Washington City Paper: Contents for Jan. 5

The Trouble With Harry
Take a ride with Councilmember Harry Thomas, D.C.'s old-fashioned ward boss.

Cover Story

Harry L. Thomas Sr., the 72-year-old D.C. councilmember from Ward 5, is standing in the middle of a vault-size freezer at a Northeast outlet store. He is searching for sausages.

The freezer is a carnivore's dreamland: Its shelves are crowded with turkey, ham, beef, bacon, pork—every kind of meat, it seems, except the kind Thomas is looking for.

"Where are those long sausages?" asks Thomas in his customary drawl. He sounds like a variable-speed tape recorder stuck on slow.

Tomorrow his office is hosting a breakfast for council staffers, and Thomas is determined to have them chewing on sausages, long ones. He checks the shelf where he expects to find the long sausages. No long sausages. Confused but undeterred, Thomas begins sorting through the meat piles: Frozen steaks, frozen chops, frozen roasts, frozen ribs—but still no long sausages. His staffer proffers an alternative sausage. "Those aren't the long ones," Thomas deadpans. He keeps digging, casting aside package after package of small link sausages—impostors all.

Finally, after five minutes in the arctic, Thomas hits the jackpot. "See, these are the long ones," he announces, grabbing six packages of horseshoe-shaped kielbasa. They are indeed long. He plops them on an industrial-size flatbed shopping cart—which is big enough to carry breakfast for the entire federal bureaucracy—and heads for the checkout, nabbing a case of papaya juice, some aluminum pans, and a package of plastic forks along the way. ... Continued

Issue of Jan. 5 - 11, 1996

News and Features

The Trouble With Harry
Take a ride with Councilmember Harry Thomas, D.C.'s old-fashioned ward boss.
Cover Story By Erik Wemple
The Lafayette Park Lobbyists
Single-Minded and Flat Broke, They Trek Across the Country to Give Their Message to the President. Sooner or Later, Most of Them End Up at St. Elizabeths.
The City By Ellen Barry
Eleanor's Etiquette
How to Thank the Shadow Senator Who Has Done Nothing
The City By Jeffrey Itell
What a Relief
The Mail By Joe Corso
Twisting Oliver
The Mail By Ben Cassidy
Alternative Notion
The Mail By Thomas Scarlett
Remembrance of Things Passed Out
The Mail By Mike Edwards
Consejoing Adults
The Mail By Sue Bell
Take Two
The Mail By David Jackson
You Gotta Believe
The Mail By Lee C.W. Hutchison II