One of the Boys

I suppose most of us, in our own minds, think we lead pretty unexciting lives. Barak Obama, in his secret life, wishes he were an NBA star—hell, even James Bond probably fantasizes life as a NASCAR driver. I’m no different, except no one I know has ever been called in to an FBI interrogation.

It was in the carefree spring of 1973. You remember; peace, love, equal rights for vegetables. A newly minted college graduate, I was in grad school, part-time at night, and working construction to make ends meet. Not only was I the only college graduate on the laborer crew, I was the only one without a prison record. Lunch conversations were embarrassing—one fellow had done five years for grand-theft auto, another had shot a man five times in a bar fight. Me? I got a ticket once for passing a school bus. I tried to fit in; smoked Camels, the pack rolled up in the sleeve of my t-shirt, shot craps behind the foreman’s trailer on Fridays after work. I even used the “f word” as an all-purpose modifier in my speech. Nothing seemed to work; I would always be the college kid, the misfit, the nerd.

One Tuesday evening after class, my friend Freddy talked me into attending the circus. No, not the Ringling Brothers variety, a small, one ring, European, family circus was touring colleges around the East Coast. They were performing one night only on campus and admission was free. I said OK and we went. Acrobats, aerialists, a trained bear, great fun. I noticed that all the performers with the possible exception of the bear, all seemed related—family circus indeed.

I was giving Freddy a ride back to his place when my car was nearly blown off the road by a passing fire engine headed someplace in a big hurry. “Cool!” Freddy said, “Let’s see where they’re going.” Sure, I thought, why not. I followed the truck to the parking lot of the campus armory, where it joined other pieces of equipment already there. The firemen, all volunteers, and all woefully undertrained, leapt from the engine, and began running around, tripping over hoses running into each other, and acting like act II, the comedy part, of the circus we had just left. The only thing missing from the whole fiasco was the fire. No flames, no smoke, not brave firemen rescuing fainting maidens from upper story windows. “Huh,” Freddy shrugged, “I thought it would be better than this. Let’s go.”

Next day, I was digging a hole when the foreman emerged from his trailer. “Al,” he shouted, “call your mother.” My stomach turned, nobody ever got a message from the foreman to call home unless it was something dire. Did my dad have a heart attack? Brother in a car wreck? Heart pounding, I made the call from a pay phone. “The FBI called” my mom said, “I didn’t tell them anything.” My mom was a war bride, having grown up in Nazi occupied Europe. When the authorities came calling, you didn’t say anything. She gave me the number and I made the call.

“Agent Van Dorn speaking.” Came the reply. I identified myself and asked what was the problem. “The armory at the University was firebombed last night and someone saw your car leaving the scene. We would like to talk with you.” “Okay…” I said, “I can take off from work and meet you at your office.” “No no,” Agent Van Dorn replied, “I don’t want to make you miss too much time. Let’s meet off Route 29; there’s a parking lot by the Giant.” This was beginning to sound like a bad cop show. I had visions of large, heavily armed men in flack jackets with instructions to take no prisoners surrounding my car. “It’s ok,” I said, “I can come to your office to discuss this. No problem.” I got the directions from a disappointed sounding Agent Van Dorn and told the foreman I was going to an FBI interrogation.
A half-hour later, I was walking into the FBI field office in Silver Spring. I was dirty, my jeans and work boots encrusted in mud, and leaving muddy footprints on the polished tile floor. I was escorted to an interrogation room and left to wait. I began to wonder just what I had gotten myself into. One wall was covered by a large mirror, doubtless two-way, and a photo of the J. Edgar Hoover Marksmanship Trophy, presented to Agent Van Dorn, adorned the other wall. Two large men came in. Agent Van Dorn, almost certainly, along with another agent. Both men were in dark suits, dark ties, and pocket handkerchiefs. Standard FBI garb. Agent Van Dorn read me my Miranda rights and repeated what he had told me over the phone. He asked what I had been doing at the scene of the crime. I told him all about the circus and the fire engine. I ended by saying “It was like when you’re a kid, and a fire engine goes by—you just want to see where it’s going.” Agent Van Dorn smiled and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy a good fire.” A phrase that would resonate in my head for probably the rest of my life. He thanked me for my time, took the names of corroborating witnesses, and told me if anything further came up, he would contact me. I was free to go.

When I arrived at the job site the next day, Jack, the biggest baddest dude on the laborer crew came up to me and said “I hear you were questioned by the FBI.” Apparently the foreman had passed the word. “Yeah,” I said, “No big deal.” I noticed the other guys on the crew began to talk to me more, joking and offering smokes. It dawned on me…I finally fit in; I had street cred.

The Departed

The thing about ghost stories is that, although each has a central core, something that always stays the same, details differ with whoever is telling it. And ghost stories should be told. They are part of a human tradition as old as language itself. When such a story is locked in print, something is lost—the printed version becomes the baseline, the unimpeachable source against which all facts are measured.

Take the case of Alexandria’s Female Stranger. The truth, as far as anyone can reasonably determine, is that in September 1816, a ship, bound from the West Indies, docked at the Alexandria wharves. A young couple disembarked, the woman very ill, probably with typhoid or yellow fever. They took a room at Gadsby’s Tavern. A physician was called as well as a pair of nurses. The husband requested the doctor and nurses, as well as the inn-keeper’s wife, swear an oath never to reveal the couple’s name. Tragically, the young woman, declining all the while, died in her husband’s arms in October. She was (some say, secretly) buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery under a headstone with the name “Female Stranger”. The young man disappeared and the doctor and nurses kept their vows, never revealing the names. End of the facts as written—the mystery now becomes legend.

Depending on who is telling or writing the story, things take off from there. Speculation on the couple’s identity ranges from the daughter of Aaron Burr, to the disgraceful outcome of a love triangle ending in a fatal duel and furtive flight. Some stories have the young man dying in prison while others have him moving up the Potomac and becoming a recluse, overcome by grief, and living in a lonely ramshackle cabin by the river’ edge. He journeyed regularly down river to Alexandria to visit his beloved’s grave. Since nothing was known about him, locals took to calling him “John of the Cabin” or simply “Cabin John”. The name lingers today in a small community on the Maryland side of the river.

Another version of the story, told in Gadsby’s Tavern, concerns a beautiful young woman, who, dressed in the style of the early 19th century, frequented formal dances held in the ballroom on the second floor. The ballroom was down the hall from the room taken by the unknown couple years earlier. She never spoke or danced with any would-be suitors, and always slipped away before the festivities ended. One evening during the Civil War, a smitten young Union officer followed her as she left the ball, hoping to strike up a conversation with this mysterious beauty. Upon entering the room down the hall, he found it empty, with a lamp lit in the corner. He notified the manager of an unattended flame and the two went back to the room. When they got there, the room was dark and the candle wick in the lamp was unblackened—it had never been lit. As the puzzled young officer was leaving the room, he touched the glass globe of the unlit lamp. And burned his fingers.

As a student of the paranormal once said: If you believe, no explanation is necessary; if you don’t, no explanation is possible.

Interglacial

It’s official, we’re number one—the D.C. area has broken the record for snowfall set in the winter of 1899. Hooray. We topped the charts at 55.6 inches of the stuff. This may seem trivial to someone from oh, say, Buffalo where they probably get this much in August, but then we don’t have the experience or the equipment to deal with a snowpocalypse of these proportions. Drinks on the house. Little kids, when they are old and creaky, will tell their grandchildren “I remember back during the winter of aught 10. You couldn’t see above the snow and we had to walk to school in the blizzard. Up hill. Both ways. And the snow was flying, the wind was blowing, the wolves were howling and the volcano was erupting to boot.” Sure grandma. Maybe some future president has noted the ungodly amounts of snow in his or her journal just like Washington and Jefferson did back in the terrible winter of 1722.

Here in Northern Virginia, we get ready for a big snow by emptying the stores. Bread, milk, and toilet paper are the first to go. My daughter and I thought we would be clever and went to the supermarket two days before the onslaught of the first big storm back in early February. Ha! Shelves were already empty and we waited to check out for an hour and a half. The line actually did move, people were friendly, and we spent the time playing word games involving the contents of our cart.

Come the snow, and I was getting cabin fever at inch two. I took walks with the dog, spent time on line, worked on projects as the snow began piling deeper throughout the weekend. When it was over and the familiar sound of shovels on pavement began to ring through the neighborhood, I went out and cleared the sidewalk and driveway. Not too bad a job, thank god for ibuprofen. When the next set hit, it was more of the same, except this time it took longer and longer to make any headway. It wasn’t so much shoveling as it was trenching—I felt like a World War I doughboy. My neighborhood now looks like trench warfare has broken out.

Cars in their driveways sit in snow revetments, waiting on the barrage.

Uncleared cars are humps in the snow covered landscape, looking for all the world like igloos with sideview mirrors. Snow plows leave several feet of snow in their wake, which needs to be moved before it turns to ice.

I dig down to the lower layers of where I think the sidewalk went and flashes of blue spark and glimmer. This is the color of glacier ice. It is also an early symptom of snow blindness where enough UV hits your retinas to cause sunburn. The worst part is when the retinas peel just like the skin on your arms at the beach. I’m told it feels like sand in your eyes. Antarctic explorers don’t wear sunglasses to look cool.

My bird feeders, filled just before the blizzard, are doing a land office business. The smaller birds have been supplanted by the big boys—starlings, blue jays, and the occasional woodpecker, all feeding on sunflower seed and suet. The little guys have to make do.


Snow is patient—this is how ice ages start. Pile it up high enough and it will last through the summer, to form a base for the next winter’s offerings. Keep it up long enough and the bottom layers compress to ice. Or you could just run a car over it a few times. Some of this stuff will still be here in June, remembering the glory days of the Pleistocene, which in geological terms, was only a few hours ago. Keep in mind—even with all the fuss about global warming, we are in what geologist call an “interglacial period”—the ice will be back. I think my driveway will be the tipping point causing the next advance of ice.