A whole gas tank away for good fun? How about just down the street and right around the corner, as I enjoyed this past week when the road — aided by 3,000 miles on a big jet airliner — took me back to Maryland.

Having spent most of the past three years in Los Angeles, I had the strange sensation of being a Memorial Day tourist in my own backyard of Baltimore, doing things the average pilgrims might do and others that wouldn't occur to them.

At the obvious end of the long holiday weekend, I had a very good crab cake and two tasty soft crabs at Canton Dockside, corner of Boston and Clinton streets, watched the Birds beat the hated Yankees at Camden Yards, and toured the ever-growing and onerous hon schtick of Hampden.

After a tall and fine glass of limeade at the Golden West Café on 36th Street, I made my first visit in 50 years to the Green Fields Nursery at Falls Road and Northern Parkway.

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There, I bought a yellow rose bush for my old friend Joe Ares III, an exile from South Savage Street in Greektown. Now out in Kingsville, Ares is building a backyard grotto to the Blessed Mother out of broken marble discarded during the restoration of the Basilica of the Assumption downtown.

While waiting in line at Green Fields, I bumped into Chris “The Plumber” Jensen, the legendary monkey wrench of Howard and 28th streets. I can report that he is as cute and ornery as ever.

On the weekend's inside track, I spent an evening with the good-timers and genuine hons — men who drink like Babe Ruth and women who look like him — at Harry's American Bar at Hudson and Luzerne streets, one of the last way-it-used-to-be corners in Canton.

One night for dinner, a gang of friends and I ate a table's worth of $8.99 large cheese pizzas at Squire's on Holabird Avenue in Dundalk and heard Joe Rubino tell stories about playing drums behind Bill “Rock Around the Clock” Haley and at the long-gone Surf Club on Pulaski Highway.

Before jetting back to Tinseltown, I stopped by the Viva House Catholic Worker on South Mount Street in Union Square to see the mural quoting Dostoevsky: “The World Will Be Saved By Beauty.”

It's looking a little faded.

Rafael Alvarez is a writer based in Highlandtown and Hollywood. His email is crab@alvarezfiction.com.