In Mount Airy, Panoramas at the Right Price

With the nearest movie theaters and shopping malls more than 10 miles away in any direction, the year-old coffeehouse was a welcome addition to a downtown Main Street "that used to be dead," Burkett said. "There used to be nothing here for younger kids."

Burkett was adopted from South Korea by a Caucasian family in Mount Airy and has the distinction of being one of 188 Asians in the Zip code. "People say, 'You don't really sound Asian.' Well, yeah," Burkett said with a laugh, "considering I've been raised white in Carroll County."

After college, "I'd be willing to stay here," Burkett said. "I'll love Mount Airy." He pauses a few seconds. "For always."

Dalia Schulman shares the sentiment. In 2001, she and her husband, Stephen, gave up on high-priced, closer-in real estate and the loneliness of an "impersonal" street in Bethesda where no one spoke to them when they took walks.

"We even had a dog," she said. "What kind of people don't say hello to somebody with a dog?"

During their Mount Airy house hunt, the two had a pleasant jolt of "reverse sticker shock" when they saw the price on one brochure. "I said, 'Stephen, something's wrong. There's a typo.' "

There was no typo: They bought their four-bedroom, stone-front model on a third of an acre for $300,000.

The couple owns Knife & Fork Caterers Inc. of Rockville, named for a restaurant they once had in Georgetown. Stephen Schulman still goes back and forth to the Washington area every day.

Dalia Schulman stays in town and is "beyond happy." She opened a knitting shop on Main Street, where she teaches needlework and now mah-jongg. Her newest passion is the "fun-after-50" Red Hat Society, a women's social group.

Breezes from the foothills are cool and brisk at 5:30 a.m. in Mount Airy, and the carnival grounds are deserted. But that didn't keep volunteer firefighter Warren "Tony" Esworthy from showing up to sand and paint the guardrails one recent day. There are lots of rusty guardrails leading to the fire company's 43-acre property.

Esworthy is something of a town hero. He was one of six firefighters injured in the line of duty in 1987, when the speeding engine on which he was riding "backstep" spun out of control, skidding 76 feet on its side before colliding with a tree. Esworthy was trapped in the wreckage for 40 minutes.

A resident for all of his 53 years, he and his wife paid $70,000 20 years ago for a Cape Cod-style house that now is worth $500,000. "I got no bills," he bragged, "and I don't believe in credit cards."

Though he can no longer answer fire alarms, his friendships with the firefighters have tied him to the company. "The guys used to bring my wife to visit every day," Esworthy said of the 110 days he spent recovering at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. "They did it on their own."

Deanna Brown felt no such comradeship in 1976, when she became one of the first five women admitted to the Mount Airy Volunteer Fire Company. "It was an all-male domain before," the 38-year resident said. "A lot of the guys swallowed real hard."

One did more than gulp, Brown said. "Every time he went to the bathroom, he left the door open just to humiliate the women."

The community grew, and the Mount Airy fire department hired many more women. As for Brown's male co-worker: "He started closing the bathroom door."