DC STORIES

 From the Fall of '65 took the bus from the corner of Old Lee Highway and 236 through the Circle and Old Lee Highway all the way through Falls Church to DC with all the kids who took public transportation to O'Connell the only Catholic High School and all the Government workers....over Key Bridge to Georgetown and past the Circle to walk a couple blocks up 17th to the Corcoran School of Art in the Corcoran Gallery a block from the White House and next to the DAR. Drawing teacher was Mr. Schmutzart (sp after all these years) who was still there in the 1980's when my friend's daughter went to the Corcoran. Design teacher was Joan Carol who had been Carol Channing's college room mate and had great stories of New York and whose specialty was theater stage design.

Lunch was up 17th past a restaurant where Washington luminaries held tables can't remember the name but personalities like Art Buchwald and other Washington glitterati held daily sway. The doormen there made sure we art students didn't accidentally get in... to another restaurant that did allow us in with Petra Fischer whose mother was NATO and who had gone to school with Lucy Bains Johnson. Petra was beautiful but very small chested and did not like Lucy because when they were 11 or 12 Lucy said "why I've been wearing a Brawl (bra) since I was 10 years old" copying Petra's German accent copying Lucy's Texas accent....or the Campus Club a block or two away on the George Washingtron University Campus area for the most delicious hamburgers cooked over an open fire on rolls thick and wonderful... .it was here we took Kahlida Baeg when Indira Ghandi came to town and her entourage would pass by the Corcoran because she was Pakistani and her father was Assistant Ambassador and hated Indians..the two countries had been warring for centuries...in the Spring we would take bag lunches and eat in the park at the back entrance to the white house and tourists would take pictures of us.

Nightlife was the Crazy Horse on M, or an invitation to The Ambassador's birthday party at the Ghana Embassy, or Dupont Circle and the first of the Anti Viet Nam War propaganda I ever saw, and Miss Meekka and the other "ladies" (remember, Allan)...exciting to an 18 year old from Fairfax....but mostly the Campus Club for me and my pals and Matt Cain's Little Bit of Ireland for the soldiers we worked with at Woodies 7Corners from Arlington Hall.....or most especially The Journey Inn which was our home away from home the summer of 1966.

I loved DC.

Post Script:  My friend Ralph Cherry has let me know that the restaurant by the White House was the San Souci.