Country ZEST & Style Holiday 2024 Edition

LETTER from PARIS Tales From 14th Street, NE

By John Sherman

Many years ago when I was working in Congress and going through a divorce, using my GI Bill and cashing out my federal pension, I bought a row house on Capitol Hill.  Thirty houses lined our block on 14th Street NE; three of them belonged to White residents.  I lived there three years, during which I married Roma Barker.

She added four-year-old Ben to my Ben and Caitlin.  None of them had ever ventured beyond the Capitol.  Pulling up to our house for the first time, young Ben asked:  “Mom, why are there so many brown people?”  I used to call the three the “Mazza Kids,” living in deep Northwest, hard by the Mazza Gallery.

On Sundays, when the Redskins/Commanders were still playing in town, a steady parade of fans headed to RFK stadium and passed our block.  Never did I see a passenger even glance in our direction.  Eyes straight ahead.  My friends rolled their eyes when I told them where we lived.  Those who did come over made a quick hustle from car to front door.  They arrived astonished at the glitter of broken glass on the street as if they had just discovered the Northern Lights.

We slowly adapted to this new neighborhood and many are the memories of those years, good and not so good.

Like the friendship between young Ben and Duane, a kid who, even at eight, faced a troubled future.  He was much larger than his age, which added to Ben’s attraction.  Duane would often come to play when we had the kids on weekends.

One Saturday, the boys wandered up the alley to a dilapidated garage.  Somehow—-and I’m blaming Duane here—-they set the place on fire.  With sirens blaring, Ben came through the back door with a stricken face.  We asked what was wrong.

“Is smoke bad?” he asked with doubtful innocence.  About twenty minutes later a fireman in uniform came to the door.  Someone apparently witnessed their flight.  It’s not hard to find a tow-haired fiveyear-old in the neighborhood. Ben sat on the kitchen floor looking up at the Black officer with dread.  The officer squatted to his level, and in a grandfatherly tone, gave him a lecture about dangers of fire.

The year of my mother’s death, we kids and Roma took her for Christmas at a West Virginia resort.  Lots of old stories, country food and “I love yous.”  We drove home through the snow.

It was dark and cold inside; we probably forgot to regulate the heat.  We switched on lights.  It took only a second to find the stereo was missing.  Walking toward the kitchen we saw a large hole to our backyard.  The robbers had apparently used a truck jack to remove the bars covering the door and window, ripping out brickwork along with it.

They made off with the obvious electronics, passing by the Heriz rugs and antique Chinese lamps.  Upstairs they went through bedrooms and my office.  They had no use for my old Royal typewriter.  Their worst crime was the theft of my grandfather’s engraved pocket watch, a gift on his retirement from the mines.  They also looted my penny drawer, leaving behind a dozen strange Indian head pennies.  Geez.

A D.C. cop showed up and took down our story and description of the missing contents.  As he left, I’ll never forgot his parting advice.  “The only way to stop these guys is to keep a hungry tiger.”

But the very best break in happened to the gent who lived at the end of the block.  His next door neighbors were the Joneses.  Every community has it plumbers, real estate agents, cooks et al.  The Joneses were criminals.  Mrs. Jones would sit on her front stoop, like the criminal matriarch Ma Barker.  She would wave to passersby.  We never saw much of her three sons.

Their neighbor was a traveling man, gone a lot.  To ward off thieves (like the Joneses) he installed alarm systems.  In his absence, the alarms would go off in the middle of the night.  It was a real disturbance.  As his systems became more sophisticated, so did the noise.

Something had to be done.  And it was.

He came home one morning to find his house had been robbed.  Not just robbed, emptied.  They left the appliances, but that’s about all.  Not even a teaspoon or a toothbrush remained.  No rugs, furniture, curtains, art.  Upstairs was just as barren.  The MO became pretty obvious.  They had hoisted the entire contents through a giant hole cut through his flat roof with a commercial chainsaw.

He was gone the next day.

Still, we always felt our neighbors cared for us and who we were.  Margaret Newman lived just a step over our common wrought iron railing.  The Newmans were four generations of women living together.  It wasn’t so much a fortress as it was brigade.

I will forever hear Margaret’s coloratura voice through the wall as she warmed up for Sunday’s church choir.  Coming home one day, I asked how her day had gone.  With a sad nonchalance, she said she just delivered a baby from a 14-year-old up the street.

One evening she invited us over for a drink on her 50th birthday.  Her favorite was coke and cognac (“Cu va say”).  After hugs, we climbed back onto our stoop and found our door locked.  We had no key.  A locksmith would easily cost a $100 to come to our block on a Saturday night.  As we sat wondering who would put us up for the night, Margaret’s daughter, Wanda, stepped out for a smoke.  She commiserated over our plight.

Deus ex machina.  A young man carrying a briefcase approached on the sidewalk.  Wanda shouted to come up.  He climbed the three steps off the street.  Wanda explained our fix.  Without a word, he set down his briefcase and got up on the railing.  Then began climbing up the iron support for Margaret’s tin porch roof.

When he could reach no higher, he leaned out over our door and somehow swung out, grabbing the lintel of our bedroom window.  He punched the sill with his fist.  Holding on with one hand he shoved the window open.  Impossible.  He pulled himself head first into the house.  Less than ten seconds later, he walked through the door, picked up his briefcase and continued on his way—-never a glance back.  Roma and I were in awe—-dumbfounded—of the performance.  Shaking our heads, we thanked Wanda.

“He’s good,” she remarked as we entered the house.