STORIES: Exploring Washington D.C. the Hard Way

It was 1985 and I was thirteen. For some reason, my parents trusted me enough to head out with the Boy Scouts to the National Jamboree to be held in Virginia. Scouts can't go anywhere remotely interesting without checking it out, so before the week-long Jamboree, nearly all scouts hit the Washington D.C. area for some period of time. The group I was with had the better part of a week in Washington, and the rest of two weeks spent around Philadelphia, Virginia and West Virginia checking out our nation's historic past.

It had been by the skin of my butt that I'd been able to go to the Jamboree: I was the troop's first alternate, scout #37. The troop was specially picked through a long interviewing process out of boys from the entire council. If one of the primary boys would be unable to attend, I would go in his place. I went on all the campouts and all the patrol meetings, I attended every meeting with extreme dilligence. My only hope was to be a model scout. There was a possibility that I could get thrown in with another local group, so I was working my damndest to get in. It hadn't looked good, however. My parents thought that I would be missing out on some important learning, however, and helped me pay for a trip to D.C. with my Jr. High earlier in the year.

As time went on, it looked less and less likely that I would be heading out with the troop to the Jamboree.

The night before I was supposed to go to summer camp, I got a call that one of our adult leaders would be unable to attend, and that I could go in his place. That would make our patrol one over the normal size of eight, but leave the troop at an even 40, where it was supposed to be. I left summer camp early and happily joined the troop in its trip.

During our "touring", we were allowed limited freedom in the evening to wander the city and explore. We had a set itinerary during the day of sites to go see, but sometimes our hotel was close enough to something to be worth a night trip. During our stay in D.C., our hotel was about a fifteen minute walk from the Mall where all the major monuments were located, so we'd make a jaunt out to see one of the monuments which were stunningly light-up against the night sky.

This particular night, we were off to the Washington Monument. We really wanted to see the city from the top, and had been stymied by lightening and early closings earlier evenings. We managed to make it up to the top and decided to peruse the nearby gift shop for more junk. We got bored and decided to get something to eat at a nearby food stand. One of our members, Troy, was left to finish his shopping and meet us around at the food stand.

Well, we got our food and waited, and waited, and waited. Troy didn't show up. We headed around to the gift store, and Troy was nowhere to be found. This was not good. We were epected to be a patrol of nine at all times, and there would be hell to pay if we couldn't account for one of our members. We split up and struck off around the monument to see if we could find him. Our search turned up fruitless. We made the painful decision to head back to the hotel and hope that he turned up there.

Something went wrong on our trip back, however. We missed our hotel by blocks. Always thinking it was just right around the corner, we kept going as the neighborhoods got worse and worse. Now, it didn't help matters any that we were required to wear full Boy Scout regalia while out and about--especially when we discovered that we had managed to walk right into the center of the red light district.

The street walkers were thick like flies, calling out to our petrified knot of boys as we nervously walked down the street. A ho was scrapping with her pimp and vaulted over a short wall into a pickup which sped away. We tried to ask a cabbie for directions, but he told us off, using extreme amounts of profanity in doing so. We'd walked into the center of hell, as far as we were concerned, and there was no way out. Eight scared suburban white boys from the Bay Area, the eldest of who was 15, with no idea how to get home.

We decided our best bet was to get out of where we were, so we kept trecking. Somehow, we ended up near Georgetown University, where the frat parties we passed seemed somehow to pale in comparison to the spectacle we'd just witnessed. Amazingly, we managed to find our way back to the Mall and back to our hotel with about ten minutes to spare before room check. We all sat nervously in the room that Troy shared, waiting to see if he was going to show up or if we were going to have to make the heavy admission that he was lost in the wilds of D.C.

Mere moments before our adult leadership came to the room, Troy came sauntering in with a large bag full of stuff. "Hey guys!" he said. Apparently, he'd finished his shopping and decided that he wanted to get some pictures of the monument. He'd lost track of time and found us gone, so had done some more sightseeing on his own and come home. We had been more lost then he was.

The rest of the trip went off without much of a hitch (the Jamboree proper was rocked by a goodly sized Hurricane--I'll take our earthquakes, thank you), but this was not to be the end of story. Three years later, I'm working at the same summer camp that I'd left early to go to the Jamboree. I'm talking with my boss, and he's just told me that I'm going to get a raise. This woman who looks vaugely familiar walks up to my boss and says "Did this young man ever tell you about the time he got lost in the red light district of Washington D.C. after losing a developmentally disabled member of his patrol?"

My boss Lynn could only laugh. My jaw dropped in shock as I saw my raise vanishing before my eyes. "Who are you?" I managed to get out. As it turned out, she'd been the assistant patrol leader's mom. Mrs. Sparkman would end up being a regular up at Camp, and she'd always give me a little ribbing about getting lost in D.C.