03 March 2007

House on the Hill



The Arlington Civitans put on the swap meet the first Saturday of the month. It is a Red Letter day on my calendar, which I do a year in advance with my trusty Sharpie-brand laundry marker.

I don't know any Civitans personally. They are a species of public-minded people who donate this one Saturday a month to fund-raising for the “mentally challenged” and other underdeveloped people. They are good people, supporting as they do the Civitan International Research Center and other good works.

Human are gregarious creatures, and like to group together. We in Arlington are no exception, though as many, I prefer bowling alone. Based on our proximity to the nation's capital, we are unfortunately cursed with a variety of shadowy conspiracy groups. It comes out of the tradition of the old Virginia that languished under the heel of the Yankees, and the ruination of the local economy that followed the end of the war, and the abandonment of the forts and trenches that crisscrossed the County.

We have moved on, of course. The mushrooming of Washington through the apex of its power has made this a diverse area with no more in common with the old Confederacy than any other city in the North. The border with the south has moved down the road quite a ways.

Still, it is not far away in time. I have coffee sometimes at the Java Shack over on North Franklin Road, which was once the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, not that you could tell any more. In 1967, the American Fuhrer, George Lincoln Rockwell, was assassinated as he left the Econo Coin Laundry in the Dominion Hills strip mall that I pass going to Falls Church.

The shooter was on the roof of the beauty salon, which is still there. The murderer was an estranged member of the party, which was the same theme that ended Brother Malcolm's life at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, two years before. Malcolm was one of the people that Mr. Rockwell ranted about, and I suspect that he would take umbrage at the comparison.

Rockwell was an interesting guy, in a creepy way, and still comes up among the conspiracy crowd as an example of military extremism. He had been a Navy flyer before his delusions overcame him, and had honorable service in the Second World War. He was finally shot down in 1967, precisely in the way that a lot of people thought. That was when things were beginning to change in Arlington.

Rockwell's followers used to paint swastikas in the parking lot on exactly the spot where he expired near his car, but that has not been done in a long time. The house he owned was up the hill. It was an old farmhouse, typical of era. He had a large swastika painted on the third floor, overlooking the road.

Locals called it “Hatemonger Hill.” It was bulldozed years ago and incorporated into the Upton Hill Regional Park.

Good riddance.

Tradition and growth have brought us new conspiracies, though they tend to be more shadowy. They cover the entire spectrum of human activity. Right here, in the shadow of Big Pink, there is MS-13, the Salvadoran gang. They are being marginalized, since they concentrate on terrorizing their own people, and besides, are getting priced out of the neighborhood.

Of course there are the resistance groups, for and against governments in the Middle East, Horn of Africa, and South Asia, and of course we have our garden-variety eco-terrorists and animal activists; and there are some well-heeled and very shadowy groups who are purported to have arranged for private exits from some of the highways. None of them sponsor flea markers, to my knowledge.

We all live in a sort of harmony, which is good, though I sense a certain unraveling of the social fabric. The neighborhood is morphing again before our eyes. Between Big Pink and the new towers of Ballston is an arch of single-family homes that were once the prototype for the post-war suburbs. They cradle the blocks of garden apartments that once housed the energetic workers at the Army Security Agency that occupied Arlington Hall across Route 50. Then, with the passing of years, they became the slightly down-at-the-heels port of embarkation for the Vietnamese and Central Americans who followed them.

Now, the County Master Plan is supporting the neighborhood as “mixed use,” which has permitted developers to buy up every block, renovating some as low-income housing and permitting high-end town homes to go in next to them. It is getting so expensive that some of the shadowy conspiracies are being forced move out to the suburbs with M-13, where the poor people increasingly have to live.

It is something of a paradigm switch. The County Planning Board apparently hopes a rising tide will raise all boats, I hope, and maybe do something to clean up the day-labor market on the corner across from the Post Office.

I am encouraged by that, hoping it will make my investment in Big Pink that much more profitable, As it is, we are a bit of an island of tranquility. I am hoping we can aspire to being a peninsula.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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