The following is an excerpt from an event that occurred to me on March 2003:
Bzz....bzz...bzz...
The nagging buzz of the alarm clock penetrated my dreamless sleep. Shoot, 4.30 already........
Waking up at “O-dark-thirty” was never pleasant, but it would be more unpleasant if I didn’t make it in on time. (O-dark-thirty is military jargon for “earlier than the rooster crows”)
Automatically I sat up, eyes fuzzy with sleep, and fumbled in the dark to still the alarm, unaware just then that I had woken up to a day that would change my life forever.
As good as on auto-pilot, I showered and shaved, and dressed to face a freezing wintry morning in Washington DC. The biting wind stung my face as I stepped on to the snow-covered streets with caution to negotiate the short walk from the Metropolitan mid-rise apartments in Pentagon City to my office at the Pentagon. The normally invigorating ten minute walk seemed like eternity that morning.
As my boots scrunched on yesterday’s snow, my mind had already wandered into my office, letting my thoughts slip lazily over the job that awaited me at this early, silent hour. Privately I had categorized it as 5th grade menial. My crucial task was to surf online, seek out Navy-related articles or ones of relevance to the Navy. In particular, I would have to scrutinize the 5 major metropolitan papers that CHINFO, or the Navy Office of Information, subscribed to daily: The Washington Post, the Washington Times, USA Today, Baltimore Sun and the Christian Science Monitor. I have always been baffled by this particular combination, but it never once occurred to me to ask why. This “CHINFO News Clips” the twenty or twenty-five pages of culled security information of the day that I religiously prepared each morning, is electronically distributed to the entire Navy leadership every morning. Some of Washington’s exalted decision-makers are also privy to this information.
In the distance I could see the Pentagon, the bright lights beckoning, enticing me to the warmth of its secure fold. I quickened my pace, my chilled body longing for the almost maternal embrace of the heated atmosphere within. As my breath steamed in the frosty air, I imagined the pampered feeling of being enveloped by the pungent aroma of freshly-brewed coffee. My near-frozen body yearned for my first mug of steaming java. Just a few steps more .......
I headed to my office located in the B ring, the 4B463 ring which arose like the proverbial phoenix, from the ashes of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Now looking at the cozy interior, still shining with the fresh glow of newness, it struck me anew as it does every time I enter the building, as symbolic of our resurrection from the brutal onslaught of terrorism.
As I settled myself down comfortably in my office with my mug of steaming hot java, my thoughts sobered as they dwelt on the prevailing global political arena. There was no doubt that trouble was brewing in the Middle East drama, with hostilities escalating at dizzying speed. The US was poised to unilaterally strike Iraq at any moment now, and all the tension, the suppressed excitement, the anxiety of an impending war was almost tangible around me at the Pentagon. It was getting translated into laborious top level meetings, long hours and lots of pizza deliveries. As much as it got the adrenaline pumping, I felt a tinge of fear mixed with anxiety. Several of my buddies were forward-deployed to Kuwait and Iraq. What would be their fate in a war? Would they survive? What about their young families? An unsettling feeling of disquiet tugged at me as I reviewed the news of the day – so slow, so lethargic, as if everything was holding its breath in anticipation. This feeling of calm before the storm was unnerving.
As these thoughts and feelings swirled in my consciousness, I opened the Washington Post and began browsing its contents. One section, then the next ... suddenly I stiffened, my attention riveted by the Feb 13, front page story of the Metro Section. It was a two-page spread on the plight of a community east of the Anacostia River. The graphic story of this economically-distressed neighborhood tugged at my heart in the most peculiar way. The writer’s passion and sensitivity added depth and poignance to an already heart-wrenching story. My attention was caught by the accuracy of the information and the upbeat tone that hinted at a better future around the corner, for the residents.
Such are the contrasts in the hilly neighborhoods of Bellevue, Washington Highlands, Congress Heights, [Frederick Douglass] and Shipley. Together, these five neighborhoods fill the bottom of the D.C. diamond, just east of Bolling Air Force Base.
It was sparsely populated until the middle of last century, when doctors, engineers and other professionals arrived to new neighborhoods of brick houses and bungalows. Many worked at nearby Bolling Air Force Base, just across Interstate 295, or at St. Elizabeths. Some of the public housing projects now being demolished were constructed as temporary government housing during World War II.
In the 1970s, thousands of poor African American families were relocated to these neighborhoods and the rest of [Ward] 8 to clear the way for "urban renewal" on the Southwest waterfront. Many were the children or grandchildren of an earlier generation of families moved to Southwest from Georgetown, Foggy Bottom and Dupont Circle, to clear those neighborhoods for affluent whites.
Like other financially struggling areas of the city, the neighborhoods in the southern tip suffer from a lack of retail shopping. Martin Luther King Avenue, across from the gated east campus entrance of St. Elizabeths, today offers little more than a barbershop, a convenience store, a discount general store and the Player's Lounge, a local and political watering hole. There is no dry cleaner, drugstore or hardware store, no place to sit down with a cup of coffee. The gaps remind Avery Thagard, the city planner assigned to Ward 8, of the mouth of an old man who has spent a lifetime without good dental care. "It's like missing teeth," he said. "We've got to find a way to fill these gaps with the type of neighborhood conveniences that other communities take for granted."
Even as I gobbled up the information, savoring every nuance of expression, I was mentally shaking my head. No, not there, I thought. I had heard way too many horror stories from way too many people in different social strata. And this was even before I had ever stepped on the soil of Washington DC. Anacostia, the armpit of the nation’s capital, ironically, seemed saturated with crime and as sleazy as any downtrodden community could get. Not to be touched with a barge pole ...... that was the unspoken conclusion I had drawn over and over again.
The day dragged on, and with the passing hours I was conscientiously monitoring the overseas news, tracking each incident as it arose. And all the while, an inner voice was nudging me, trying to steal my attention to the dilemma of Anacostia. My mind was focused on the glimmer of hope I detected in the story. “That community is on the verge of a turnaround. This could be a diamond in the rough.” The thought waves ebbed and flowed, and
being a good military officer, I was determined to do my own reconnaissance.
It was like was jumping head on into an adventure in the wilds. The danger and the forbidding elements only whetted my appetite further. Anacostia was calling me in mysterious, unfathomable ways. No work week had seemed so long. Never had time dragged this way. I was impatiently counting the hours till the weekend when I would get the opportunity to do my own windshield tour of Anacostia.
I used every bit of my spare time during the week to surf the web and learn about Anacostia. It seemed like the beginning of a mysterious love affair. I was delving as deep as I could into the history of Anacostia, to get to know her, to understand the myriad complex facets that make her what she is today.
Anacostia, known as Uniontown in the 1800s, was once home to an all-white workforce from the nearby Navy Yard across the Anacostia River. A stone’s throw away was the Barry Farms area where the descendants of slaves and freed Blacks lived. As the 1880s wore on, the blacks began moving into Uniontown. The home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass is currently a major tourist attraction in the area. In the early 1900s, Anacostia’s economic wellbeing was hitched to a hub of barber shops, small drug, grocery and hardware stores, and family-owned furniture shops.
In the years leading up to the 1960s, Anacostia was a thriving, vibrant community with quaint and dignified suburbs in the outskirts of Washington DC, with predominantly white people, good schools, plenty of parkland and clean air. With the gradual development of the outlying areas of Washington DC in the 1950s and the 1960s, longtime white residents moved out of Anacostia, and waves of blacks began to move in. Many of the small shops put up shutters or followed their longtime customers to the suburbs.
As I read on, I realized that the deprived community of Anacostia came to be, not by choice but by chance and through a woeful lack of vision. As the once wealthy neighborhood began to collapse, day by day, the affluence was getting replaced by stark disrepair. The city leaders of the 1960s lacked the vision and foresight to realize the negative consequences of what they did in order to make space for revitalization of the southwest neighborhood across the river. Supported by the federal government, they literally dumped the poor and under-privileged across the river to the newly-built but congested tenements that were sprouting like mushrooms around every corner.
Before long, the city fathers realized the gravity of their error, but it was too late in the day to retrace their steps. The shift in populace and the new bussing regulations that swept the nation, led to white people leaving Anacostia in droves. Following close on their heels were the middle class blacks who couldn’t stand how bad the streets had gotten and how unsafe the schools had become. The neighborhood was almost unrecognizable after some time. The safe and trusty Mom and Pop stores and the family barbershops gave way to vandalized houses, vacant lots and liquor stores.
Over thirty years, the upscale neighborhood fell from its middle-class perch to a poverty-ridden, crime-infested community where the common sights were check-cashing outlets, liquor stores, drugs, crime, homeless people, storefront churches and abandoned buildings. When Interstate 295 came into being in the 1960s, there was fervent hope that might bring a change for the better. Hopes were miserably dashed when all the beltway did was to give Anacostia a sense of being little more than a shortcut from the suburbs to downtown.
Only residents know the miserable reality of life in Anacostia. Crime is a part of daily life, with one-fourth of the city’s murders committed in the area, according to police statistics for the Seventh District. Anacostia and Ballou, the High Schools of the area are among the District’s most troubled. In 1990, the only grocery store in Anacostia closed down. There are no sit-down restaurants in the entire Ward – just a sea of carry-outs that pass food to customers through bullet-proof glass. The Players Club on Martin Luther King Street, the only place that serves a decent lunch, has albeit, a Jekyll-and-Hyde façade, transforming by night into a sleazy, sordid strip club where people get mugged or stabbed perennially every night. The formerly famous and classy Nichols Street is now the infamous Martin Luther King Avenue, where open air drug markets, drive-by shootings and gang wars play out in squalid surroundings. Teenage boys regularly terrorize the town by stealing cars, burning them up and leaving the burned carcass on cinder blocks on the wayside. Crack or cocaine use is rampant on Galveston Place and Mellon Street and residents who brave the menacing behavior and threats in the light of day, are too scared to do the same at night, even though securely locked up in their cars. Fear is all-pervasive, and even the police delay answering distress calls, often waiting an hour or more to respond. The state of the main thoroughfare of Anacostia seems no different to the vandalism and waste of war-torn, terror-swamped Beirut or Baghdad after an insurgent strike.
When the weekend came around, I was sufficiently acquainted with the history of Anacostia for my first visit there to be meaningful. As I drove my truck down from Arlington, the dismal weather added to my somber mood in no mean way. The twelve inches of thick, wet snow dumped by the huge snow storm of the previous week was gone. What was left behind was a muddy quagmire of rocks, sand and mud and a bone-chilling, blustery wind that blew steadily from the east. I passed the Barry Farms, the last vestige of public housing in DC. My truck rattled crazily on the cracked and rutty road which was in an absolute state of neglect and disrepair like the dilapidated, pathetic-looking puke-brown houses at Barry Farms. Rough-looking, unkempt youth hung around the street indolently, while the children of the area played around them, shrieking and yelling as they ran hither and thither amidst crack needles and used condoms, innocently oblivious to the more sinister goings on around them. Every which way I turned, hopelessness stared me in the face and my heart kept sinking with every mile, even as the laundry hanging on makeshift clothes lines whipped about crazily in the cold blowing, as if desperately trying to lure me there. The feeling of abandonment, of overhanging danger, was so intense I began to wish I was in an armored humvee with ballistic glass, instead of in my simple Grand Caravan.
As I steered my truck down Martin Luther King Boulevard, the atmosphere turned tangibly formidable. The solitariness that seemed to pervade the area was enhanced by the silence that enveloped the red-brick walled campuses of the old mental asylum of St Elizabeths, which flanked both sides of the road. I had no idea where I would end up—perhaps this was a war zone .... With a deep sense of uncertainty I headed north on Alabama Avenue.
And then serendipity walked into my life. What a wonderful feeling of old-world charm, of warmth, courtesy and dignity flowed through my being! Not in my wildest dreams had I expected this kind of genteel neighborhood in such squalid, miserable surroundings. Leafless burly oak trees, like faithful sentinels, lined the street, their gigantic trunks offering security and stability to the ornate Victorian houses that stood beyond, gracious, spacious buildings, most of them orderly and well-kept. As I cruised by, bemused, enthralled, the years rolled back to an era of wine and roses in Anacostia. I imagined an environment of upper class living that matched the graciousness of their homes. A well-maintained playground and a softball field would have been favorite haunts of the children of the area as they ran and played with abandon, singing at the tops of their voices, the air filled with high-pitched laughter and joyous screams. The ting-a-ling-ling of the ice-cream truck on a hot summer day would have brought the kids out by the dozen, thirsting for ice-lollies and varied flavors of ice-cream. Kids mean schools - clean and well-maintained schools where the children of affluent white Americans in days gone by were given the foundation for their lives. As I drove past, I could not help the let-down feeling that engulfed me as I observed the leaky roofs, the sense of dilapidation and neglect that seemed all-pervading. The neglect outside was just a whiff of the unkempt condition that could probably be found inside, I said to myself.
My exploration of Anacostia continued with more passion and determination the next weekend. During the week I had filled my after hours with intensive homework. I read up voraciously on Anacostia, past and present, I spoke with people who had grown up in Washington DC. And by the weekend, I had valuable insight into why Anacostia is what it is today.
When I drove down to Anacostia the next weekend, I was deeply aware of the area’s notoriety for drug turf wars on the streets and drive by shootings for no reason at all. You were in danger of getting shot at just because you were not from the area or were from a different street. High schools pitted against other high schools. Streets versus streets, block versus block. That seemed to be the only line of segregation. There was just one race in Anacostia. Black Americans. A white man would not dare even drive through. At worst, he would be shot at. At best, the cops would pull him over and inquire whether he was buying drugs.
Driving down Martin Luther King Ave, I could see a group of about twenty ruffians with dirty, disheveled appearance, milling around the run-down liquor store at the corner, whiling away their time by staring and yelling at passing cars. In an unexpected move, an elderly man with an unkempt grey beard that fell to his chest, jumped off the sidewalk gesturing wildly. I instinctively stepped on the brakes. “No carryout,” he commented in a jeering tone, referring to the ubiquitous carry-out Chinese food shops all over the city. This joke at my expense provoked a wave of derisive laughter from the rest of the men. I shot him a look of pure disgust. The car behind me honked violently, jerking my attention back to the traffic I was holding up. I shrugged off my annoyance at this uncalled for provocation by the street corner drunks, and hesitantly turned right to head down Lebaum Street, unsure of where this would lead.
I remembered my trip down memory lane last week and the remnants of gracious living down Alabama Avenue. That seemed a world away as I courageously continued down the rough and pitted Lebaum Street. Neglected, dirty-looking apartment buildings and empty soda bottles appeared to be the signature of the area, as were the formidable-looking ghetto youth who hung out outside and in the back alleys.
Amidst the squalor and lurking danger of this street, my attention was captured by a forlorn-looking, worn down red-brick house - 500 Lebaum Street. The walls of this two-story Cape Cod house appeared near collapse, the sidings were about to fall off, and the weather-beaten roof had layer upon layer of broken tile. A couple windows were boarded up, and shattered glass lay scattered on the unkempt grass. Malicious sprays of graffiti smeared one wall and empty beer bottles and crushed soda cans littered the sidewalk. The front yard was cluttered with a worn and scratched dining table and four dirty-looking half-broken chairs. Close to the retainer wall were boxes overflowing with untidily packed clothes. The very air was filled with desolation and abandon. I was intrigued. Was this house up for sale? Was it an eviction? It had seen better days – that was for sure. I parked my truck right by the house, and sat debating the wisdom of leaving the safe confines of my vehicle. I had been part of Operation Enduring Freedom and served with the US forces in Israel and the Middle East, but this time the tasking was different and more mission essential. I felt my pocket for the pocket knife I carried just in case and my cell phone on ready in my other hand. I opened my car door cautiously, stepped onto the premises hesitantly. The boarded up windows were dirty and eerie-looking. I felt a shiver of apprehension run through me. As I trod warily to the backyard, I was accosted by more shabby furniture and many more boxes of clothes thrown willy nilly. It gave me the creeps. My inner being revolted, I could feel. I needed to get away, now. The scary, isolated atmosphere was beginning to penetrate my very being. I should forget the experience entirely. I turned to retrace my steps. Suddenly I froze in my tracks. Images of some soulful moments of a while back came flooding to my mind. Could I walk away from some of the most awesome views of Washington DC? Moments ago, on another road, I stood among the trees on an incline gazing spellbound at a panoramic view of Washington DC, stretching as far as the eye could see, beyond the Capitol “Hill”, beyond the Washington Monument, over the heads of the rich and the powerful, towards the bleak, wintry skies. It was as if a profound statement was being made by the poor and forgotten of Anacostia.
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