(Manual Labor beckons from the drive at Refuge farm. The Snow may melt again. Photo Socotra)
We had that big announcement yesterday about a New Wrinkle on an old trade in a strange town. Washington, DC. Generally speaking, we have enjoyed the accidents that washed us up there, with the people always at the heart of the fun. Of course, DC fun comes in flavors, ranging from “Very Good,” to “Really Awful.” But apparently there are those who enjoy both ends of the spectrum, and sometimes enjoy mixing them up.
The start of the New Wrinkle was the result of the weekend meeting between the folks in Legal and the Chairman’s Personal Staff. The junior attorney who had been tasked with taking the message to the production people looked a little apprehensive, but we welcomed “them” in with a fresh mug of Black Rifle coffee. “They” seemed comfortable with their pronouns as a thick sheaf of papers was produced and laid on the tallest rock in the circle around the Fire Pit.
“Legal is concerned. This is a historic time with a lot of unusual stuff going on. You people seem to have some indications of not being completely onboard with some of it.” There was some uncertainty about the collective pronouns appropriate to be used in an official policy declaration. “They” worked, but the collective group that included Splash and Melissa who are comfortable with the older binary terms and made the transition difficult.
“Anyway, knock off anything that would get readers uncomfortable with the depth of the chasm between mainstream views. Try making things interesting without somehow implying there is something odd going on. The Chairman says we can talk about things that reflect general interest, not some vague horror about where this is all going.”
Splash and Melissa looked at one another and smiled. “How about something that reflects how DC works?”
“That would be acceptable, but only if the story line was from a time where current leadership and policy are not the direct focus. That would minimize complaints from the readers. Plus, we could include pithy bits about what people said then opposing the same policy changes they are now endorsing.”
The attorney, which title did not require quotation marks around it to imply there was no external rational for their use, seemed to conclude “their” remarks, since there are trees down from the weight of snow all over the property, collapsed over the fences and snarling the gravel access roads. “They” seemed concerned that after the legal guidance was delivered there was going to be manual labor involved for anyone not suffering from government-approved disability. Since the entire Writers Section has crafted their retirement strategies around their individual disabilities approved by the VA, they were receptive.
DeMille rose politely when “they” seemed to be done. “We had thought that a story about a visit to Dr. King’s church down in Atlanta would be a nice tie-in to the President’s trip down there this morning. It would appear the Boss wants us to do stuff like that, but who wants to hear about things that didn’t make sense then to things that don’t make much sense now?”
“Why don’t we just recycle some stuff? Then we can talk about lunch.”
The nodding was almost universal, and Loma suggested a start from the beginning of the last declared war in which we had all participated. As we recalled, there seemed to be some temporary unanimity then. “How about this one from 2003?” he said a bit apprehensively. “It includes some items we used to talk about without thinking or putting any extra punctuation in it.” He grasped a couple wrinkled sheets and waved them in a manner suggesting they could either go to publication or drift slowly into the fire without prejudice.
DeMille said: “Why don’t you read it to us. We can see what it used to sound like.”
Loma cleared his throat and started off. “Zero Three October, Two Thousand and Three. The Oyster Bar.” He stopped for a moment, a bit perplexed. “That was only a month after taking off the uniform.” He was obviously doing some time traveling under the clear cold brilliant blue skies. Then he continued with some resolution.
“It was a huge week. Not that we accomplished anything in particular. But we seem to have gotten into something of a groove in our new role in this strange town. It is a real change. We had been hard-working day-time mice all our careers, rising early to prepare for briefings or meetings. Lately, we have risen early to write the stupid stories and then labor through the day, eager to get back to our little apartments as soon as possible, get to sleep and start the cycle again.”
Then he settled into a polite drone about marketing and development, which actually was about going to lunch in Washington on an expense account. After some scene setting, his story seemed to veer into an account about the Capital Grill at mid-week with soup and martinis, and then a transition to drinks at the Old Ebbitt Grill.
“If you are of a certain age the names will resonate. For the Ebbitt, it was the oldest continuously-operating saloon in Washington DC, or at least that is what the current owners claim. It certainly was when I read about it in a book on classic bars around the country back in college. The Old Ebbitt was one of the grand ones, them, along with legends like McSorley’s Old Ale House in New York City. McSorley’s had a sign dating back a century or more that said: “Good ale, raw onions and no women.”
Melissa laughed. “You guys don’t realize the changes unless you have tried to live, work and raise kids there.”
Loma continued without much contemplation on what she said. “But when the Old Ebbitt opened in 1856, an older saloon, the Rhodes Tavern, was still in business and the Ebbitt was very much the junior partner on the block. They were not near each other in the 1850s, since the Ebbitt has been a moveable feast in Washington. The original was located uptown someplace, by where Chinatown is now near the MCI sports arena. It also had rooms to let, which is what everyone did who had a spare one to make money in a seasonal and unfinished city.”
Rocket poked at the fire, hoping to get the flames to increase the temperature around the ring. “This is already a peek across the great divide. DC wasn’t a place to live as much as it was a place to crash while legislating before going home.”
Melissa reached over to Loma and took his sheets of paper. She continued at random: “The town filled up with people when the Government was in session. Imagine a Washington that didn’t legislate every day of the year! Senator Kaine just had a great story about being stuck on I-95 for more than a day during the snow storm. Imagine what it was like when the new trans-continental train was the only way to get from California to town! The Ebbitt accommodated the surge requirement for lodging and was a contemporary of the other famous hotel in town, Willard’s Hotel. The names still exist today, though none have survived as they were when the streets were muddy and the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument unfinished. Both have been through at least three buildings and along the way both institutions claimed guest lists of the great men of the day and some of the women, too.”
“Ugh. You can’t even say it that way any more.”
Melissa waved the papers. “No, it gets better. Or at least it gets different. The story talks about future-Presidents McKinley, Grant, Andrew Johnson, not Lyndon, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, not FDR and Harding knocking back a few cold ones at the stand-around bar at the Ebbitt, which wasn’t Old yet. There are some words about the Occidental Restaurant, near the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania Ave. and how the future Presidents would stagger back up the block to 14th street and their rooms at the Willard or stop for a night-cap at the The Round Robin bar off the lobby. All of those places were within a couple blocks of the White House and that massive granite pile that used to be the Departments of War, State and the Navy.”
Loma took the sheaf back from her, carefully wadding up the first sheet and tossing it toward the fire. It ignited helpfully. The next sheet had something about the table at the Occidental with a little brass plaque to commemorate the place a Soviet agent passed their offer to withdraw the missiles from Cuba to ABC news correspondent John Scali. There was more about how relieved JFK’s Administration was to take the offer, and the note that The Occidental might be the only restaurant in town that helped prevent global annihilation.”
“Not a bad reason to get a drink there. But that is all gone. The old DC had been on the skids for a while, but died on April 4th, 1968, when Dr. King was murdered. The riot that followed required the establishment of a command center in the Pentagon, mobilization of the Guard and deployment of 50,000 troops. Old timers, the ones before us, remembered the ash from the fires dusting the cars in the Pentagon parking lot on the Virginia side of the Potomac. None of the great institutions were burned, except in a metaphorical sense. But it wasn’t like after the Brits pulled out after burning the White House. People just stopped coming downtown. It didn’t take long for the Occidental to be shuttered and the Willard to stagger into bankruptcy.”
“Wait,” said Rocket. “Then you are going to lurch into Mayor Marion Barry and compressing his life into a paragraph leaves out the space to separate the good parts he accomplished against the odds and the parts that are bad jokes now.”
“That would be exactly how history is made. Not by actually making it, but controlling how it is told. The Chairman would tell us to stay away from the 1619 project.”
“Exactly. You would think history would be sort of unchanging, but it is not. In 1970, the IRS closed the Ebbitt and held an auction to satisfy a federal tax claim of $7,412. The owners of a hip new bar in Georgetown came to the auction, seeking to buy some of the furnishings for their place where the fires had not burned so fiercely. All they were really interested in was the Ebbitt’s collection of antique beer steins. But the auction could not generate enough to meet the lien on the property and the auctioneer got desperate. He opened up bids for the whole shooting match. For $11,200 they got the entire contents of the bar and rights to the name. So, in a way it died and in a way it lived on like the Phoenix.”
“Maybe we could work that angle. We could use the metaphor that everything in Washington has a false face. What Mayor Barry did was partner with developers to reinvigorate the city after the riot. They ripped down what was left of the old, but saved the fronts of many of the buildings. Old face, brand new inside. Not a bad compromise. The low-rise zoning of the city ensures that nothing will ever conflict with the grandeur of the monuments. The refurbished parts of the city looked old and felt new.”
The circle thought about what it was like to walk that city, seeing buses of tourists, attaches and legislators disgorging their human cargoes, the new Metro whizzing below, expanding the city’s reach across rivers and state lines. “That is a good enough metaphor for this morning. We can publish the whole thing in our own version of history some time, and it will look like we are working.”
“That is historic all by itself,” said Splash. “But is there any more coffee? If we shift to something else this early the story might get a little out of control.”
There was a unanimous circle of smiles in response. And then a look at the drive. Only the Attorney frowned.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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