16 May 2009
 
Hickory Hill

(Young RFK and Family at Hickory Hill)
 
I wasn't going to write the story of the two stones in Decarlia today, much less drag you off on some brand new wild goose chase.
 
Dammit, I was going to finish off the mystery of the Buckingham Swim Club, and I will. It is going to take a minute, though, and believe me, I feel for you.
 
In my defense, this is consistent, in a curious sort of way, The water that once filled that pool, and still flows from the taps in Big Pink come from the place Jason and LeRoi and  trekked yesterday in the District looking for two of the Boundrary Stones. This has been a work in progress for nearly six years.
 
A break in he case occurred a month or so ago, and I came across a phone number for a man in the Baltimore District of the Corps of Engineers who has jurisdiction over two of the stones. Well, actually, he is retired and a new fellow answered the phone, and told me of the procedure to gain access to them legally.
 
I drafted the request, and it was sitting on my desk when I got a note from the Admiral, who said he saw an article by reporter John Kelly in the Metro section of last Thursday’s Post about some loon who had appointed himself Ambassador of the Stones, and naturally he thought it was me.
 
I got a copy of the article and bristled immediately. It was some other loon, who claims to have all the Stones.
 
Until yesterday, I was missing four, five if you include the one that is in the Maryland Transportation Official’s garage, but I have been to the place it used to be, which should count for something. Otherwise I have touched all thirty-five of the easy ones, assuming you count the two replicas and the brass plate that marks the place NW 1 vanished from.
 
“The stones abide,” starts the article, and the bile started to rise. An engineer named Stephan Powers from Arlington got himself hooked up with reporter Kelly, and the product was a cute article about speed-visiting the sites of all 40 stones in six hours and thirty-four minutes.
 
It is bullshit, or trespassing, or both.  The article claims they did in on a Sunday, andI know for a fact that the Federal Reservation where two of the stones are located is not open on the weekend.
 
So, I am going to ask you to bear with me. Jason and I went to NW 4 and NW 5 the hard way. But in the meantime, General Montgomery C. Meigs, the man who as much as Grant was responsible for winning the Civil War for the Union, got in the way.
 
So, yes, I am going to drag you off on another wild new Goose Chase and pull you down a bunch of rabbit holes and culverts on the way.
 
We are on the way to that story tomorrow, but it directly relates to the water we drink, and hence life in Big Pink and the Buckingham neighborhood. It is just too big to do today.
 
Jason and I were in the Bluesmoible, and we left from the office and drove up the Glebe Road to the Chain Bridge near CIA's wooded campus, and the old Kennedy mansion at Hickory Hill. The old police car is definitely the vehicle of choice for adventuring: rugged and business-like, and ready for pursuit or flight, should either become necessary.
 
I was running on about the story I was trying to conclude, the part about the murder of George Lincoln Rockwell at the Econowash not far from SW 8. 
 
I told him I was trying to recreate the moment in history when Buckingham tipped from an all-white enclave into a Vietnamese immigrant settlement, all in the course of three years.
 
My working theory, I explained, gesturing out the window of the blue police car, was that the Buckingham Swim Club was close to Rockwell’s Nazi headquarters, and that Frances Freed knew what was going to happen when she allowed people of color to rent in Buckingham, just like the ACCESS protestors were demanding.
 
There would be mixed bathing in a state where the segregation of the races was still the law, and real, if imitation, Nazi storm troopers up the street.
 
Mrs, Freed was nothing if not proper, and the whole thing must have struck her as  undignified, and bad for business. I thought she had the pool dug up and the garden apartments north of 5th Road ripped down to make the problem go away.
 
“No way to prove it now,” I said. “Not in the archives in the Central Library. The real story is probably buried in the minutes of the County Planning Commission, and God only knows where they are.”
 
I lit up a smoke and exhaled into the slip-stream. “That is what I thought, anyway. Looking back on it, I think it was something simpler. I think it was about cash.”
 
“You can’t go wrong following the money,” said Jason.
 
“Yeah. Once upon a time, there were long waiting lists of people who wanted to live in Buckingham. I think that stopped in 1966 when the protests started. The Garden Apartments were getting a little frayed around the edges. The rooms were too small, and the big houses in the suburbs must have been pretty attractive. Plus, the city was changing. Getting edgier and more dangerous.”
 
“Maybe it was just people looking for a little peace and quiet.”
 
“Frances wanted to change Buckingham into a high-rise area. That is why she built the Hyde Park, the big twelve-story tower on the south side of Glebe from the swim club. The County must have got something in return for that. Maybe the right to push Quincy Street over the other Buckingham units where the Mercedes dealer is now.”
 
“Might have had nothing to do with the Nazis or the Klan at all,” said Jason. “After all, Rockwell was dead in 1967.”
 
“I think it had everything to do with the killings. JFK. Malcom. Rockwell. Then Doctor King. That is what tore it. Washington went nuts.”
 
“So did everything.”
 
“It’s funny. I was asking people about that time, and a friend actually grew up in Buckingham. She remembers sitting in her little girl jimmies in front of the television set in a unit right over by Pershing and Glebe. Her mom worked at DIA at Arlington Hall at the time, and they moved right after. Something happened to Buckingham. Maybe people fled, or Frances was able to find people desperate enough to pay higher rents. Maybe the Vietnamese.”
 
By this point we were on the curve where Glebe approaches the Chain Bridge, not far from Hickory Hill.
 
I waved my cigarette in that general direction. “It is all connected. A friend of mine was working in the City when Bobby Kennedy was still living there. He invited to the mansion by the Senator with a bunch of interns the summer that Rockwell was killed outing one afternoon and evening. He said Ethel was very gracious, and Bobby finally showed up to the crowd of rock-star-groupie interns.”
 
“He said it was funny. Bobby wasn’t a saint then, and the Congressman my pal worked for thought he was a sawed-off SOB. His room-mate’s father remembered stuffing little Bobby butt-first into a janitor’s rolling trash receptacle at prep school.”
 
“NW 3 is up there in the backyard of a house on Tazwell Street,” I said as we passed the turn. “I felt kind of weird sneaking around the house to see it. I did knock on the door though.”
 
“That is the least you could have done,” said Jason, pulling down his ballcap.
 
“Yeah. The guy in the Post said he called first. Anyhow, my pal was playing tennis on the compound later, and he said RFK appeared at the tennis court and introduced himself. He was very gracious, and my pal was astonished he would even bother.”
 
“Politicians are social creatures,” said Jason, looking out the window at the lush foliage as Glebe Road began to descend toward the river.
 
“Anyway, he said they talked for a bit, then the Senator went back up to the house, changed, and the last time he saw him he was wearing black pegged pants, and a fuzzy powder blue mohair sweater, driving a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville convertible out the driveway, headed for Georgetown bars with his brother Teddy and two other family friends. He said even then he had something marked or tragic about him—like guys in combat you know are gonna get killed. Two years later my pal was on the Cambodian border, and he knows those things.”
 
“Lot of baggage from those years, isn’t there?” said Jason.
 
The Bluesmobile roared onto the Chain Bridge, and the chasm cut by the Potomac is still narrow and steep and wild there. We came into the District and turned right on Canal Road, headed for the turn at Arizona Avenue, then Macarthur Boulevard and NW 4.

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com