Strolling Through D.C. -- Pt 2
During my first half-year in the high school cadets at Dunbar (having earlier skipped a half grade I was a midyear student) I was a lowly private, but in the next semester, being good at written tests, I made a high enough score to jump up to become the platoon sergeant of the second platoon of Dunbar's Company B. My total lack of leadership drive was soon noticed -- and not for the only time -- yet there I was with my bigtime five stripes and posted at the very rear of the formation, where I was supposed to be ensuring that everyone ahead was doing as prescribed. As in all the other phases of my life, however, I was really little more than a spectator.
We had some good officers, especially the captain, while one of the lieutenants, the commander of my platoon, went on to become the president of the first rainbow-owned S&L bank in D.C. to break into the high rolling downtown on K Street. He held the loan for my first house, and he was mildly amused but not overjoyed at how I insisted on taking advantage of the prepayment clause so that in just five and a half years my wife and I owned our house free and clear.
Anyway as that second year progressed, we drilled so well that it became a fair certainty that Dunbar not only would win the competition once again but also would make a clean sweep of it, and of our companies, mine, Company B, was by far the best. Everyone thought so, even the other companies, and I remember how great it felt, with the winter over and with all the missteps worked out, to finally head out of the confines of the drill hall inside the school and even away from Dunbar's football field and out at last onto the pavement of D.C.'s streets and to march along in perfect order for blocks and blocks in that residential area, for all the citizens who were lucky enough to see how truly we, the boys of Company B, a pretty disparate and cranky bunch, nevertheless had our thing completely together. Check this out, Armstrong, damn you, and weep!
As expected, Dunbar did make nearly a clean sweep of the competition that year, winning first, second, third, and I believe fifth, but Company B won only third, and it was with a mixture of jubilation and sadness that we marched back home. And as the last man in my company I was the one who was to be inflicted with the most vivid evidence of how badly our continued dominance was taken. Some street hoodlum from Armstrong kicked me in the rear just as we left the stadium. This is one of the few times, weblog readers, and definitely the first in over 50 years, that I've told anyone that that happened. After we had stowed our rifles back in the school's little armory, spirits were still so high all through that part of town that I wondered if, still in my uniform, I'd be able to ride the streetcar to the train station safely, but no one else seemed to hold me personally responsible for Armstrong's debacle.
After high school, I was in ROTC at Howard University for two more years and then I was in the Air Force for nearly four, both of which were cakewalks because of what I had learned in the cadets. So I saw a bit of the military, and in time I came to regard that pursuit as being at times on the questionable side. But I had no such questions in those cadet days of 1946-1948, and instead one of my fondest memories is of showing off with the rest of the company ("Ca-dence ...count! One, two, three, four!") with my emasculated rifle on my shoulder and so proud to be a part of a precision piece of military machinery, in perfect step and in exact alignment, as we "strolled" (that was what we called good marching) along Washington's beautiful tree-lined streets and past its pretty rowhouses that featured so much incredible Italian brick work, with all the traffic making way for us and people of every stripe watching and admiring us, during those cool, bright, optimistic Spring mornings in an era that now, in such an abundance of ways, is so long gone.
We had some good officers, especially the captain, while one of the lieutenants, the commander of my platoon, went on to become the president of the first rainbow-owned S&L bank in D.C. to break into the high rolling downtown on K Street. He held the loan for my first house, and he was mildly amused but not overjoyed at how I insisted on taking advantage of the prepayment clause so that in just five and a half years my wife and I owned our house free and clear.
Anyway as that second year progressed, we drilled so well that it became a fair certainty that Dunbar not only would win the competition once again but also would make a clean sweep of it, and of our companies, mine, Company B, was by far the best. Everyone thought so, even the other companies, and I remember how great it felt, with the winter over and with all the missteps worked out, to finally head out of the confines of the drill hall inside the school and even away from Dunbar's football field and out at last onto the pavement of D.C.'s streets and to march along in perfect order for blocks and blocks in that residential area, for all the citizens who were lucky enough to see how truly we, the boys of Company B, a pretty disparate and cranky bunch, nevertheless had our thing completely together. Check this out, Armstrong, damn you, and weep!
As expected, Dunbar did make nearly a clean sweep of the competition that year, winning first, second, third, and I believe fifth, but Company B won only third, and it was with a mixture of jubilation and sadness that we marched back home. And as the last man in my company I was the one who was to be inflicted with the most vivid evidence of how badly our continued dominance was taken. Some street hoodlum from Armstrong kicked me in the rear just as we left the stadium. This is one of the few times, weblog readers, and definitely the first in over 50 years, that I've told anyone that that happened. After we had stowed our rifles back in the school's little armory, spirits were still so high all through that part of town that I wondered if, still in my uniform, I'd be able to ride the streetcar to the train station safely, but no one else seemed to hold me personally responsible for Armstrong's debacle.
After high school, I was in ROTC at Howard University for two more years and then I was in the Air Force for nearly four, both of which were cakewalks because of what I had learned in the cadets. So I saw a bit of the military, and in time I came to regard that pursuit as being at times on the questionable side. But I had no such questions in those cadet days of 1946-1948, and instead one of my fondest memories is of showing off with the rest of the company ("Ca-dence ...count! One, two, three, four!") with my emasculated rifle on my shoulder and so proud to be a part of a precision piece of military machinery, in perfect step and in exact alignment, as we "strolled" (that was what we called good marching) along Washington's beautiful tree-lined streets and past its pretty rowhouses that featured so much incredible Italian brick work, with all the traffic making way for us and people of every stripe watching and admiring us, during those cool, bright, optimistic Spring mornings in an era that now, in such an abundance of ways, is so long gone.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 6:08 AM
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