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The Washingtonian Syndrome

I am a die hard Washingtonian and loved it in a way I never thought I would ever forget. That is the city of Washington DC. the nations capitol. I grew up there having memories of good times with friends and family and plenty of both. I learned early the value of the art of making friends. Back then the famous book "The Art of Making Friends and Influencing People" was considered one of the very best guides for setting your intellectual platform straight and setting up goals that would both allow you to embrace the world around you and be successful in it, and for this it was greatly lauded. For me just the thought was enough and I loved to make new friends and did so at every opportunity. But for the record I didn't even read the book till I was 14, then it was a book report. I had been influenced by the very words, which I got when the movie was a big hit in the fifties.

With my friends I must have explored every corner of the city. Early on I learned how to catch the trolley cars that seemed to go almost everywhere to get where I wanted. I knew my way around so well that at ten I was already trusted to go myself and not get lost; but was usually stuck with my older brother who sort of put a damper on the whole adventure. He was my only sibling and he'd demand that I hold his hand and suddenly the adventure was over.
I am Negro and I don't mind saying it. This return to Africa thing and use of the term 'Afro-American' tick me off to no end. I owe nothing to Africa and I don't like referring to it in my identity. At the time fourteenth street was the center of town for blacks, of course this was only for business. The whole street was filled it seemed with business after business selling everything. And if you left the main street there was a "DGS" which was the local Jewish store no farther than three blocks away where ever you were. And if you couldn't get it there you still had the local drugstore which was also Jewish. The supermarket was a thing of the future, you see.
If you road the trolley further downtown you were soon lost in the very size of things. There were no skyscrapers but there were buildings so tall I could not even see the tops eventually that's because they were so close to the curb, or maybe I was so little? If I could only imagine remembering all of them and I made a point of doing just that using postcards then only one cent or even five for a penny. The buildings along familiar

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