Ok- I left you in the bar at Joe Theismann’s Restaurant with a sense of contempt for the fraudulent SW2 Stone, a bogus paean to the original national monuments of the Young United States.
I was too busy to get back to it yesterday, since I was wandering around great Baltimore, the Charm City, looking to help get the Lieutenant’s but Ford shipped to the land of palm trees, hula and poi. It was a most triumphant day, and oddly, the Stones featured in that one, too.
We were driving out the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, a surreal experience if you have not done it. Drivers in the Free State take great liberty with traffic regulations of any sort, turn signals and signaling lane chances is a totally optional sort of behavior, while driving slower than traffic while planted resolutely in the left lane appears mandatory.
Anyway, it was a successful adventure in cheerful vehicular anarchy, and heading out of Your Nation’s Capital, we passed the vicinity of one of the Stones, NE8 to be specific. The Stone is located near the intersection of Kenilworth and Eastern Avenues, and is one of those mile-markers where you want to have a posse with you- or at least did back in the day when I felt that the clock-wise hunt for the Stones was leading right smack into the Heart of DC Darkness.
But I will get to that presently. The Southwest Quadrant of the District Diamond is easy, and sunny and bright, and coming back we decided to celebrate the triumph of getting the car inducted into The System with a stop at Taqueria El Poblano in the Lee-Harrison strip mall. My son had been craving a basket full of their delightful LA-style crispy tacos with shredded beef, margarita con sal on the side.
Thus, we wound up enjoying the superb Mexican food he has craved for the years he spent in Asia. It is also not far from a Stone with a Story, which will be told presently. In the meantime, I have three Stones to knock out with you this morning. They are easy- and maybe that is the problem with getting started on this adventure. It seems like it is simple, and then you get hooked.
From the fake SW2, get on King Street and drive a mile to the northwest. I don’t really have to say that anymore, do I?
Major Ellicott’s crew of hardy surveyors and brush clearers would have now left the bustling confines of post-colonial Alexandria behind, and were cutting brush in a swath twenty feet wide, ten on either side of the true boundary line.
SW 3- with some of the inscription still visible- is at 2932 King Street, and the left as you drive, and located on the north end of the parking lot of the First Baptist Church, south of Scroggins Road. The DAR cage to this stone is surrounded by stout iron pipes sunk into the asphalt to protect it from the bumpers of worshippers anxious to get home to watch the football game. SW3 has been dug up and reset in concrete for that precise reason.
SW4 is another mile up King Street, and adjacent to Fairlington Village where The Judge and his wonderful wife Judy made their home after he retired from the Navy and went to work in the surreal National Indian Gaming Commission. We were both in the indigenous Peoples business at the time, me dealing with the Sovereign Tribes through the Indian Health Service and him trying to regulate the activities of the Casino tribes.
We used to swap stories about the experience over beers at Ramparts Tavern, not far away on Fern Street.
That was one of the last places in town that let people smoke indoors, and a reason that Speaker John Boehner liked to go there and puff his Camel Extra Light cigarettes over cocktails. I think that is history now, like the Stones. SW4 is on the east side of King Street between S. Wakefield Street and Route 395.
According to Fred Woodward, farm plows had destroyed the top of this stone by the early 1900s. After being repositioned when the highway was widened, the remaining portion of the stone has sunk very low into the ground. It is not impressive, but if there is more lurking down below, it might be worth re-setting the Stone someday.
SW5 is on the north side of Walter Reed Parkway, a little east of the intersection with King Street. Only the stump of this stone remains, and is entirely consistent with the description that Woodward gave it in 1908, saying that the “stone is broken, and the top seems to be lost. The entire base, with a few inches of the finished portion, was found lying on the ground in approximately the same spot where it had originally been placed.”
Worse, this Stone is now nearly 45 feet from its original position, a clear indignity.
SW6 will require you to find a place to park, or just wave as you go by. It is in the median strip of Jefferson Street, a tenth of a mile south of Columbia Pike in Arlington, VA. It was a familiar landmark when I was working at an anonymous office complex supporting the Department of Homeland Security, of which I could discern only two words that actually reflected reality there. This Stone has been repositioned several times and badly used in each of them. It has been hit by a speeding Virginia motorist and badly cemented back together.
SW7 is just off Rt. 50, at 5995 5th Road, Arlington, VA. It’s on the grounds of the Carlin Springs Elementary School, at the edge of parking lot C, in a little indentation near the fence. There are a couple ways to approach the Stone, and was the first one that I had a little trouble finding and had to return for a more detailed search, since the characteristic signature of the DAR cage is hard to distinguish in the perimeter fence. You can try it from the west, coming from the private park behind the tennis courts at 3101 S. Manchester Street, Falls Church, VA.
I don’t know why you would do that, since the gate to the tennis court is often padlocked. There has been a lot of construction on the school campus, and the old athletic field where our boys used to play Lacrosse is long gone to accommodate a burgeoning student body. Obviously you also have to veer between Fairfax and Arlington Counties, but there is no evidence of the continuing battle between the two jurisdictions. I understand the last Republican retired to Florida from Fairfax last year, and the two Progressive Counties have turned their attention to demanding that the rest of Virginia get in line.
That actually brings us around to the tangential but related story of SW8, but that story demonstrating the remarkable change in Arlington’s recent history will have to wait until tomorrow. All I can tell you is that it features a real stone and fake Nazis. More on that mañana, which reminds me I might want to stop by the Taqueria El Poblano on the way to pick up my Powerball ticket. That is an important component of my retirement plan. If I win the $450 million tonight, you may not be hearing from me for a while and you can go find the Stones yourself.
I will let you know.
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303