Before the Pentagon, there was a Beach

(I lived at 1115 Street NE - a few houses off of East Capitol Street)

I was 8 years old. The White family was the largest family in the neighborhood. They had 19 children. We were all playing in the street. Someone in the neighborhood said "Let’s walk to the beach." We didn’t know where it was. Myself and Joe went. There must have been 10 to 12 kids all together. We had to walk all the way to the 14th street bridge. The beach was very close after that.

We went in for a swim with the clothes we had on. We had no swim suits. We didn’t think about eating lunch. And about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we thought we would head for home. And when we did, we all got beatings for not saying anything.

We won’t take a long walk to Arlington Beach anymore. It was quite a lesson for all of us. You think they would have been happy we didn’t get lost. I think they wanted us to know to not walk to the beach again. Because before that, we were always in the neighborhood.