‘They Threw Crab Apples At Me’: Local Maryland Artist Brings Unfiltered Silk Road Stories To Prince Frederick

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — March 21, 2026, local artist Dr. Jay Anderson will be giving a lecture about his book “Threadbare Tales From Silk Road” at the Kocen Arts Center in Prince Frederick. The book is a travelogue that records Anderson’s trip overland from London to New Delhi in the early ’70s as a series of short stories.

Anderson told The BayNet that he had always been an artist, but later became a writer and traveler.

“Right off the bat I was interested in art,” he said. “I had a kindergarten teacher who was my main supporter and introduced me to drawing. I was certain from an early age that this was something I wanted to do.”

“In college I got my bearings,” Anderson said. “I was a fine arts major. My general education was also supportive of my interest in drawing. At 16, I had a wonderful, supportive high school art teacher. I decided one way or another that I wanted to stay in art. The writing came later, after I had started traveling. I enjoyed writing short stories, and I wrote about places that were exotic or were dangerous, where most people won’t go.”

The long journey recorded in “Threadbare Tales From Silk Road” was Anderson’s third extended voyage. He had previously worked for four months in Germany and sailed from Newport Beach, California, to Acapulco, Mexico. The book clocks in at around 400 pages. Anderson has since written a sequel, “Where Tour Buses Won’t Go,” based on another trip to India that he took 28 years later.

The journey described in “Threadbare Tales” was motivated initially by Anderson’s love for art, he said.

“I had my degree in fine art with an emphasis in art history. I was always interested in Asian art, but I was tired of studying it without really seeing it,” he said. “I went part of the way with another person — maybe that’s a story I’ll tell at the event — and we decided that the best way for us to go was overland.”

Writing and revising “Threadbare Tales” took more than 50 years, Anderson said, and wasn’t always easy.

“There were lots of stages. I almost lost it three times,” he said. “It was hard at the time to find a computer that could read my printed manuscripts, you see. I committed to sitting down and finishing the book after I retired.”

On Saturday, March 21, Anderson will recount his stories to event attendees at the Kocen Arts Center, which is located at 22 Duke St., Prince Frederick, MD 20678. The event will start at 4 p.m. and run for about an hour and a half.

“I’m going to read two or three excerpts,” Anderson said. “These stories are examples of how mysterious, exotic, and magical Asia can get. One is about when I was in Mashhad, Iran. This was in 1972. I was walking along in a park, past this group of kids. I guess they hadn’t seen many people who looked like me before, tourists or people in shorts. They threw these rock-hard crab apples at me. I caught a few, but they hit me a couple times. One hit me right in the head and made me dizzy, and I fell. When I looked up, the crowd was on their hands and knees, like they were praying. This man in a black robe, black turban, and long black beard shouted something, waved his hand once, and then he was gone. The kids ran off, but there were some other bystanders around. I was left with 30 people who had no explanation for what had just happened.”

“I don’t know if I’ll share this story at the event. I’m still working on updating and organizing things,” Anderson said. “I’ve got a story where we’re coming into Istanbul. I happened to be driving a Porsche. I didn’t own it, this woman who was with me did. She had a scare, almost hit something back in Vienna and didn’t want to drive, so she asked me to drive all the way to Istanbul. As we were coming into Turkey, every time we drove by a big rig, an 18-wheeler, they would get real close and try to run us off the road. There was a whole carload of us, and it scared us every time. When we got into Istanbul, we entered a shop and I asked the shopkeeper about it. He just slapped me on the shoulder, laughed this big belly laugh, and said, ‘That’s the Turks’ way of welcoming you to the country!’”

Anderson said that as of Thursday afternoon, only a handful of people had signed up to attend the event. Even so, he expressed excitement to share his stories.

“Sharing the experience is what I’m about,” he said. “Mickey was saying that only five people had signed up and wanted to know if I wanted to keep doing it, and I said, ‘Absolutely. If one person attends, I’ll do it.’”

Mickey Love, executive director of the Arts Council of Calvert County, has been working closely with Anderson to organize the event. Anderson said that he is one of the first in a series of lectures hosted at Kocen Arts Center by the Arts Council of Calvert County.

You can sign up for Saturday’s lecture at Kocen Arts Center here: https://www.calvertarts.org/event-details/threadbare-tales-from-silk-road

To see more from Dr. Jay Anderson, check out his website, Facebook and Instagram.

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