| 05 March 2006 Under Whitehurst I am ducking the Quarterly as best I can, finishing the Spring issue has been weighing heavily on me, and eating another weekend. There is so much news washing over me, and my hands tremble as I edit copy. Air Force One flew into Islamabad with all the windows covered, completely blacked out. I imagine the pilots used night-vision goggles to bring in the Giant Boeing, and after a joint press conference with President General Musharrif, the President learned to play cricket on the heavily protected grounds of the Embassy. The radio people are being clever. They are moving some letter around like scrabble, calling the historic nuclear agreement with India the “unclear agreement.” At least they don't pronounce the word the way it is in Texas: “nukler.” Words sometimes mean things. A friend of mine wrote me and said he did not approve of my using the term “The Long War” in referring to the conflict in Iraq. I wrote him back and said that I follow the term of art as used in the Capital. The Administration has decreed that we are not fighting a Global War of Terror, or what we have referred to with fondness as "The GWOT." That would be absurd, since terror is only a symptom of the problem, and would imply that we don't have a clue as to what we are doing. Rather, the Administration has declared it The Long War, which has no pronounceable acronym. I don't mind it, per se, but it is not my term. I am just thankful they did not call it the Hundred Years War. I would find that depressing. The Quarterly is due to the lay-our people tomorrow, and I am crashing on putting together a 48 page document with pictures and pithy commentary. I am doing OK with the pictures, but a little short on the pith. But one way or another, it will work out. I had company come to town, unexpected, and that has thrown the schedule into a cocked-hat, so to speak, and that is precisely why I found myself not at my trusty computer but under Whitehurst on Friday night. It felt right to go out. It had been one of those weeks that merited staying home, but the days are longer, and reports have the daffodils poking their heads up from the sleepy beds in the Rock Creek Park. We decided to go out for a light repast at J. Paul's in the District, a dark wood-paneled public house on M Street in Georgetown. It was still light as we crossed the elegant spans of the Key Bridge over to the District side of the Potomac. Traffic was heavy trying to get out of town to begin the weekend, and rush-hour restrictions on M street made on-street parking a premium, since the curb lanes are reserved for through traffic. Along with the production of hot air on Capitol Hill, the only real industry in DC is parking and the regulation thereof, so we watched the signs carefully as we crept along in front of the historic storefronts. Georgetown was a place long before the District was founded, a bookend to Alexandria across the River in Virginia. Ocean-going ships would stop in Virginia to drop off manufactured goods from England, and on load tobacco and agricultural goods from the plantation inland. Georgetown marked the last deep-water on the river, and that is why the C&O Canal began right here, a narrow channel carved out along the side of the roaring Potomac as it falls from the heights of the mountains to the west. The District was carved out of the Old Dominion and the Free State to make the capital. Alexandria formed the southern anchor, only a few miles north of George Washington's plantation at Mount Vernon, where he had his own dock. Georgetown was the vibrant little city from which the Capital was constructed, to the east, block by block across the muddy swampland. Being its own city long before the Federal District rose, it has always been a problem for commuters. Cobbled cross streets aligned with the docks, and later Stop signs and traffic lights collided with the elegant grid designed by L'Enfant, and that is what led to the construction of the Whitehurst Freeway, an abomination of modern city planning. All we wanted to do was on-load some Sam Adams and a Wedge Duo salad, and that is how we found ourselves turning right down the foot of Wisconsin Avenue near the golden dome of the Farmers and Mechanics Branch of the former Riggs National Bank. We went down the bluff looking for a parking place, cross the canal without luck until we were in the murk under the freeway that blocks the sun and the view of the River. Once this was where the wharves projected out into the placid brown water. Now, it is a cityscape like Chicago, under the elevated Trains. From below, the Whitehurst is dark and dirty iron with heavy bolts on tall pillars of black corroding steel. It drips rusty water when it rains, and seals in darkness the year round. Now, in the early turning of the Spring, it was black long before the sun finally sank. We motored along, vigilant for an opportunity, and I shouted in triumph when we saw a narrow slot at a parking meter in the gloom. I pulled in next to a chain link fence, and we walked up one of the narrow streets to M Street, to cold beer, raucous laughter and solicitous service at J. Paul's We dined and laughed and beat the evening rush of Georgetowners, students and older establishment couples who walked down from campus or from the elegant townhouses further up the hill. It is a little strange, walking down under the Whitehurst. The elevated road cuts off the view of the river, sealing the city off from the original highway if its roots. There has been some development along the riverbank, but it is sundered form the rest of the city as if by a concrete blade. There is talk about ripping the freeway down. It was developed by the late Herbert Whitehurst, one of the able and determined white bureaucrats who ran the District under the mandate of Congress in the days before Home rule. He was one of the first directors of the District's highway department, whose last project was a roadway to route commuter traffic around Georgetown. He chartered a design and construction firm owned by African-American engineer Archibald A. Alexander to punch the road through, bypassing Georgetown and freeing the bureaucrats of Foggy Bottom to whiz right past the little city. The home of Francis Scott key, author of the Star Spangled Banner, was at the junction of the new road and the graceful bridge named for him. It was demolished without fanfare, and a plaque was placed at the edge of where it once stood. Archibald Alexander was the prototype of the plucky African-Americans who would come to rule the District. He was a graduate from the University of Iowa, a civil engineer. He worked his way up in the Marsh Engineering Company, where he worked on the Tidal Basin, where House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills was later found by the Park Police frolicking with Fanny Fox, the famous exotic dancer known as The Argentine Firecracker. The Tidal Basin ruined his career. Mills, that is, not Alexander. The latter went on to start his own construction firm specializing in bridge design. In the late 1940s, Whitehurst tapped him to build the Whitehurst Freeway. Later, Alexander was appointed Territorial Governor of the Virgin Islands. I understand he died shortly thereafter, and no significant public works remain in St Thomas from his administration. They should be happy about that, I thought, as we turned up into the cold wind blowing down the dark tunnel formed by the elevated roadway. We crossed the darkened street to the truck, and I discovered some paper wadded up under my windshield wiper. I grabbed it and peered in the gloom. My eyes widened in horror. The first part of the strip of paper was a $35 dollar citation for failing to back in to the parking space. The ticket informed me it was clearly posted, and after looking around, I saw a sign on one of the rusting pillar about thirty feet away. I kept reading and it got better. The meter was expired. I shook my head. In Arlington across the river the metered parking is only in effect until six pm. Apparently that is not the case in the District, thought it was so dark I could not see the sign on the meter. The ticket was quite emphatic. Damn, I thought. Things are sure are different under the Whitehurst. They ought to tear the thing down so you can see. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |