In 1977 I was working as a Hotel Detective at The Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. I have more posts about this and you can find them by scrolling down below.
The Shoreham has a very nice swimming pool. That is the Shoreham swimming pool in the photo shown above.
One morning very early around daybreak I saw a duck swimming in the hotel pool. It had dropped down for a quick dip. The Shoreham Hotel backs up to Rock Creek Park which is a large urban park that runs through D.C.
Lots of geese and ducks fly over from time to time. This was a mallard duck that had dropped in. I watched it for some time but did not bother it.
Another time I was called to get a dog out of the pool. It had fallen in and could not get out. It was swimming around barking for help. I helped it get out. It was stray dog that had somehow found its way into the pool area.
But this story is about another incident.
I was working with a guy named Harry. Harry was an alcoholic or ex alcoholic. He was also a retired D.C. Homicide Detective. He was a large beefy Irishman who had hands that shook all the time. He had the tremors.
We got a call from the lady Asst. Manager and she said there were two gay men kissing in the pool and she didn't know what to do.
Now Harry seized hold of the situation and said "We will take care of it. I know what to do." And he took off at a rapid pace toward the pool. I thought this should be very interesting since I had no idea what to do about 2 gay men kissing in the pool. I followed him anxious to see what he was going to say and do.
The Shoreham is a large hotel. It took us some time to get there. By the time we got there they were gone. I never got to find out what he was going to do.
I told the story to my friend named Bill who was the Chief Engineer at the hotel and he told me he would have told them they had to get out of the pool because there was a short in one of the lights and they could be electrocuted.
The link below is about the history of laws in the District of Columbia concerning this sort of thing. Far down in the article a man named Blick is mentioned. He was a legend still being talked about in the 1970s and 1980s. He had files on all sorts of people in D.C. Maybe more than Hoover. When he died what became of his files became an important matter. I can't remember who got them or what happened to them.
http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/districtofcolumbia.htm
