06 May 2009
Fair Housing
(Frances Freed’s Office Window Today)
The rains have been persistent this week, the skies a uniform gray that periodically open up in a drench. I parked the Bluesmobile in front of Big Pink and fumbled around in my leather mail-pouch for the Totes-brand umbrella.
Handy little device, those things, though not sturdy enough for anything more than the desultory showers of the week. I opened the solid steel door of the Ford and extended the umbrella while still seated on the gray seat. It was a little awkward getting the thing deployed while dragging the bag out and slinging it over my shoulder.
The swimming pool thing was starting to bug me. It was all tied into the Fair Housing demonstrations and the Nazis and the Klan, I was convinced. The working premise I had seemed to fit. I was convinced that Frances Freed, Queen of Buckingham, had worked with the County Planners to get some concessions in exchange for the Buckingham garden apartment block that stood on the north side of 5th Road North. The pool was a problem, lying at the uttermost northern point of Buckingham, closest to where the troublemakers hung out on North Randolf Street.
Buckingham had been built as a stand-alone community, an island of fair housing for white bureaucrats, isolated intentionally. Pressure was on to punch through north-south and east-west roads to connect to the rest of the county and let traffic flow. Frances could definitely go with the flow. She had completed construction of Big Pink in 1964, and had told the Post that the future meant tearing down the two-story garden units and replacing them with high-rises.
Frances had a vision, and I was convinced it did not include demonstrators, or Nazis or the Klan. I thought that the community pool was going to be a flashpoint for demonstrations. It would be messy and embarrassing. She had Carl Albert, Speaker of the House of Representatives, living at Big Pink, after all, and a host of senior Spooks from the new Defense Intelligence Agency, created out of the intelligence units of the Army, Navy and Air Force after the missile crisis to try to fix the dysfunctional system,
Frances was pleased with the way Big Pink turned out, and had been talking to the architect who designed it for her to try another one, bigger, and with all the bells and whistles to anticipate the growth in the Ballston area that was sure to come.
She thought she would continue the British-style theme of the Buckingham neighborhood; a working name for the prospective development was “Hyde Park.”
It was a bold vision. A twelve-story monochromatic International-style building would tower over the leafy neighborhood of two-story suburban homes, garden apartments and low-rise commercial buildings for miles around.
Just across Glebe Road, the Parkington Shopping Center an early attempt at a mega-mall was winding down to make way for what would eventually become the Ballston Common Mall, e*Trade Bank Tower and the Kettler Capitals’ Iceplex.
I was deep in thought as I walked along the narrow access drive in front of the building. It is not painted as “one way,” but it is narrow enough that parking is only permitted along the curb on the right hand side, and by custom and practicality, traffic flows west since there is not enough space for passing.
When the guy in the Volvo hit the horn I about jumped a foot. I wheeled around under my umbrella to see if it was one of the Ornamental Concrete executives, playing a work-site joke on me, but it wasn’t. Just a fender and a windshield and an impatient man with his hand on the center of his steering wheel.
I asked him one of those blunt rhetorical questions- you know the sort.
He was a foreigner, and said something that seemed to question my presence at my building. I gave him my very best wishes in an increasingly louder tone as he squeezed by and sped down past the entrance to the eastern entrance. District Plates, I thought, and would have written down the tag number if I didn’t have an umbrella clutched in my hand.
I leaned down to see under the trees as the Volvo wheeled onto the access road. Sure enough, he had cut through the parking lot to get to the on-ramp to Route 50. A damn cut-through driver from the new apartment development across the parking lot.
I waved my middle finger at him as he accelerated into traffic.
I stopped to make a formal complaint with the Mayor on my way up to Tunnel Eight.
I don’t complain much, but being nearly run down in my own parking lot was too much. Something has to be done.
I was still agitated when I got out of my business clothes and was back at the desk, looking at the pile of notes and papers.
According to the old clipping, the last of the ten detained demonstrators at the Buckingham Rental Office was out of the slammer on Sunday, the 10th of July, 1966.
That is where the Cassiana Spa is now, where I sit in sometimes to have Ben the Tunisian cut my hair. He is a miracle worker. By the time he gets done with the trim, I am the spitting image of former German President Paul von Hindenburg. We chat in broken French as he snips away.
The Executive Director of the Action Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs (ACCESS) posted the bond, which for the group amounted to $2700. George Harris assured the police that the group would appear at the Arington Courthouse as commanded.
Chris, Bill, Roy and Sharlene went back to the District pending their morning in court. Jan and Mari went home to Bethesda. Franklin took the bus down to Alexandria, Norm hitched out to Falls Church, and Joan and Alice were from right here.
They were charged a $300 bond for the right to walk away, though they had to come back for a formal hearing on the matter of their guilt.
They were college kids, for the most part, except for Alice, who was in her early forties. She was the only one who was released on her own recognizance- she said at the time she was a medical patient and could only go a few hours without taking her medication. She lived on North Evergreen street then, and would be 83 this year.
The kids would be mostly in their mid-sixties now and it occurred to me that some of them might still be in the area. I made a note to Google the names and see if I could track them down and see what they recalled about the protest.
Frances Freed had no comment at the time, and never did, to my knowledge.
I walked back to the kitchen and poured a cocktail, wishing I had got the tag number on the son-of-a-bitch in the Volvo.
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com