(The Bureau of Navigation, predecessor of the Bureau of Personnel, in its salad days. Arlington National Cemetery is behind the building. The Pentagon is off the frame to the lower right. Photo USN.)
It will be Spring tomorrow, Dammit. It had better.
It is gray and chill and spritzing this morning, not much different than it was Sunday morning, which is when a long round-about journey to Federal Office Building #2 began. I should have gone down to the garage at the farm and sorted through some stuff, but they said there would be cold rain all through the day and they were right. So, I took a road trip south that I will get to tell you about, eventually, and maybe tomorrow.
The short story long, I was approaching the vast sprawl of the Washington-Boston megalopolis and hit grid lock south of Fredericksburg. The sign I was parked near told me helpfully that Alexandria was only 57 miles away.
Jesus, I thought. This is insane. It is a Sunday, for goodness sake.
As we crawled north, I noted more road construction and the increasing number of modern commercial structures along the highway. Things were popping up everywhere, and the Quantico complex was clearly burgeoning with new Federal work even as the budget battles threw a wrench into any sensible execution of the new programs. Approaching the Occoquan River overpass, the old border of civilization, I could sense the seething activity in the new magnetic center of the swelling Federal bureaucracy.
I normally return from the farm via the strategic choke point that is Interstate 66. Coming from the south, and trapped in the high occupancy lane, I realized I could only transition to the local roads just short of the entrance to Pentagon North Parking. I could navigate around the great sandstone bulk of the military headquarters of the known universe and head up Columbia Pike, or swing over onto the on ramp to Washington Boulevard.
I don’t get down this way as much as I did when I still had a Pentagon Badge, and access to the wonders of the refurbished five-sided Adult Care facility. Not to mention the convenience of the nearby Navy’s Quarters K Quick Mart, the preferred Network Television location for watching the burning Pentagon on 9/11, and the closest point of approach for civilians while the place was a crime scene. In more pleasant memories, Quarters K combined the three necessities of life: a Navy Federal Credit Union ATM machine, a modest but adequate supply of distilled spirits and high-octane petroleum distillates. There was a reason I had been meaning to get back here, though.
Quarters K is long gone and the site unrecognizable now. Brooding on the bluff above the former gas station and the Pentagon is the ecru-hued mass of the Navy Annex, more formally named Federal Office Building #2, or the ARLEX. The Air Force, bless them, has erected the three-pronged sculpture of triumph in the air on the point of the bluff, and the structure dominates the ridge line. Behind it is the vast ruin of the Navy Annex.
I take this all personally, since I used to work in the 8th wing of the vast temporary building that lasted seventy-four years. Our ground floor office was Code NMPC-4411, the Navy Military Personnel System’s Intelligence Assignments desk.
If you ever want to have the goggles taken off your view of life in the military, being a “detailer” for a small community of prima-donna officers, this was the place to do it. The immortal Millie Doyle was allegedly our secretary, but she had been on the job since Christ got his first orders, and I could still open the window behind my desk and puff a Marlboro at my desk. We were deep in the canyon, and high overhead there were seemingly fragile walkways between the wings. It was not a pretty place to work, and the parking was crappy, but it was my introduction to Washington, and it was, in its way, the heart of the Navy itself.
Now, it is entirely possible that I will be buried underneath it, since according to the provisions of the FY-2000 Defense Appropriations Bill, the Secretary of the Navy was directed to cease and desist operations in the building, clear the property and transfer title to the Secretary of the Army for the expansion of Arlington National Cemetery.
(Vic’s Annex. Photo Socotra, 17 March 2013.)
In its time since construction in 1940, the Annex has been a warehouse, the headquarters of the Marine Corps and the Navy Bureau of personnel. for fifty years, Selection Board Services had made the picks for every Naval officer promoted by Statutory Board.
It was a historic place, in its way, with a great view of the capital. That will stay, whether the frankly ugly building is there or not.
Contractors- not SeaBees- removed the cornerstone at the Annex on January 18th, and the great deconstruction began. When it is complete, the land will be restored to open green space for cemetery use.
I looked at the old security check point and sighed. My ships are all either museums or razor blades. My office buildings are not looking so good, either. Then I arrived home, and began the quite deliberate process of not thinking about anything in particular.
Road trips are good, and useful, and they permit s certain reflection. At least they so if you are not cursing the traffic down by the Occoquan River.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche Colorado springs