Vic Socotra

04 April 2009

A Walk in the Rain

Everyone in the movie knew this was not going to be a great day.

I knew that the Hubrismobile needed new front tires, and I had been shopping hard for the best price in town. I don’t know what it going to happen, and I figure that you may as well stay on top of the simple maintenance issues on the assumption that if things go south, a person can get further on new tires than old ones, and a catastrophic failure while on the run from what is coming up behind you could be really inconvenient.

Anyway, that accounted for the umbrella and God and Nature accounted for the pelting rain and the two mile walk to the office from the Lee Highway and the bandits who occupy the Merchant Tire store who saw the car and began to salivate in anticipation.

I forgot that that everyone in the car business is a thief, and the rear tires that looked fine were actually showing the wear-bars between the treads, and the stems and balancing, and the alignment was off, which is why I noticed the wear on the left front to begin with.

It was too wet to try to listen to the iPod, or the phone in radio mode, so there was time to think as the cars whizzed by, throwing rooster-tails of gray mist as they passed.

I walked by the bus shelters and wondered how you take one. I know the general principle, but not the specific route or the fare. I could have waited under the clear plastic cover, I suppose, but somehow it seemed more constructive to just keep moving rather than wait for something to come along. I was only getting wet from the elbows down, after all.

Plus, it is Spring, and the wind does not cut anymore and the smell of the wet soil was a little intoxicating. I walked past the Mt. Olivet Church on the west side of Glebe and stopped to read the historical marker.

It would have been shortly after the people at the Commerce Department brought out the binders with the press announcement about the economy shedding 630,000 jobs, which shreds the optimistic forecast of the administration, and just before Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant, drove his borrowed car up against the back door of the American Civic Center in Binghamption New York.

One thing about being on foot is that you can actually stop and read the signs. The silver metal marker was partly obscured by the new blossoms, but I was gratified to discover that this part of the block was home to the oldest continuously used church site in the County. Behind the sign was an a burying ground with old worn stones.

When they laid the cornerstone of the Methodist Church in 1855,
Glebe Road was unpaved and canopied by trees. I would have been in mud up to my knees then, and the lane was barely wide enough to permit passage of two horse-drawn carriages.

Rude or not, Glebe was the main travel way between Alexandria and the Chain Bridge across the Potomac. I was heading toward the office towers that overshadow Ball's Cross Roads, or Ballston as we call it now, and could see why this was a strategic location.

The church building was completed in 1860, only a year before the Yankee army crossed the river and occupied Northern Virginia.

It was not good timing, and a cautionary tale about being occupied by an invading army. After the rout at Manassas, the Federal troops fell all the way back to this place, and occupied the church as a hospital and stable. There were 50,000 troops camped nearby, and the eventually the structure was dismantled to provide firewood and tent floors.

There are probably Union dead in the churchyard, but you can understand why the markers are long gone. It took a quarter century for the Congress to consider a bill for recovery of damages, conditioned on the loyalty of the parishioners at the time.

The rain dripped down from the umbrella and I looked over the low brick wall, The sign indicated that Sue Landon Vaughan was laid to rest in the little churchyard, and invited my attention to the weathered ivory-stone just inside the gate.

During the war, Sue had been a Rebel spy, infiltrating Union lines under the pretense of providing for the spiritual needs of the troops and keeping notes on the military formations she encountered. She also smuggled medical goods to besieged Vicksburg before the fall of the city, and could have encountered my Great-great Uncle Patrick or Great-great Grandfather James, who were both in the area, though wearing different colored uniforms.

After the peace, Sue is credited with originating the observance of Memorial Day, when she began the custom of decorating the graves of Civil War soldiers, Yankee and Confederate, while living in Jackson, Mississippi.

Sue died in the District in 1911, but was buried here, alongside her sister Sally, right about the time the Congress allocated $3,400 to the congregation for the destruction of the original church.

Tough times, I thought. Hard to believe the War was right here, an occupying army encamped all around. I resumed my own soggy march south toward the Crossroads and the office as the rain increased in intensity. If I had known it was going to get this bad I would have waited for the bus, and trusted in the unknown.

It is hard to do that, though. When I finally arrived at the building, and later sitting soaked at my desk, I turned on the radio and heard the news about the jobs. I was mostly dry by lunch, which was a good thing, but turned sour as the first reports came about what happened in Binghampton.

There was no explanation for the atrocity committed by Mr. Jiverly Wong against the Russians, Kurds, Chinese, Arabs, Laotians and others gathered in Binghampton.

Figure the odds of something like that, I thought. All those places to come from, all tangled up in a common nightmare.

The bandits from the tire store called, adding some necessary charges. I caught a ride with a generous co-worker to get the Hubrismobile, which wound up costing about three times what I had budgeted.

Somehow I didn’t feel like walking.

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