I was slogging through the Times this morning, trying to dodge the obligatory Socotra task, attempting to avoid the Quarterly draft I have to get to lay-out this week and scowling at the half-done Big Pink novella that needs another twenty thousand words to meet the Novel-in-November deadline. It was easier not to think about […]

Breakfast at the Rin Con Cito Chapin is one of those things that makes you feel better about the rest of the day, or would be if it didn’t provide more things to worry about. I am not much of a breakfast person, which is not to say that I don’t enjoy eating. The evidence […]

The key about visitations in Arlington is where to park. I had an official letter I needed to deliver to the widow, and wanted to show my respect. Mardy One confirmed to me that the funeral home was death on illegal parking. It is a symptom of the explosive growth in the Ballston neighborhood north […]

The George Schultz Foreign Training Center, AKA Arlington Hall Station If we are short on anything in this tale of Buckingham, it would be sex. There, I’ve said it. It is the reason we are all here, of course, and more so for some of us than others. Based on the number of baby carriages […]

The Spooks had a good run at Arlington Hall Station, and the national security aspect at the heart of the Buckingham neighborhoods went on until the mid-1980s. You might have thought that the men in the long coats from the Soviet Embassy would have lost interest after the Venona affair was revealed to them, and […]

The Honorable Carl Albert, D-3 OK You can understand why Speaker of the House Carl Albert selected Big Pink as his residence after the riots in 1968, the days of his greatest power. The lobby is as elegant as the one in front of his office under the Capitol Dome, where he summoned the powerful […]

The Arlington Assembly of God, Flanked by Culpepper Gardens and Big Pink I don’t know if the blessing of the giant Jesus figure on Route 50 helped to save my life that day I fled Washington ahead of the regular troops. After all, just a few years later I was one of the regular troops. […]

If there was ever a place that represented Arlington on the skids, it was Whitey’s. The place anchored the northeast side of the corner of Pershing and Washington Boulevard where the old trolley tracks ran up to Lyon Village, the stop before the original Buckingham Village development east of Glebe Road. The people fleeing the […]

History is a lot easier when everyone in it is dead. They cannot talk back at you, though I feel sometimes their yelling, muted by the tomb. It is harder when the participants can talk right back at you, even if the language is different. Frances Freed is the key to Big Pink, its quirks […]

The family called the lanky dark-haired kid Link, and the name stuck. The other one he liked was “Commander,” which was the rank he made in the Navy, flying carrier aircraft in the days before jets. He was pretty good at it, which means that his reflexes were quick and he enjoyed an adrenaline rush. […]