What white people wouldn't DO for a swellegant river view in 1959 Anacostia! [Photo from D.C. Public Library] There really was a time, before President Kennedy left Washington, DC's Georgetown for a big, white house on Pennsylvania Avenue, and tailfins on Chevrolet Impalas were stabbing Wallies and Georgies in the chest, ..when the people Downtown didn't think living east of the Anacostia River was so crummy. "...This was back when Southeast was just a bustling country town across a soggy, dirty ditch from the nation's capital. Southeast was a half-mythic Southern hamlet writ large, thousands of emigrant crackers from all over Dixie crammed on a hill in one big neighborhood, where everyone knew each other's name and dirty little secrets—and the black folks and the crazies knew their place. Back when white people still lived east of the Anacostia River. But all this is getting ahead of the story. Right now, we're in Strick's, a broken-down bar just a...