Washington Redskins Curse through divining rods

I had a dream in which there were many men taking showers in a vast institution of some sort –perhaps after a sporting event. I wanted to redirect the adjacent showerhead onto me to take a ‘double shower” and have two heads cleanse me better than one.

But as soon as I reached up to make the adjustment the water pressure suddenly tapered off, dribbling down to almost nothing. I looked around and saw that too many showerheads had been left on without anybody underneath them. Since I had worked for the water department for several years, (and was an expert) I knew that having too many heads running was the likely cause for this reduced pressure and went around telling people. There were five or six different separate areas for showering and I started turning them off and announcing for others to do so. However, the pressure remained lower than before.

A kindly elderly black man* in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulled up with some piping. He said he knew what the problem was today. I went outside to take a look and realized that a small hut next door to the institution was virtually the same house which forty years ago; dad and I got stuck in front of in traffic (driving a Volkswagen) for 2-3 hours making us late for a hallowed Redskins professional football game. This house was on Chain Bridge road, the road that led from a long hill in McLean, Virginia down to the Potomac River, crossing over to D.C. and eventually the stadium. I’m almost certain that this part of the dream connects to some actual event from the late 1960’s. In the similar (real) event, I distinctly remember aligning with the gas lamp in the yard next to the institution, which we were stuck in front.

In the real event, Dad was full of seething anger. The utility or road problem was going to make us late for THE GAME and this was unacceptable. There was no time for reflectiveness or joking. It dawned on me back then that this was not the type of man I would desire to become and that growing up to be a man in our culture is fraught with forbidding problems. As dusk settled in, dad thought angrily about the clock ticking away our missing time at RFK stadium. I continued to focus on the dwindling light of the old Washington Gas lamp in the front yard of the problem house. The light seemed to flicker there, or maybe it was watery tears.

I started thinking how the dream reminded me of this real event, which somehow through a divining rod in the earth predicted that I would work for the Falls Church Water Dept. Although I walked along this same stretch of road, many times a half-life ago, recording water meter readings in the area, I never recalled this real event again until my dream. At the end of my dream /recreation of actual event, I went into mom’s bedroom with David and Karen on the sides and said facetiously that Dad was 'very happy' about getting stuck. Mom nodded and smiled with a wide-eyed and loving understanding.

It should be noted that Ted Kennedy lives along this stretch of road on the Virginia side of the Potomac. I know this from climbing down in his vault to read his water meter as his name was on the ticket. I believe that Ted’s name was taken off the Presidential ticket because of trouble he got into drowning his date Mary Jo Kopechne back in 1969. National Lampoon ran a fake ad in their magazine back then that said –if Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, that he would be President! This is because Volkswagens float and not just in dreams.

Some water meter vaults in the McLean, Virginia area contained cute little salamanders or newts. I remember seeing these small reptiles in Ted Kennedy’s meter vault one time.

*A Skatman Caruthers like figure – perhaps an angel messenger from the Twilight zone?