Armory memories

 

My neighborhood and school in Northeast D.C. were in easy walking distance to the Armory on East Capitol Street.

We good Catholic schoolchildren from St. Benedict's would parade in orderly fashion to the Armory for the water show or the flower show or some other "kid-friendly" event. I always thought the Armory had something to do with the Arboretum, which I still visit routinely when in the District.

Yeah, I always associated the Armory with "soft stuff," so you can imagine my surprise the day I saw armored vehicles on a neighborhood street, heading to the Armory, I was told.

What? Why? Memory is foggy but through the mist I see battleship gray, steel and turrets! Who knows how much I was borrowing from TV's "Combat!", but soldiers and armored vehicles were on the move.

I am pretty confident I was unaware of war as a "real thing" before that day, even though the U.S. was deep in the military conflict of Vietnam. It's not something 6-year-olds think about, I guess. And, besides, Catholic schoolchildren were at war with the devil.

From that day on, though, "armory" has meant "war," "war" has meant "guns," "guns" has meant "soldiers," "soldiers" has meant "shooting," and "shooting" has meant "dead people."

We all have to grow up sometime, right?