Vic Socotra

11 October 2008

Fire Sale

I am going to go over to the Courthouse and vote this week. They cal it “Absentee in Person,” which is one of those non sequiturs that abound in this new century.

Arlington is a thoroughly Blue County, and I expect things to be pretty crazy on election20day at the precinct next to Big Pink. I worked as a polling official there for the election in 2002, the one Al Gore won, and it was as frantic as anything I have ever seen.

I have my mind made up, and there is nothing that is going to change it, even if my candidate is found in bed with a dad girl or a live boy, so I may as well get it out of the way. I couldn’t get out of Tunnel Eight fast enough Friday to get there before work, and I was thinking about taking the Metro down three stops and doing it after the morning meeting.

That takes a little more time than driving, but with the exception of walking to work, I am trying to be better about burning fossil fuel. It is also part of that getting used to public transportation. I draw the line at the bus, but who knows where this is all going. It might beshoe-leather before long, just like back in the days of the soup kitchens.

Of course, that reminds me. There is a soup kitchen now across the street. I made a mental note to check out the feeding program at the Assembly of God/Iglesia de Luz Verdidad just in case things really hit the skids.

Anyway, Millicent the Magnificent was headed out of the marble-floored lobby just as I got off the elevator.

She is a smoker, so of course I have become acquainted with her, as with all the smokers in the building. We are an outcast fraternity, not so much in the summer, but when the winter winds come our commitment to addiction is impressive.

Millicent is a striking woman works at the Japanese copier company across from our suite on the eight floor. She might have genes from the Horn of Africa. She has high cheekbones and a slim, tall carriage. Her eyes are dark and merry, and we joke around a lot.

She had a cigarette and her Bic in one hand and her cell phone in the other, but she looked like she was on a mission, striding briskly to the glass doors to the alley.

“Hey, Magnificent!” I called, hurrying to catch up. “Where’s the fire?” She turned and smiled as she held the door for me.

“Lieutenant Ron said there is a fire sale at the Clinton Campaign Headquarters. They are shutting the place down and everything has got to go. Ron knows everything that is going on around here.”

“What do they have?” I asked, falling in beside her.

“Dunno. Office supplies, desks, I imagine. I have never been in there. It was high security when it was in operation.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “For a couple minutes, that office was one of the most important places in the world. Remember when the satellite trucks used to park in the alley?”

“Oh, do I,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I never saw her but once, and it was a day that Bill came. There were so many people that all I could see was the top of his head.” She shivered at the memory.

“All I ever saw was the Senator’s Security Detail from the Secret Service,” I said. I spend an hour one time waiting for her to come out. Never did see her.” We crossed the alley and walked around the end of the building. It is one of the first modern ones that was erected on the Wilson Corridor, and now is slated for demolition.

Hector, one of the guys I work with, was naturalized there as a kid,=2 0and before that it had been Naval Investigative Service, when this end of the neighborhood was a nest of Spooks. The weathered blue cube across the street did training for the Langley folks before it became Marymount University, and God knows what other shadow agencies had anonymous offices along Fairfax Drive.

The Hillary Clinton Campaign is the end of the line for this structure. As soon as things turn around in the economy, it will become a hole in the ground and then another mid-rise skyscraper.

We walked up to the back door that still had some information for the volunteers taped to it. It told us to go around in front for access if we did not have badges. There obviously was no way that was going to happen at this late date, so we walked around the far side of the cube and went to the front door, which was flanked by a ten foot inflatable Uncle Sam and an industrial-style wooden desk with a Post-It note with “$20” written on it.

There was no tag on Uncle Sam, but there was no place for me to put him anyway.

Inside, there was a reception desk with some old newspapers on it, and a couple workmen with loading carts moving chairs and filing cabinets. Th ere was a stock of boxes with large white labels. I looked at them. They were from Simon and Shuster, the publishers, and addressed to “Hilary Rodham Clinton” at HILPAC. They were filled with copies of her 2003 book “Living History,” which must have been used as presentoes on the campaign trail.

They looked a little forlorn. A gray-haired woman with a clipboard was talking to some women who looked like immigrants outside an office to the left that must have been one of the boiler-rooms for the volunteers who worked the phone banks. The women did not have a lot of English, and they were apparently looking for bargain furniture. Millicent gave a gasp of delight as she saw a table covered with fax machines and copiers.

“Do you need to do a lot of faxing?” I asked as she ran her hands over the sleek machines. The stickies said they were $25 apiece, and there was a basket filled with powered speakers for computers.

“I run an office supply business at home,” she said, calculating which machine might best fit her needs. They were good deals.

I looked around the room in disappointment. There was not much with any overt connection to the camp aign. There was a white board with a matrix of local offices in Texas and the Midwest, the last remnant of the last surge of activity. Otherwise there were boxes of stickies, with a sticky on them to indicate the price, and boxes of pens and paperclips. Nothing to associate them with the historic nature of what they had supported: the first major party woman candidate to run for the office of President of the United States.

I picked my was across the room, looking for possibilities. I struck gold in a box filled with all sizes of American flags. I found a brand new one in nylon, five foot by eight. I did not have a place for one of this size at Big Pink any more than I could have accommodated the ten-foot Uncle Sam, but I retain my hope that someday I might.

I decided this was going to be as good as it got. “Hey, Millicent,” I called out across the room, “When I get home tonight, I’m going to take a Sharpie indelible laundry marker and put block letters across the hem saying “Trophy. Hillary Clinton National Campaign Headquarters, Presidential Election, Arlington, 2008.” “

“That’s nice, Vic. You can never have too many flags.”

I also selected a pair of the powered computer speakers, too, since they were almost brand new, and the words of the Candidate must have come through them on the Internet ads,

Millicent found an all-in-one fax-scanner-answering machine that must once have held critical information on the early primaries. We found the gray-haired woman, who looked at her clip-board and said she wouldn’t take cash. “Checks only,” she said pertly. “If you don’t have one, you can go down the street to the 7-11 and get a money order.”

We put our treasures on a card table by the door with a sign that announced the goods were sold, and hustled off down the block to get some good paper. “I don’t know the last time I actually wrote a check,” said Millicent.

“Me, too” I said. I do everything on line these days. “There were some good deals there, if you were starting your own company, or were going to run for office someplace. I think I will get a lottery ticket, too.”

“I could bring a truck, if I had one,” she said, wrinkling her brow to think how she could turn the detritus of a dream into inventory for her home business.

“I sort of hoped they would have some old campaign stuff,” I said. “Something collectable, like that crazy poster with the picture of Hillary looking like Eva Peron with the sun-rays bursting out all around her.”

“I’ve seen that one,” Millicent said. “It was done by that Hollywood screenwriter Tony Puryear He worte the movie “Eraser.”

“I would have paid a premium to have one of those from the national headquarters,” I said pensively. “Because by Monday, that is exactly what is going to happen to it. Erased.”

Millicent stopped as she reached out for the metal handle of the glass door to the 7-11. “Yes, but they will never wipe away what happened there.”

“No," I said. "I don’t suppose they will.”

Close Window