A ghost story in the nation's Capitol
They always ask if I felt something. "Across your foot? Your shin?" My shin?
"Yeah. Your ankle. Did you feel it?" Not really. But before I respond, they ask again.
What was it like?" they inquired. "Or did you just fall?" Then they speculated I might be clumsy.
Hmmph. Clumsy. I truly don’t think so.
Oh. I fall like everyone else. I work out daily. I’ve taken a couple of tumbles on predawn runs in Alexandria, Virginia. You never know when one of those sidewalk snakes will slither up from the asphalt and nip you on the ankle. I used to snow ski. I studied martial arts for years and hold a second degree black belt.
Clumsy? Nah.
"But, what do you think it was?" they follow up. Well, I have my theories.
I was a little tired that day. I noted the lip on the small staircase near the Memorial Door of the U.S. Capitol where I may have caught the edge of my brown loafers.
I remember my shoes. Rubber soles. Slight scuff on the toes. Perfectly matched with my crisp tan summer suit. Not quite an "Obama" tan suit. But appropriate for summer. And I thought at least reasonably dapper for traipsing around the U.S. Capitol and covering Congress on a sweltering July day.
Was it the shoes? My fatigue? Or how about my haste to "get the story." I spotted then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his small coterie of aides and a security detail descending a spiral staircase after a meeting with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. D-Calif.
I would try to ask Trudeau a question.
No. This really doesn’t have anything to do with Trudeau. Or the fact that I recalled that there was a picture of him, aged about 14 or 15, at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, rooting for the Expos. He’s there with his father — the most storied of all Canadian prime ministers — the late Pierre Trudeau.
Of course, the Expos no longer play in Montreal. They don’t play at all. They moved to Washington in 2005 and are now the Nationals. And this was before the tariff wars. Montreal has been bereft of Major League Baseball ever since.
What would Youppi! Say?
Look him up, kids.
No, there wasn’t something across my shin or ankle. I didn’t feel anything. I was there, on those steps, in the U.S. Capitol, because I’m a baseball fan. And I found out that Justin Trudeau watched those old Montreal Expos teams in the 1980s. Stocked with Andre Dawson, Warren Cromartie and Steve Rogers. And even though Trudeau was there to discuss affairs of state with Pelosi and others, I was there to ask him about the national pastime.
Ironic, I know, to pose such an interrogative to a Canadian.
However, the reason was that there was a report that the Tampa Bay Rays might consider splitting their season each year between Florida and Montreal. Big league baseball would return to Quebec. It would be international news if Trudeau commented. It would appear on Fox. FS1. ESPN. TSN in Canada. And Montreal — famously robbed of perhaps winning the World Series in 1994 with the best team in the game that year because of the player’s strike — might have a shot again at baseball glory.
But journalism is like baseball. A game of failure. You sometimes swing and miss. You’re doing great if you’re successful three out of ten times.
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And sometimes, in journalism, the question is never asked.
That was this day. On those steps. Questions about the Rays and Montreal were muted. All because of whatever got me.
Absolutely got me.
I stepped toward Trudeau, mumbled something about Tampa Bay and bought it.
I fell on those steps. Directly in front of the Canadian Prime Minister. On the hard Capitol marble.
I quickly realized I was about to fall. With a microphone in one hand, I couldn’t catch myself. I was confident I’d break a wrist or a hand if I tried to catch myself.
So, I just went with it and fell.
And because I studied martial arts for all of those years from Master Kim and Master Yang back at the Tae Kwon Do dojang, I knew how to fall without hurting myself.
I rolled onto my right shoulder toward Trudeau.
My feeling flew up absurdly high in the air.
"Oh Chad! Oh Chad! Oh Chad!" hollered my photographer, Robert Fetzer. "Chad!"
Trudeau stopped briefly. But I leaped to my feet after the roll, hoping he might say something about baseball.
I struck out. And Trudeau departed.
"But what tripped you?" they ask. "Were you all right?"
Physically, I was fine. Mentally, kind of garbled. I’ve worked daily at the U.S. Capitol for decades. I had a sneaking suspicion of what got me. Or better yet, who?
In the latter years of the 19th Century, Rep. William Taulbee, D-Ky., did not get along with reporter Charles Kincaid. Taulbee thought Kincaid wasn’t an honest broker, writing screeds about his personal affairs.
Taulbee was tall, towering over the diminutive Kincaid. Taulbee was known to sometimes physically pummel Kincaid.
Taulbee was out of federal office. But Kincaid knew Taulbee would be at the Capitol. Kincaid packed a pistol with him. And on Feb. 28, 1890, the reporter shot the Bluegrass Congressman square in the eye.
Taulbee leaked blood all the way down the House’s "Y" staircase, the plasma blending with marble. Through a miracle of chemistry, the splotches are still visible today.
The Kentucky Democrat succumbed to his injuries 11 days later.
It probably goes without saying that Taulbee does not like the congressional press corps. And, so, his phantasm is known to lurk around the Capitol.
Sometimes low bridging reporters on ornate staircases.
"What tripped you?" they ask.
And before I can answer, my inquisitors jump to a conclusion, albeit an interrogative one.
"Was it a ghost?" they giddily exclaim, like they had just figured out Final Jeopardy.
As I say, I have my theories. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.
But I don’t want to trip you up.