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It’s a 38 minute drive from Mt. Airy to Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Another 15 minutes, on a shuttle, from the employee parking lot to the terminal. Then 10 more minutes to pass through security and seven more for Sheila to walk to the gate.
Sheila’s gate has no letter or number. She unlocks it and slides it open every morning, the first step in preparing for a day of hungry, thirsty, tired, and lonely passengers. Sandwiched between a Panda Express and a newer, shinier bar from a corporate restaurant group, Sheila’s International Airport Bar and Grill would seem like an eyesore to any traveler rushing by.
The enduring, dark bar is a relic of another time and many, many other places.
It smells old and looks old because it is old, and would never purport to be anything otherwise. Sheila’s been in the game too long to care about keeping up with her competitors or keeping up with appearances. Maximizing revenue hasn’t been the goal for decades, or else she would have sold her space at any of the increasingly bloated offers over the last few years.
The walls are covered in thousands of postcards, photos, and souvenirs from across the globe, objects brought back to the bar. Sheila’s keepsakes collect like stamps in a passport, emblems of where her regulars have gone for business and pleasure. The old barkeep takes great pride in updating and recalibrating the collection, the closest she ever gets to making the journeys herself.
For as much as Sheila lives amongst objects and vistas from around the globe, she has never been on a plane or even left Maryland.
She dutifully took over the bar when her dad got sick, an only child whose spot as next in line took precedence over her own hopes and dreams. For a while, the old traditions of the place held, but eventually Sheila’s wanderlust began to materialize and then metastasize. You can only be surrounded by globetrotters for so long before emotional osmosis sets in.
What started with her patrons sharing trinkets from their comings and goings eventually led to stories of worlds outside of BWI Airport and Anne Arundle County. Ground-bound Sheila lived vicariously through the tales passed across the old oak and linoleum bar.
Sheila can recite a list of the best pizza shops in Rome or recommend the best ways to get to the pyramids in Giza. She knows what the seasons look like in Tokyo and could tell you what African countries you’d most likely see all Big Five game animals. She can warn of the pickpockets on a Brazilian beach and detail the joyous thunder of a goal scored by FC Barcelona.
Her brain is like one of those maps with the pushpins in all the places people have been, even if her feet have been firmly planted on Maryland terra firma her whole life.
Sheila isn’t just the local bartender. She’s a Fodors book without pretension. She is a Michelin guide whose travel is exclusively on Michelin tires. She has created customs without ever having gone through customs. She is the warm, consistent face before her patrons leave the country or the first smile they see when they get back.
She sees the world through the eyes of others. Sheila may never step on a plane, she may never even get a passport. But she’ll keep seeing the world, sometimes multiple continents in one day. And when someone new moseys up to the bar and tells her “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Sheila can tell them exactly where that place is, what it’s like, and find out where they are going or coming from, and add another page to her travel guide.
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