Chapter 9

At 7:30 that evening, Marty Johnston, son of the Secretary of Education, had decided to go out for a while and have a few beers. Being in an experimental mood, he decided to stop at a little place in Center City Philadelphia that was well known for carrying over one hundred brands of imported beers in stock.

Rather than hassle with traffic, parking, and possibly drunken driving, he decided to get onto the Market-Frankford El at 69th St. in Upper Darby and ride it to City Hall. He got off there and then walked down South Broad Street to Pine, turned left and then went the remaining block and a half to the bar and went inside.

The Pine Room, as it was known by many of its customers, was not the classiest place in town, but the prices were not outrageous, and one could have a good time there with a clientele that in the evening normally ranged in age from the mid twenties to early thirties. He walked in, looked around, and found a place to sit at the bar next to a very good looking woman who was there with one of her girlfriends, ordered a Pilsner Urquel, a Czech beer brewed at the oldest continuously operated brewery in the world, and began to drink it.

The extremely attractive woman sitting two seats away from him looked vaguely familiar, but not wanting to sound as if he was using an old line with her, he sat back and drank his beer. The place was quiet because of the early hour, so he began talking with the bartender about some of the different beers that they served there.

When the woman sitting next to him got up to use the ladies' room, her friend stayed behind and looked at Marty and smiled. "You look awfully familiar," she said, "although I can't place you."

Marty laughed. "I was going to say the same thing to you, but I didn't want to sound as if I was using that old line."

"No, seriously, you do look familiar, but I don't think it's from around here. I'm here from Washington visiting some friends that go to Penn. By the way, my name is Sheila King."

"I'm Marty Johnston. I grew up in Philadelphia, but I now live in Arlington, and go to school at Georgetown. I'm here visiting my Father before we start back to school next week."

"I go to George Washington and I'm working toward my Masters in Public Administration. What are you studying?"

"I'm going for my Masters in Latin American Studies. My Mother became good friends with a couple of people who work with the poor in the barrios in Mexico City. I went down there with her several summers and I found that the more I went there and found out what was going on, the more I wanted to find out. So, I decided to study it in more detail and then return to see what I can do to help the people there."

"That sounds fascinating. What do you want to do to help them?"

"I would like to follow in both of my parents' footsteps and teach. I hope that I will be able to teach in the barrios, which will help the people there help themselves improve their lives."

"I plan to get into urban planning, concentrating on providing affordable housing and rehabilitating the areas with widespread urban blight, to transform them once again into productive areas."

"What are your ideas for accomplishing your goals?"

"I'm writing my thesis on that. I have an idea that would provide on-the-job training for the hard core unemployed by having them repair abandoned houses and then selling them, returning any proceeds back into the program to pay for the rehabilitation of more houses."

"It sounds interesting. Has it been tried anywhere?"

"Only as a small, pilot project type of thing, but where it has been tried, it has been fairly successful."

About ten minutes had passed, and Sheila began to wonder where her friend had gone. She looked up from her conversation, and saw that she was involved in a conversation with a man she knew on the other side of the bar. She returned her attention to Marty and they continued their intellectually stimulating exchange and each ordered and drank another beer.

At 9:15, someone burst into the bar, shouting that something just came over the radio about something happening at the Capitol, something about an explosion during the State of the Union address.

The bartender reached over and turned the television on, finding news anchors on all three networks trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Marty heard the most trusted newsman in America saying that right now they didn't know exactly what had happened, but there appeared to have been an explosion at the Capitol during the President's speech to a joint session of Congress and that his whole Cabinet was there. Marty's stomach dropped when he heard that about five minutes after the newscast had been turned on.

"Oh my God! Mom!"

"What did you say?" asked Sheila.

"My Mother is Secretary of Education! She is in the Cabinet! She was there! Oh my God!"

He ran over to the pay phone and punched in his telephone credit card number and called his Mother's house. He received a recorded message saying that all circuits were busy and that he should hang up and try his call again later. He dialed the number again and heard the same message. He then tried calling his Father's number and received the same recording. This happened five more times. Frustrated, he finally returned to his seat and drank another gulp from his beer.