Washington DC Was A Novel Place To Live

Decades ago I lived in the Washington DC area in places such as Arlington, Fairfax, McLean in Virginia and then in Gaithersburg and Mount Airy Maryland.

My Dad worked for a real estate company which was well-known and respected. The wife was a well-known seer into the future and met with a couple of the Presidential families.

Another real estate concern my Dad worked for was in McLean near the Kennedy compound. One of the Kennedy kids came by often to visit the bosses son.

John Glenn lived nearby and had his phone number still in the book. I called once after his flight and asked about it. Seems the number disappeared from the book soon thereafter.

I was a Ham Radio Operator and once did a demo at the Gaithersburg Fairgounds for the Boy Scouts. I took a handheld walkie-talkie with a touchtone pad on it, (we didn’t have cheap commercial cellphones yet) and I made a phone call. That was not the exciting part. The phone call went from our repeater in  Rockville Maryland to Comsat Labs up the road from me. There the call was patched into the upling to the orbiting Anik satellite. The satellite was undergoing testing beoe being placed into service so I was the only person on that massive orbiting satellite. The call was then routed back down to Comsat, back to the repeater by phone and sent back to my handheld by radio. My explanation was that in an emergency, we could find a way to make a communication possible anywhere in the world. Aniks’ signal was Alaska and Canada I think, but you get the idea. From just a walkie-talkie we could provide communications.

That idea was made more interesting when most Shuttle Astronauts were licensed Hams and there were Ham setups at schools whereby students in a classroom could talk to an astronaut who was passing overhead.

I once visited the Garber facility where the National Air and Space Museum restored planes. I was within feet of the Enola Gay while it was being readied for display. Another plabe there was one of Howard Hughes. My Uncle was a Ham and supplied weather reports to Hughes on his round-the-world flight. My Uncle said they were friends.

Outside Gaithersburg I also got a chance to go into an underground center further out in the country. It was the location not widely known to the public. There was a giant parking lot in the middle of nowhere and in the center, a small building which looked like it could hold 20 or 40 people. There was a spiral stairway down to the center. There were bunk beds and food supplies. The toilets and sinks had flexible hoses to ensue that any movement would not rupture pipes. This was not for earthquakes, it was for nuclear war. You see, we were on the ‘radar’ so to speak for a nuclear strike. Those map of books you might buy for your city are different from the ones in DC. There were concentric circles on the maps emanating from the zero milestone (just outside the White House). It kinda told you if you knew what it was for, how likely you were to live after a nuclear blast.

When I lived in Gaithersburg Maryland there was a Nike Missle silo in the back yard. It had been decommissioned though.

There are various places for politicians to hide underground in case of an attack.

I used to be a Net Control Operator for the Ham Radio group RACES who worked with Civil Defense. While not government we did provide a communications link between services which they lacked. When Air Florida crashed into the Pacific, Ham were on their way to help provide inter-agency communications but were stopped short. The subway which would have allowed us to get there was closed because of ice on the tracks.

When I was quite young I used to spend many days over the weekend or during the summer downtown. Often visiting the museums I was quite familiar with the various Smithsonian museums. Little did I realize that years later I would be part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian. We were providing communications for a Cherry Blossom Parade and I was Net Control. I was sitting at the Smithsonian Ham Radio booth behind glass and within sight of Archie Bunkers chair.

When I lived in Mt Airy Maryland I often traveled north near Mt Weather (another underground city). My house was on the flight path between DC and Camp David. I could watch the President leave DC in a helicopter and minutes later see it and the attending ones pass overhead.

As you can see, it was an interesting time. It also seems as though many of the experiences involved aircraft.