Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Southerncitythattheyjustdidn'tdare.Thatseemed strange tooanditmademeevenmore
reflective.
Afterwards,lyingawakeinthehothotelroom,listeningtotherestlesscity,Itriedtounder-
stand the adult world and could not. I had always thought that once you grew up you could
do anything you wanted-stay up all night or eat ice cream straight out of the container. But
now, on this one important evening of my life, I had discovered that if you didn't measure
up in some critical way, people might shoot you in the head or make you take your food
out to the car. I sat up on one elbow and asked my dad if there were places where Negroes
ran lunch counters and made white people stand against the wall.
My dad regarded me over the top of a book and said he didn't think so. I asked him what
wouldhappenifaNegrotriedtositataluncheoncounter,eventhoughhewasn'tsupposed
to. What would they do to him? My dad said he didn't know and told me I should go to
sleep andnotworryaboutsuchthings.Ilaydownandthoughtaboutitforawhile andsup-
posed that they would shoot him in the head. Then I rolled over and tried to sleep, but I
couldn't, partly because it was so hot and I was confused and partly because earlier in the
evening my brother had told me that he was going to come over to my bed when I was
asleep and wipe boogers on my face because I hadn't given him a bite of my frosted malt
at the ball game, and I was frankly unsettled by this prospect, even though he seemed to be
sleeping soundly now.
The world has changed a lot since those days, of course. Now if you lie awake in a hotel
room at night, you don't hear the city anymore. All you hear is the white sound of your air
conditioner. You could be in a jet over the Pacific or in a bathysphere beneath the sea for
allyouhear.Everywhereyougoisair-conditioned,sotheairisalwaysascoolandcleanas
a freshly laundered shirt. People don't wipe their necks much anymore or drink sweating
glassesoflemonadeorlaytheirbarearmsgratefullyoncoolmarblesodafountainsbecause
nowadays summer heat is something out there, something experienced only briefly when
you sprint from your parking lot to your office or from your office to the luncheon counter
down the block. Nowadays, black people sit at luncheon counters, so it's not as easy to get
a seat, but it's more fair. And no one goes to Washington Senators games anymore because
the Washington Senators no longer exist. In 1972 the owner moved the team to Texas be-
cause he could make more money there. Alas. But perhaps the most important change, at
leastasfarasIamconcerned,isthatmybrothernolongerthreatenstowipeboogersonme
when I annoy him.
Washington feels like a small city. Its metropolitan population is three million, which
makes it the seventh largest in America. And if you add Baltimore, right next door, it rises
