This is where I left the story in 2011. You can see the Pentagon façade just under the overhang to the left. It is where the jet came in a quarter-century ago.
The old Navy Exchange gas station was located at what was called Quarters K, a name left from the old Army layout on what had once been General Lee’s Arlington estate. Quarters K was closing. The Navy Annex was still standing. Arlington National Cemetery was growing toward both of them.

Dan Shanower and Vince Tolbert were already below the hill where we had worked at the old Navy Annex, in Section 64 of Arlington National Cemetery.

I could still remember walking behind their caissons.

I can still see the red Virginia dirt on the shiny ends of the shovels.

But Quarters K was still sufficiently present in memory when they closed it fifteen years ago. Then, we could still make jokes about stopping for gasoline and smokes and vodka and a couple packs of Marlboros.

Fifteen years.

The pumps are gone. The cheap liquor is gone. The eight wings of the Navy Annex are gone.

The ordinary geography through which we hurried to meetings, parked cars, filled gas tanks, bought snacks, complained about traffic and conducted the thoroughly unremarkable business of being alive has been rearranged.

But the geography did not disappear.

It just changed purpose.

Ground where we once performed the small errands of daily life has been absorbed into Arlington.

Dan and Vince are already part of it.

We’re next in life’s perfect circle.

Copyright 2011, 2026 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com