We took the metro back to the hotel, where I spent a lot of time reading through papers. (Daryl's wife) called and let us know how much KLGA had played up the kids' story, especially the part about being stuck in the elevator. The kids were restless tonight; they definitely didn't want to go to bed quickly. While I don't usually do formal bed checks on these trips, I don't normally like to go to sleep before the kids do. Given everybody's mood, it was a short and not especially restful night.
Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Since we played three games yesterday, we had most of the day free for sightseeing today. If I were here on my own, I'd have caught an early train into the city and gone out exploring from about 7:00 on. Kids, of course, live on a somewhat different schedule, though. From their point of view we still left early, but to me 8:30 was well into the day.
One thing almost all the kids agreed that they wanted to see was the National Holocaust Museum, which they had all heard described as moving and excellent. I knew tickets were scarce for the museum and often involved a lengthy wait, which is why we were off at a time that would allow us to get there before they opened.
For those who had been to St. Louis last year, our companions on the train this morning were familiar. A year ago we had gotten mobbed by women in pink T-shirts trying to raise money for breast cancer. Again today it was "the race for the cure"; I only hoped that, unlike last year, we wouldn't lose anyone in the group in the rush of people getting on and off the train.
* * * * *
When we got off the metro downtown, it was clear that the "race" part of "the race for the cure" was over. No one among the swarm of women crowding Independence Avenue was running. They were slowly walking (waddling might be a better description), and the thing seemed more like a social event than a "race". It was still raining (the news said parts of the metro area had gotten five inches of rain overnight), and most of the women were decked out in race-logo ponchos and umbrellas. It intrigued me that only women seem to participate in these events. I'd think that the ladies would get their husbands or boyfriends to join them, but it pretty much seems to be "ladies only". It bothers me that if a similar event for, say, prostate cancer were limited to men, that event would likely be criticized, but it seems to be okay to have an event that's just for women.
The combination of the rain and the cancer walk definitely worked in our favor form the point of view of seeing the museum. We arrived about half an hour before the place opened, and only one couple was in line ahead of us. The tickets are all for specific entry times, but we were able to enter right when they opened. By the time they did, the line had grown to where it stretched a whole blocked and turned a corner; I don't know how much further it went.
It was still raining as we stood in line-not pouring, exactly, just an annoying, steady rain. A street vendor nearby hollered "I'm here for you" as he gestured toward a collection of cheaply-made umbrellas. Several of us (myself included) parted with $5 each to get a bit of portable shelter. The price was really quite reasonable. The umbrellas were not well constructed, but they did their job, and I don't think we could have touched an umbrella at the Walgreen's down the street for $5.
We went through some rather cursory security and entered the enormous museum. The place was interesting, but I could see why Angie wasn't all that eager to see it again. Its disturbing theme makes it a place you don't so much enjoy as appreciate. The galleries are just unending; it's five immense floors crammed full to every corner. That size (which may have been intentional to portray the magnitude of the tragedy) was really overwhelming, too much to digest in one visit. There's so much truly tragic stuff here that after a while you just sort of get numb. Also somewhat annoying was that they played tragic muzak (basically a series of musical moans and gasps) in the background; to me that got in the way, rather than setting the mood.
It seemed odd to me that this museum was in the United States, rather than in Europe, and it was even stranger that almost nothing in the museum was an authentic artifact. Almost everything was "an impression made from" the originals, which are in Germany, Austria, Poland, or Russia. Someday I'd like to visit Auschwitz or Buchenwald or Thekla; I think it would be much more moving to see the actual site of the Holocaust than to walk through a museum that re-creates it.
The museum does a good job of portraying all the many groups that were pursued in the Holocaust. We so often think of it as a massacre of the Jewish people, forgetting that many others were also slaughtered. Gypsies, gay people, the handicapped, and the mentally retarded were also among the groups that were systematically sent to concentration camps. In addition, they portrayed just how little the rest of the world was willing to help avert the tragedy. From the vantage point of history, we can see many missed opportunities where Americans or west Europeans could have and probably should have stepped in to change the course of events. There's nothing we can do about that now, of course, except to ponder things and hopefully learn from the mistakes of the past.
There was an encyclopedic treatment of Hitler's rise to power that made me see some scary similarities to modern-day America. I'm not trying to say that Bush is like Hitler (although both men established agencies in charge of "homeland security", which was also what the initials "KGB" stood for in the Soviet Union), but rather that people in both 1930s Germany and 21st Century America seem to over-react to what they perceive as threats on their security with unquestioning patriotism toward questionable leaders. There are so many people today who seem to think that any kind of dissent is unpatriotic, who seem willing to give up all the liberties that our ancestors fought for in the name of "preserving freedom". People seem to think it's a good thing to just blindly follow and be told by their government what to do and how to think-almost like the students I'm complaining about on this trip who preferred to never make a decision for themselves. To me that's not freedom, and that's not a healthy society. My father didn't fight World War II so that his children could live in a police state. Our country hasn't yet become the police state that was depression-era Germany (although some politicians have said in no uncertain terms that they'd like it if we were), but that is the direction in which we're headed. We need to be vigilant to ensure we don't lose our freedoms-to terrorists or to the government.
The Holocaust Museum was another place where the kids' passion for doing everything as one big group was a problem. The museum is enormous, with four floors of encyclopedic description. Different people wanted to go through the galleries at different speeds, but-because they also wanted to stay together-everyone actually ended up going through at the pace of the slowest person. It was well into the afternoon by the time we were finally finished going through the place.
We did eventually finish touring the museum, and when we did--big surprise--no one could decide what they wanted to do next. Several people wanted to see "the Smithsonian" (which is more than a dozen large museums), but no one could agree on exactly which part of the Smithsonian they wanted to see. Everyone was also hungry, but no one could seem to agree on where they wanted to eat. Again I ended up making a decision for my little zombies; we got on the train and headed back to the food court at Pentagon City.
We finally did split up into two groups at the mall. The majority of the group decided they really didn't want to see anything else, so they just went back to the motel to chill out for the afternoon. (I don't think I'd ever find lounging at a motel preferable to sightseeing, but to each his own.) The rest of the kids still wanted to see "the Smithsonian". I suggested we go to the National Museum of American History, which has been described as "America's attic" or "the nation's junk cellar". The enormous museum covers the equivalent of about two square blocks, and features displays on almost every conceivable aspect of history-including "shrines" to famous movies, television shows, and musicians. The kids agreed this would probably be the most interesting of the Smithsonian museums, and we made our way over there.
We had less than an hour to see things before we'd have to head back for our last tournament game, so we had a very cursory overview of the immense museum. We saw the display called "pop culture" (which seemed to be mostly 1970s housewares), a gallery of Beatles memorabilia, a hall called "The Black Experience" that traced the great migration from southern farms to northern cities, the "Hall of Agriculture", an entire floor tracing the history of transportation with full-size examples of every mode of movement, and a gallery dedicated to Presidents and their first ladies. We didn't really stop anywhere, but just kept moving from one exhibit to the next. We got a quick glance at maybe 10% of the exhibits (and that's being generous) and then were out the door again. Still, now the kids could say they'd been to "the Smithsonian"-and from their point of view, that was the point.
We took the metro back to Arlington, made a quick change into dress clothes, and then drove to Marymount. Our final game was in the college auditorium, a much better setting than the earlier games. The moderator was Chip Beall, the man who runs the tournament, and one of the best quiz bowl readers I've heard anywhere. He was working with a radio announcer from New Orleans who we've also seen many times before at nationals.
We played Delaware Valley Regional High School, a school that was remarkably similar to the kinds of teams we play in tournaments around Iowa. Delaware Valley was from Milford, a small town on the Delaware River where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all come together. (Milford is in Pennsylvania.) The town is in the heart of the Pocono Mountains, which are best known for their honeymoon and skiing resorts. It's less than 100 miles from both New York City and Philadelphia, but it really is a truly rural area. Their school was about the size of Algona High, and-like us-they'd qualified for nationals by winning a regional tournament against other schools like them. Also like us, they hadn't done especially well at nationals; they were now 0 - 3, which made us look better on paper.
This was a very close game. It was back and forth all the way, and we ended up losing by 15 points, or essentially a single "Stump the Experts" question. It was frustrating to end up with a 1 - 3 record, but our consolation was that with just a couple of questions going slightly differently we could have easily been 3 - 1 (which would have assured us a playoff spot). This year we had a team that definitely deserved to be at nationals, and the best thing about it was that while our senior captain had always been the core of our team, it was actually the junior ("Larry Bird") who answered far more questions than anyone else at this tournament. He'll be back next year, together with some smart kids younger than him, so we might just stand a chance of returning another time (...and next year would be in Chicago, which is an easy trip and a city I love).
Before we left Chip Beall asked if we'd like to return in the evening to play an exhibition game in a new format they were considering for future tournaments. We had no special plans and the point of our being here was to play quiz bowl, so we agreed.
Before that, though, we needed to get to church. Whenever we go to nationals, I see to it that my Catholic school students go to mass. ... The way our schedule worked out this year, it was not easy to find a church that fit well into the schedule. Saturday evening was the obvious time, but virtually every church in greater Washington held its Saturday mass at 5pm. It would have been much simpler if even one church had the "anticipatory" mass at 6:00 or even 5:30, but every last one was at 5:00.
Our final game finished around 4:30, so that didn't leave much time. It would have been impossible to get all the way across town to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in time for 5:00 mass, and most other churches were equidistant. I had, however, searched online, and I managed to find a church in downtown Arlington (two metro stations and a short walk east of us) that we just might be able to get to in time for 5:00 mass. St. Charles was just a local parish church, nothing historic or architecturally significant, but it fit our needs perfectly.
My hope was that we could drive straight from campus to the park and ride at East Falls Church and then immediately catch a train. Unfortunately several of the kids had forgotten to bring their metro passes with them, so we had to stop by the motel. Needless to say, we just missed a train; we could see it leaving the station as we pulled into the parking lot. Trains run every fifteen minutes on weekends, so it was about 4:50 when we finally left the station.
It was all of 5:00 when we made it to Virginia Square station in downtown Arlington. We ascended the escalators but still had to walk about three blocks in the rain to get to the church. We missed the opening hymn, and we could hear them singing "Glory to God in the highest" as we neared the doors. We actually arrived just as they were starting the first reading. That's pretty good, all things considered. I was also pleased to see that several other people arrived after us. The sanctuary was packed, and we the group had to split up and fill in here and there throughout the pews. We seated ourselves. That got some looks from the ushers, but no one complained or told us to move.
The homily was definitely not the most inspirational message I've ever heard in church. Today was Trinity Sunday, and a very young priest chose to take this opportunity to spew back everything he had learned in seminary. He pointed out that if we had gone to 11:00 mass tomorrow, Fr. O'Connelly would likely use the shamrock to describe the Holy Trinity. I couldn't help but think that this man's sermon would be improved had he focused on that metaphor. Instead he read at length, word for word, from the catechism, and proceeded to leave the congregation more confused as to exactly what the Trinity entails than we were when we came in. I must confess that at many points during his rambling, my attention drifted to he church's beautiful windows, which featured the stations of the cross portrayed in Picasso-esque abstraction on stained glass. I saw some of the kids thumbing through the Spanish misallettes that were stacked at the side of each pew. I think both methods of passing the time were more inspirational than the homily.
After the homily came the Prayer of the Faithful, the litany for various intentions. It went through all the usual stuff, but there was something more at the end. Almost as an afterthought, the young layman who was reading the intentions added, "For the soul of President Ronald Reagan, who passed from this life today, we pray to the Lord." There were several audible gasps around the sanctuary. This was the first anyone in our group had heard of this, and it was obviously news to almost everyone else at church, too. We all knew Reagan had been suffering for a long time and could die at any time, but I don't think anyone expected it to actually happen. This one little prayer, of course, was the first taste of what would be the news for all the rest of the trip.
Unlike some of my relatives, I never particularly hated President Reagan. I didn't vote for the man, but I certainly found him infinitely preferable to our current President. I disagreed with many of Reagan's political views (I am, after all, someone who doesn't think "liberal" is a dirty word), but I at least got the feeling that he was willing to tolerate a variety of opinions. President Bush and his supporters seem to see everything in black and white; people are wither "with us" or "against us". I can't remember a time when our country was so divided, and it's largely because the President makes it seem that anything less than 100% support of the issues he feels strongly about is traitorous, and a lot of Democrats feel the same way about other issues. My own personal views (liberal on most social issues, but very conservative in my own private life) seem to be denounced by both parties today. I hope that one good thing that might come out of President Reagan's death is that politicians of both parties might see of compromise and diversity of opinion as good things-things that should be the cornerstone of our democracy.
The announcements after communion included one rather lengthy commercial for the church website. That stood out because that website was the reason we were attending this particular church. They were apparently looking for people with computer skills that could help maintain it-which shouldn't be too hard to find in this overwhelmingly white collar city.
We sloshed through the rain back to Virginia Square station and took the train back to East Falls Church. The kids were all starving, and we hoped to get just a bite to eat before we played our extra game. We saw a Wendy's along Lee Highway and pulled into their parking lot. Unfortunately, while they hadn't taken down the signs, the place was permanently closed. A surprising number of fast food places seem to be going under lately (like almost every Hardees in the country and the Burger King in Clear Lake)--I suppose a sign of just how tight money is everywhere.
By the time we realized Wendy's was closed it was really too late to stop anywhere else. We drove back to Marymount and made it to the auditorium with only a little time to spare before the match was to start. Officially our exhibition game ended in another loss, though neither we nor the other team (a Catholic school from South Bend, Indiana) were really trying. Both teams purposely gave some stupid answers on questions they later realized they knew, and in the end it was just a five-point difference, so essentially it was a draw.
The exhibition format was for a shorter game. They had far fewer toss-up and bonus questions, and they dropped the introductions where they read the player biographies. They still had an endless string of "Stump the Experts" questions, though. Apparently some schools had complained because they were able to play only four games at nationals. With the shorter game format, the hope was that a schedule could be formed that would allow each team six games. They wanted us to comment on how the game flowed and what we thought of a six-game tournament format.
The game seemed to flow okay, although I think I'd cut the "Stump the Experts" round all together and perhaps include more of the toss-up/bonus combos in the second round to create the same reduction in time. I'd also save time by not playing five minutes of taped classical music to set the mood before each game. That would allow them to keep the biographies, which the kids enjoy. I really don't care for the idea of a six-game format, and neither did the kids (though we were definitely in the minority). Coming from the rural Midwest, the opportunity for sightseeing is an important part of these trips for us. With six games, it would be highly unlikely that there would be a significant block of time that would allow for much sightseeing. What's more, for a small school from Iowa, it's bad enough to think of an 0 - 4 record; going home 0 - 6 would be really embarrassing, but perfectly possible.
Some of the same people who wanted to stay at the motel this afternoon still didn't want to do anything tonight. Some others, though, figured (as I would have) that if they were in Washington, it was silly to just sit around in a motel room. They still didn't want to go anywhere on their own, though, so I offered to take a group of five kids to Washington's Hard Rock Café. We took the metro downtown and walked about five blocks to the café, which is just around the corner from Ford's Theatre. We were told at the entrance that there would be a 35-minute wait, even though about a third of the tables in the restaurant were empty. We were given a beeper which they told us would only work in the restaurant itself; we had to spend our wait in the gift shop.
One Hard Rock Café gift shop is pretty much the same as another. They all have the same collection of T-shirts, jackets, pins, and drink glasses. It took about ten minutes to see everything there was to see. A couple of people made purchases, but that took no time either. The most interesting thing in the store was the young black man who ran the cash register. He asked where we were from and proceeded to tell us that "Iowa is the second most boring state in the union." Apparently only Ohio is duller in his eyes. He proceeded to relate two stories--one of spending a snooze-ful weekend in Ames one winter (I must say that Ames also strikes me as one of the dullest college towns anywhere) and the other of taking a Greyhound bus that got into Cleveland late at night.
Washington's Hard Rock is located in an office building. Once we had done the gift shop we went out to the vestibule by the elevator lobby to wait. The woman at the entrance had implied that our beeper might not even work there, but it did. Fortunately it took them only about twenty minutes to slide three of the empty tables for two together and seat our group of six.
This Hard Rock Café struck me as expensive, and it struck the kids even more that way. It's been a long time since I've eaten at a Hard Rock in America (Hard Rocks in both Canada and Europe seemed comparatively cheap), so I don't know if Washington's prices are typical of the whole country or not. You basically couldn't touch anything on the menu here for under $10, and $15 was more common. It cost another $2.50 for a soft drink-plus tax and tip. I think the kids had imagined something closer to $10 than $20 for a tab, and I'm pretty sure a couple of them didn't have enough money. I offered to put the whole bill on my credit card and have them reimburse me when it was convenient. This was disguised as simplifying things for the waitress, but I could tell that some of the kids were grateful.
It must have been '80s night at the Hard Rock tonight, because we had an endless parade of Duran Duran, Blondie, the Eurhythmics, the Pet Shop Boys, Poison, and the like on the video screen. Most of that isn't exactly what I'd call hard rock, but it beats some of the more recent stuff they could have selected.
One of the boys in the group was celebrating his eighteenth birthday today. I said he didn't want us to do anything for his birthday, but I could tell he didn't really mean that. I didn't know if the Hard Rock Café did anything special for birthdays or not, but I made a point of letting the waitress know we had a birthday boy. As we were finishing the main course, the waitress asked the boy to go with her. She stood him up at the side of the room and announced that there was a birthday. All the other waiters and waitresses basically started screaming in what I assume was some kind of a birthday rap, and they presented him with a free hot fudge sundae. He looked mortified as he went up with the waitress, but he wore a big grin the rest of the evening.
When we finished eating at Hard Rock, several of the kids told me they wanted to go to the ESPN Zone. I'd never been to one of those places before and didn't really know what they were. I still haven't been inside one, but I got the idea (mostly from the fact that they wouldn't let 18-year-old kids go inside unless I accompanied them) that it's basically a big sports bar. I figured if this was a place where people needed to be carded, I didn't need to be their excuse to get in. ... I let them visit the gift shop (where they could get anything they wanted to show to their friends and make up stories about how cool the place was--pretty much the whole point of going there), but I wasn't going to let them go "inside".
The boys' ESPN Zone bags proved an icebreaker on the metro ride back. A man in our car had apparently just come from the bar part of the place, where he had been watching a hockey play-off game on the big-screen TV. The boys pretended that's what they had been doing too, and I didn't correct them (nor acknowledge that they were with me). They ended up having a long discussion about every aspect of sports that lasted until we reached East Falls Church.
It was nearly midnight when we got back to the motel. I settled in quickly and got a fairly decent night's rest.
Arlington, Virginia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
This morning they had cereal as well as muffins on the breakfast bar, and I enjoyed a big bowl of granola. I had written a letter to my brother and got my morning exercise walking around the neighborhood trying to find a place to mail it. The most interesting thing I saw was a Baptist church that obviously served a very diverse congregation. Their sign gave times for weekend services in eight different languages. It's no surprise for a church to have a Spanish service these days, and I've seen a number with Chinese or Korean services. This place, though, offered church in Arabic and Russian--not to mention a couple of Asian languages whose alphabets I didn't recognize. This church could well be the modern descendent of the institution (a Baptist church by a waterfall) for which Falls Church was named.
I got things packed up so I'd be ready to leave later in the morning. Then I set out back into town with some of the kids who wanted to see a few more specific things. We took the metro to Foggy Bottom and walked past George Washington University, the Navy Hospital, and the State Department. We paused near the State Department for a minute while a boy in the group bought a Mountain Dew. He paid $2 for the bottle, which turned out to be completely frozen. I think the street vendors bring frozen pop with them in the morning. As the bright sun beats down on it, the pop thaws, so it can be sold as an "ice cold" liquid later in the day. Early, though, this was not "ice cold", but merely ice-not to mention a waste of money.
Our real purpose for going into town this morning was to do a quick tour of the "must see" monuments. We started at the Vietnam Wall and then made our way to the Lincoln Memorial. After seeing the ugly fence surrounding the Washington Monument, it was quite a surprise that there was virtually no security at the Lincoln Memorial. They had blocked off the street immediately in front of the building, but they didn't even search bags for people going in. I'd love to know how they assess the comparative risks and decide what security to allocate where.
We also saw the Korean War Memorial, where we first became aware that flags were now at half mast in honor of President Reagan. We then made our way past the reflecting pool, snapped a few daylight pictures of the World War II Memorial, and caught a glimpse of the Jefferson Memorial. Finally we walked back to Smithsonian station.
All the Washington metro stations have electronic signs that tell how long it will be until the next train in each direction arrives. (They're starting to install similar signs in Chicago now, too, and they've had them for years in Europe.) When we entered Smithsonian station the sign said the next train to Vienna-Fairfax (our direction) would be in 19 minutes, and we settled in for a long wait. Fortunately the sign was in error. Just two minutes later a train pulled into the station. We boarded, and in about 19 minutes we were back in Falls Church.
The check-out process was very slow. The woman at the desk had to process each night for each room separately and wait until it was printed out and the charge went through on my credit card before going onto the next one. That was twelve different charges, each of which took about a minute. They've obviously not heard of "express check-out" around here.
Around eleven we left the Econolodge and made our way back to the Capitol Beltway. What had been jam-packed on Thursday seemed positively empty on Sunday, and we made our way around quickly. Before long we were headed up I-95 toward Baltimore. I-95 is eight lanes all the way across Maryland. Even in the rural areas it's very busy, but traffic moved along at about 60 mph (about five miles over the speed limit).
You get a clue of just how close things are in the East when you realize that it's less than an hour from Washington to Baltimore. They're not exactly "twin cities", but places between them (like Laurel) are really suburbs of both cities. We left the Washington beltway and joined I-95 at Exit 27, and we turned onto the Baltimore beltway at Exit 49. Before you get to Baltimore the destination signs start saying "New York", which shows you that nothing is that far from anything else out here.
I-95 is an easy interstate to drive, but the Baltimore beltway (I-695) isn't. It's only six lanes wide, and it really should be at least eight-even on Sunday. Moreover, the lanes aren't continuous. Lanes keep becoming "exit only" to the right, and other lanes enter from the left, so you have to keep shifting left to stay center. There was construction here the last time we were out this way for quiz bowl, and there's construction here again this summer.
We made our way to Pikesville in the northwest corner of the metro area and exited onto Reisterstown Road (highway 140). Years ago when we came out east for quiz bowl we had stayed in a cheap motel on Reisterstown Road. Today we just drove south a mile or so to a park and ride for the Baltimore metro.
When I took kids here several years ago we had some unpleasant experiences on the Baltimore metro. That was definitely not the case today. There were lots of people doing the same thing we were--parking in the suburbs and taking the train to a ballgame downtown. Service was not frequent on the metro's single line, but we didn't have a long wait either. The mostly elevated trip past housing projects and crumbling rowhouses hasn't become any more scenic with time, but we managed to get downtown efficiently.
We exited at Lexington Market, an area that had improved dramatically since the last time I was in Baltimore. This area, at the northwest corner of the downtown area, was more than a little rough around the edges in the '90s. Our group had gone to a night game then, and walking back to this station after dark was downright creepy. The area has gentrified a lot since then. They've restored a couple of old theatres in the vicinity, and trendy bars and restaurants have opened. There are other construction projects all over, and it's obviously a place on its way up. It's still not the jewel of the city, but you no longer feel like someone's going to jump out of every doorway and try to mug you.
It's about three-fourths of a mile from Lexington Market to Camden Yards. Most of the walk is down Eutaw Street, a neighborhood of blue-collar bars that was never nice in the past and I'm sure has no plans to gentrify. This is the area where Babe Ruth led a troubled childhood a century ago, and I'm sure it's still got more than its share of tough young men. I was very glad it was a day game we were going to this time, so we wouldn't have to worry about walking back after dark.
The biggest difference at Camden Yards from the first time I was here is that now there's a football stadium just south of the baseball park. Instead of being named after the historic rail yards it was built on, the other stadium is one of those "Your Name Here" places with an unmemorable name. Thankfully the Orioles haven't given into quite so much commercialism--yet.
That's not to say they're not out to make a buck everywhere you look. Our tickets cost about $15 each, but I'm sure they got a minimum of $10 more out of each of us form one kind of concession or another. They serve excellent food at Camden Yards, but pretty much everything is about double the price you'd pay outside the gates.
There was a weird crowd at this game. It was Little League Day, which meant that most of the upper deck (which is where we were) was filled with elementary school athletes. I would have thought kids that play baseball themselves would be interested in watching the game, but pretty much none of them were. For most of the kids the biggest thrill was doing "the wave", which made its way around the stadium eight full times before dying with an exciting play. I, on the other hand, enjoyed the game; it was an offensive battle that the Birds ended up winning 5 - 4.
We waded through the postgame crowd and made our way back to Lexington Market, from where we took the train back to Old Court station. I stopped for gas at a station on Reisterstown Road, but the school credit card wouldn't work at the pump. I remembered two years ago when a hotel had put a hold on the card during CYO baseball which caused it to become useless to us on our quiz bowl trip. I went inside, and the clerk (a plump and pleasant middle-aged black woman) said she's try to put the charges through by hand. They went through fine that way; there must have just been some problem with the pump.
The clerk at the convenience store was impressed that we were an academic team. She was also surprised that we were already out of school for the summer. (In fact, we had been out for some time.) Her sons still had two more weeks to go, and one of them would immediately turn around and go to summer school. Apparently the Baltimore public schools are not air conditioned, and she said her sons had told her it was already miserable in school a month ago. It amazes me the different schedules schools around the country use. When I was in the South a year ago everyone had started school at the beginning of August, while here they go through mid-June. It made me wonder if anyone follows the old "Memorial Day through Labor Day" routine anymore.
(CONCLUDED IN PART 4)
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