(The East Stone rests in a circular cage and marks the right angle of this Side of the District).

I may as well get to Argo, since he is directly responsible for much of the rest of the adventure of The Stones. I confess I kind of ran out of steam on the project. There were some not particularly interesting episodes that were part of the run-up to the great financial melt-down of 2007-8; legal crap that drove some career changes I did not particularly want to do, but which were critical in meeting my obligations.
I left one big company to go to another, smaller one- but there was a challenge they wanted to conquer there, and they were willing to incentivize accordingly. So, I took my eye off the Stones though they never were that far from my mind.

I got pretty far, and knew there were some challenges that needed to be met.

I was missing a couple. I went back to Northwest, and nailed the Stone at NE9 and the East Stone, which was sort of eerie, across from some boarded up town homes.

That made it a wrap for the NE Sector, except for NE8. I made a mental note to come back with a get-way driver and someone to accompany me back into the brush.

I went back to attempt SE as well, which is where things got kind of sketchy in the middle part of the 2000s. Some good things were starting to happen in Washington- development had made the U Street corridor vibrant again; the Navy Yard was starting to wake up after a long slumber, and the Navy handed over a plan to revitalize the SW sliver of the town into a going concern.

Places you would never have considered walking were becoming safe again. It was exciting to see it happening. But there were some other places that were much slower to respond, and most of them were in SE Washington. I often traversed the area, heading for the Office of Naval Intelligence headquarters out at Suitland. So, I decided to see the ones that were easy and defer the ones that were hard.

SE1 was in nice shape, near the wall of the National Capitol Hebrew Cemetery:

The inscription was in good shape, and the stone wall makes it likely that no cars will be crashing into it soon.

SE2 is likewise is good shape in the front lawn of a pleasant home at 4346 Southern Avenue. When I saw it the first time it was caged:

Next on down Southern, SE3 dominates a little rise next to a fence guarding an apartment complex. It is unusually tall for an intermediary Stone, and Fred Woodward speculated that it might actually have been intended to be one of the Cardinal Stones. In view of the diminutive stature of the West Stone, he theorized that this might have been a mix-up between quarry, stonecutter and the survey team. I have no opinions on the matter, except that I am glad it has survived.

SE4 is among the missing, It used to located near the merge between Southern and Naylor Road, near the Suitland Parkway we use to get from Downtown to the Census Bureau Complex or out to Andrews AFB. In the 1980s, a truck went out of control and crashed into the cage and knocked the Stone out of place. Knowing the significance of the Stone, the manager of a nearby apartment building and had the thing manhandled across the parking lot and into the boiler room of the building. This was the one that was rumored to be in the garage of a Maryland Department of Transportation employee, and was a frustrating hole in the SE sector. In 1991, the Stone was given to the bicentennial resurveying team, who, in turn transferred it to the D.C. Office of the Surveyor.

It exists, and though there is no marker, there are reportedly plans to install it at some point on the same side of Southern Avenue close to the crosswalk at the Naylor Road intersection.
SE5 has a pleasant resting place near the Southern Ave Metro stop:

Poor old SE6 is once again at 901 Southern Avenue. When I first saw it, it was nearly pristine, and one of the best preserved of all the Stones. Then, a car went out of control and crashed through the protective fence and broke it off at ground level. I am glad I saw it before the incident. The broken Stone sat over with the Office of the Surveyor for six years, but happily is now back in place with a new protective cage.

SE7 is actually a place of business. Located near the junction of Southern and the Indianhead Highway, the cage is used by local street merchants to display their wares. I approached with some reservation and explained the situation to the merchant, and that I was not attempting to take his picture of that of the articles he was vending, but that of the Stone places there in 1792. He was most accommodating.

That was about as far as I was going to get, since the description of SE8 and SE9 filled me with more than a bit of foreboding. SE8 was described as being on the grounds of the DC auto impound lot, something I imagined as being protected by junkyard dogs, near DC Village and across the freeway from the Blue Plains water treatment plant and its distinctive odor.

SE9 was even more remote, and was going to require an expedition to visit. So I deferred action on them, which left me a list of things to do:

Dalecarlia Reservation, and NW 4 and 5. Guarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. NE8, back in the thickets some place. And the last two down at the very end of the line in the District.

I was having lunch with Argo in 2008 at the Willow Restaurant, my very favorite place to dine, and which did a lot of company lunches due to its proximity to the Headquarters. I did so much entertaining there that I might as well have called it my living room. I don’t know how we veered off mergers and acquisitions and onto the topic of the Stones, but we did.

I was bitching that I had been to the once or former locations of 36 of the Stones, false and real, present or not, and it was only those last four that were preventing me from declaring victory.

Argo took a sip of his iced tea and gave me the same look I used to get when he was an Air Force Captain working in the front office of the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. You know, the one that says, “why don’t you just try to be reasonable?” He put his tea down and said: “Why not just call the Corps of Engineers and ask to see the Stones on their property? For goodness sake, all they can say is ‘no.’”

I sat bolt upright on my stool, thunderstruck. Why not try this legally! “Well, I suppose I could do that. It would be better than being arrested by the MPs for trespass. If they let me in, would you like to go?”

“Bet your sweet ass,” he replied. My interest in the Stones flared again. Maybe the story was going to have an ending after all, and not be one of those loose ends in a life.

“I am on it,” I said, and took a refreshing sip of my Chardonnay.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303