in the median and one of the few families there with young children. Recently, the family has tried to fix up the properties and sell them. But the bank officers walk off the property as soon as they arrive, Peter Thompson said. They have no idea how to value a house in the middle of the road.
It's not all misery. The squirrels, finches and rabbits have come back, for some reason. The family replaced a litter of kittens lost to the road with a pet pygmy goat, Nanny, and a dog, Oliver. But Thompson knows it's not ideal.
"I would like to go to an area where my children can ride their bicycles," he said. "It does get monotonous for them to ride in circles on the grass. I know what they're missing."
It was never supposed to be this way. In the 1970s, before I-97 was built, the state was working to create a road called Interstate 297 to connect Baltimore to Richmond. The northbound lane of what is now Route 3 was to have been a service lane, the southbound lane right of way a limited-access interstate.
"We were predicting as far back as the planning study that there would be very significant increases in congestion problems if improvements were not made," said Neil Pedersen, who helped to oversee the project and now is SHA's deputy administrator for planning and engineering.
But influential Crofton residents, led by then-Del. O. James Lighthizer, opposed the plan, and the state scrapped it. In 1982, Lighthizer became county executive and the funds were diverted elsewhere. He later became state transportation secretary and says the issue didn't come up again during his term.
Since then, Crofton - and Route 3 - have boomed, and the Village at Waugh Chapel shopping center along Route 3 has become a major attraction.
Such developments, Pedersen acknowledges, have contributed to the road's identity crisis - its split from I-97 encourages highway speeds, while its traffic lights and entrance points create start-and-stop traffic.
Studies, focus groups
The state studied the road several times in the 1990s, but Crofton and Bowie residents never agreed on a bypass option. Earlier this year, the state reconvened a focus group of Bowie and Crofton residents - and added one median property owner - to discuss options again.
Median property owners also have battled county officials who have been reluctant to upgrade any more median homes to commercial zoning and over the years have tried to strip commercial zoning from existing businesses in the median.
During the rezoning in the late 1980s, most homeowners in the median were able to win only a hybrid residential-commercial status. That has left residents with rundown properties as they wait for a state buyout - which Pedersen insists isn't coming - or a zoning change before making upgrades.
Finding tenants, too, is hard: Thompson said he has rented to 28 different tenants in 20 years - often, he says, "they're people who can't find a normal place." Though he and other landlords declined to reveal their rates, they say the properties could command about $300 more if they weren't in the median.
Two years ago, residents' luck began to change when they brought County Executive Janet S. Owens to the median.
"All you had to do was get out of your car to see this is unreasonable," Owens said of the residents' plight. "It seemed so crazy - you couldn't hear." Owens said she supports commercial zoning for the homes.
And if the state can't decide on a road plan soon, Boschert said he'll invite Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to the median strip so he can see the situation.
Even if change comes, Mary Sinclair is not sure she'll move: "We have so much freedom here, even though we are inhaling exhaust daily. I still love it here, only the noise is unbelievable."