As stomachs growled in incongruous beat, the ragged gang stopped at a McDonalds outlet, famished and feeble. I bought Jimmy a Big Mac with an extra handful of ketchup and Jerry a fish sandwich with cheese and extra lettuce. Now I had two contented passengers munching noisily to express their satisfaction. All they probably needed now was their bottle. Then they would be really living the Anacostia High Life.
On the way back home we took a rough and dusty shortcut across Wheeler Road. Jimmy was familiar with the area nearWheeler Road historically called “The Bottoms.” This name originated from the fact that the area was not part of Bellevue or Congress Heights, but was located at the bottom of the 7thStreet hill.
The name Congress Heights, on the other hand, was derived from the community's setting perched elegantly on top of a hill offering a splendid and unhindered view of downtown DC. Paradoxically, despite the ideal location and pristine view,the name carried negative connotations. This area boasted what was probably the worst public housing in the city: Valley Green. In 1961, more than 300 apartment units rose from the decaying dirt lots, with the hope and aspiration for a better, more wholesome life for the oppressed and impoverished.
Though the buildings were built with high standards, trash and sanitation had become an unexpected luxury.
The kind of deprived, poverty-riddled community that was housed there was a fertile breeding ground for every kind of vice imaginable. The area was deemed Danang dangerous and the drug situation skyrocketed to the point that even 7D (the Metropolitan Police Department serving the most impoverished Ward) were afraid to come out when called. Often times police cruisers would get pelted by kids throwing rocks from apartment buildings. The cops, on the other hand did not give up. They decided to be resourceful in busting the drug dealers.They hid inside PEPCO trucks, ambulances, ice cream trucks, whatever it took, to make a bust.
“Valley Green was known to have a pervert who would sit inside his van and holler out at young girls walking to see friends and offer them money to go behind the building," Jerry said. "It took a long time for the cops to arrest the man. I hope he is rotting in his cell for the remainder of his f..... life.”
Jimmy lost his earlier moroseness and joined in enthusiastically, “And there were gangs, one prominent one was called “Valley Green”. Their turf was on Varney Street from Wheeler to the Greater Southeast hospital. Their rivalry with Ballou and Condon Terrace was legendary. It all started with a dumb beef and it got worse and worse until some punk got shot.”
(For more info, please read the 1996 NYT story "Monument to Decay" re: Valley Green)
The notorious Ballou High School
As memories flooded in, Jimmy became livelier. “Sometimes there would be gang fights with the gangs from Condon Terrace or Trenton Park. And I know that the gang from Condon Terrace is still standing and tough. They are almost as tough as the Anacostia gang known as Choppa City—this group has been known to attack the metrobuses.”
As the violence grew to unmanageable levels, the city fathers had to urgently shut down the housing scheme in the mid-1990s. When Valley Green closed, a lot of the winos and the dregs of society scurried up the hill to Congress Heights. As if a ghostly image of the past, I could see an echo of it all today. Dirty-looking, shabbily dressed men sat outside liquor stores, scratching their disheveled, grimy hair, smoking, playing dominoes, loitering around and getting in people’s way.
In complete contrast to the housing provided earlier, the Valley Green project was replaced by the Wheeler Creek housing complex which comprised of $100K town homes and several single family homes.
Built in 2002, it was a Hope VI private, public venture and a proud model for Washington DC that had become its gold standard. It was an image-building project, with the goal of Hope VI being to change the physical shape of public housing by demolishing severely distressed projects. So it happened that ugly, tawdry high rise buildings and barrack-style apartments became things of the past and got duly replaced with garden-style apartments and town houses that changed the ambience of the surroundings.
Wheeler Road was notorious for its drug deals as well.Jimmy seemed knowledgeable about the goings on. He said, “I remember a time, when these folks and fiends would just smoke weed in the open air so much -- we were virtually free from police intervention. Hell, I was one of them. But I never got messed up on the hard dope. Until..”
“What? Hard dope?” I asked innocently.
“Hell, heroin, PCP, weed," Jimmy replied in a matter of fact way. “These were the serious dopers who made real money and hired an army to protect them. They didn’t sell just to anyone on the street and they were true business people, organized crime, you might say.”
Jerry was eager to add his own memories. “Eventually the cops busted them. I remember cuz Pops and I remember the Feds coming down like SWAT charging in to boot their asses during a huge sting on Oakwood Street back in the 70s.”
And, for a while Lebaum Street and the environs had returned to a semblance of normalcy. Yet, it was only a short reprieve. Crack cocaine hit the area in the mid-80’s and there was no way to escape the mire of addictive narcotics. Unlike dope, crack was cheap, easy to obtain, and available even to women and children. Pinch a little of it with your thumb and get a nickel, two nickels or a dime’s worth of affordable coke. It was an open field for all, no longer limited to the hardcore, and as expected, spread in the community like wildfire. With little concern among city authorities and the Federal Government, the situation simply got out of control. Although PCP, Heroin and cocaine were used occasionally, they were not popular with the blacks as they were well beyond the range they could afford. The distribution was usually handled by big time dealers and being a downer, a couple of hits and you had enough for the whole day.
Having got back to the house and the repairs, we decided to do a quick walkthrough as a meaningful way to wrap up for the day. Jimmy explained how it important it was to lay out the floor plan and to measure everything to the “T.” I was somewhat surprised by his astuteness. “Carpentry and construction are like a chess game. You need patience, planning and concentration. You can’t just go for the easy option. You have to go for what’s beyond and you have to get a feel for what’s happening on the board.” I could do little else but nod in assent.
I glanced out of the window. Dusk had turned to inky blue and the yellow lights of neighborhood houses glowed from here and there. A feeling of weariness flung itself on me. A week’s hard work was getting to us all. “Let’s go out,” I suggested. “I don’t particularly care where, someplace local, someplace that serves cocktail that is made strong, not the watered-kind shit, and some place we could meet people and have a good time.” Jerry was not enamored of the idea. He pleaded tiredness and wanted to go home; besides he had to watch Tracy’s son, Donald.
So, in the end, it was only Jimmy and me. We locked up the house, got into my truck and drove along with the windows rolled down, past the squalid areas of Congress Heights on 15thstreet known locally as the Washington Highlands.
Filled wing to wing with 4-storyed, garden-style apartment buildings, they were decrepit, rat-infested and needed to be condemned immediately. A pregnant mother, carrying a baby and dragging two more kids by the hand, looked harried in the lamp light as we passed by. A couple of alcoholics in tattered clothing slouched on a tree stump, sipping from their brown paper bags and staring mindlessly at the roaring traffic.
There were a cluster of young men across the street by a large oak tree apparently dealing. They had their scouts out who were observing us as we drove by. They noticed the blue truck and the out-of-state license plate and they looked me straight in the eye. That was it. This was the proverbial trigger that sent Jimmy on his diatribe. He hated White Supremacy not because he thought they were racist but because they were suppressing the poor people.
“The powerful muckety mucks in the nation’s capital have all given up on the poor folk east of the river. They have allowed teenage pregnancy to get out of hand, disease and drugs are rampant, there are limited services and programs for kids after school. So what do they do? They have no role models. So they look up to the hard-core, hard drug brother to serve as their role models. Nobody loves them but these ex-cons will take them into their arms. What do you think will happen? This is an easy ticket to the life of hard drugs and crime.”
Jimmy was not allowing me a word edgeways. I had to fight for his attention. “Why do you point the finger at our nation’s leaders? Don’t you think they can each help themselves out of their situation?”
“Sure, we are all accountable for our actions and inactions. However, the government is fully aware that there is abject poverty just a stone’s throw from the nation’s capital. Yet they continue to turn a blind eye to the problem. If they wanted to do something about it, they would have by now,” Jimmy gushed with passion. “And it’s not just the whites. The black leaders have also turned away from us, especially when they come to office and become powerful and influential. The current mayor is one of them, Yale educated and all. If they cared for us, they wouldn’t issue a permit to have a liquor store in every corner.”
I gave his words some thought and felt some surprise. “I thought the problem in this area was drugs. Drugs is the true menace isn’t it?”
“Sure is. It is not just the drug but the selling, marketing and consumption that puts money into a tout’s pockets. Overnight, by the hood’s standards, they become wealthy and they become popular cuz all of a sudden they are wearing nice jeans and a nice jacket.”
I nodded in understanding “So the choice is personal. The kids choose to use drugs and their parents have allowed them to get out of hand.”
Getting out of hand was indeed what it was. Teenaged kids, bleary-eyed, aggressive manner and drugs. That was the be all and end all of their lives. I didn’t blame Jerry for his anger. I let him get it out of his system and listened patiently. “ They send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Why can’t they send the National Guard and get the drugs out once and for all? This is not Al Qaida.”
It appeared unfortunate that the Feds chose not to take this option. The black men thus got caught in a web of social relations, economic conditions and political predicaments that lent bleak prospects to their future. Unemployment among black men had reached epidemic proportions. About half of the young black males had no work experience. They did not attend school. Suicide hit sky high. More men had died of suicide in one year, than the number of black men who were killed in Vietnam.
References:
(1) Photo of Wheeler Estates taken by Richard Layman (www.urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com)
Noteworthy Stories:
New York Times, "Monument to Decay; Toll is Even Greater in Forgotten Anacostia," Don Terry with Karen De Witt, July 26, 1996
Washington Post, "Ballou Slaying Rooted in Territorial Rivalry," Sylvia Moreno and Justin Blum, Feb 9, 2004
This story is about how a feud that started after a Barry Farm youth stole a coat from a teenager in Condon Terrace resulted in a shooting in a Ballou HS cafeteria.
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