A Many-Storied Inn

Before his arrival, Presley scrawled a letter on American Airlines stationery to Nixon, requesting a meeting. Presley told Nixon he was concerned about the direction of the country. He wanted to help. "The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment," Presley wrote. He told Nixon he could help the country by becoming a "Federal Agent at Large" and communicating with "people of all ages."

Presley told Nixon where the president could reach him. "Sir," he wrote, "I am staying at the Washington Hotel, Room 505-506-507. . . . I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent." Indeed, Presley met Nixon on Dec. 21, 1970. They talked about the drug scene, how Presley could help. Presley gave the president a commemorative World War II Colt .45 pistol. One of Nixon's aides noted later in a memo that Nixon was suspicious of Presley's credibility. We came to know, later, that Elvis knew quite a lot about drugs, firsthand.

Perhaps history should be written by hotel staff. Although they are silent and courteous, they see and hear everything. The hotel's history is in the details. History is in what gets left behind, lost under the hotel bed.

Mary Allen's mother worked at the Hotel Washington then. "She told me Elvis was staying in the hotel. I said, 'Can you get something?' She knew the maid attending the room. She got me a pair of socks," said Allen, who was 18 years old at the time and would later get a job at the hotel as a telephone operator.

The socks were black. "The story was, he had a brand-new pair of socks every day. He changed and threw the other ones away," says Mary Allen, 63, who lives in Bowie. "I was tickled to death. I just kept them in my drawer with my nightgown. Silly girl. I had some pictures of him in there." She kept the socks for 37 years "because they belonged to Elvis."

Following her mother, Allen began working as a telephone operator when operators connected calls with plugs and a switchboard. Operators wielded silent power, for they could listen in on calls. For the paranoid, it was true there was a third ear listening -- sometimes. Oh, the people she connected calls for over the years, the rich, the famous. Calls from the White House.

One morning several years ago, she rang a room to give a wake-up call. "I said, 'Good morning, Mr. Pride, it's 7 a.m." She did not know it was the Mr. Pride.

A voice on the other end asked: "Can I kiss an angel good morning?"

And Allen recognized that the man she'd awakened in that room was country music legend Charley Pride.

Later, Pride came all the way down to the hotel's lower level and kissed Allen and another operator on the cheek. "He said he was going to the White House with Willie Nelson," Allen said. Pride had come to town to donate his boots to the Smithsonian. Nelson was to donate a leather jacket.

The switchboard room was in the basement. There, Allen met members of the group Alabama. She also met Aretha Franklin. The Pointer Sisters. "Ernest Borgnine stayed there all the time," Allen says. There was Jack Palance. Toby Keith, the country singer. Richard Gere. Gloria Estefan.

"I saw Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan going to parties in the ballroom," Allen said. "The telephone department was right next to the ballroom. I would open the door. Nosy me. Ronald Reagan was very nice. He shook our hands. . . . Bill Clinton was really nice. We saw Strom Thurmond and his children."