Washington,
D.C.
In June 1967
I took off for Europe with my new boyfriend Lee. We drove in his Datsun sports car across
country. We got in an accident by going
on an off-ramp too fast and rolled down an embankment in Kentucky and wound up
staying there for two weeks. With the
repairs (broken axle) and hotel expenses,
there went our cash for Europe.
We drove as
far as Washington, D.C. and settled in for a couple of years there.
At first we
lived in Silver Springs, Maryland. I
worked for an insurance company as a receptionist and switchboard operator.
Back in the
day before copy machines, I would type
forms with carbon paper in between each of several pages while pushing and
pulling telephone cords into various holes on the switchboard. Correcting typos was very challenging.
Next we
moved to D.C. proper. I got a job in the
Dupont Circle Building working for Amnesty International. The office was on the 10th floor
and there was an old elevator that you rode to go up. It was operated by a man in a uniform who
would always try to hug me if I was in the lift alone. I would leave the elevator if I was the last
one out so that he could not do that and take the stairs.
We collected
information on prisoners of war and sent out fundraising mailings. I remember being the hostess for foreign emissaries
in the Watergate Hotel with the Potomac River running along outside.
Lee worked
as a writer for National Geographic. We
went to a house that bred canaries one day and he bought me a white canary with
black bangs. I called him “Hipshot
Percussion.” D.C. had amazing
restaurants of every ethnicity. At the
movies we saw “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Mrs.
Robinson” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” We
listened to “The Age of Aquarius.”
I had not
been into politics too much really. My
brother had been drafted and sent to Vietnam which made that personal to me,
but most other issues were far removed from my attention. But living in Washington D.C. has its way of
educating you on the issues. The time I
spent there had been quite turbulent.
There were
anti-war protests going on all the time.
In October 1967 there was a March
on the Pentagon with a rally at the Lincoln Memorial which numbered more than
100,000 marchers.
On April 4,,
1968 Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis and all hell broke
out in the city. Everything was
burning. We went out a couple of days
later to see all the charred remains of buildings.
It reminded
me of the Watts Riots. A friend and I were
in my 55 Chevy and we were lost downtown when the riot broke out. I drove by a blackened hull of a bus and
police officers were yelling at me to go this way not that. Finally I found the freeway and headed back
to safety in the San Fernando Valley suburb.
In May,
thousands of poor people started a shanty town called Resurrection City in the
National Mall in front of the Washington Monument. It lasted for six weeks.
On June 5th,
Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan moments after winning the
California primary.
On November
15th there was a march in Washington, D.C. for peace. It was the largest antiwar rally in U.S.
history. The speakers at the Washington
Monument were McCarthy, McGovern, Coretta King, Dick Gregory, and Leonard
Bernstein. The singers were Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger,
Peter, Paul, & Mary, John Denver, Mitch Miller and the touring cast
of Hair.
By 1970 I
was back in the San Fernando Valley. Lee
had sent me ahead of him to procure an apartment while he gave notice to his
job. Sadly, he did not rejoin me. Something I felt quite badly about for a
long, long time. So much for the chances
a person can take with their heart.
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