A Weary Race, but Prized Picnic Spaces Are Theirs

Holiday Barbecuers Know Competition for Park's Shelters Means They Might Have to Pack a Pillow

When James Caldwell has a yen for a weekend cookout at Anacostia Park, he pulls himself out of bed at 4 a.m. to stake a claim to the best picnic tables: the ones under a roof just south of Pennsylvania Avenue in the District, a short walk from restrooms and a playground. This Labor Day, however, he thought he could afford to sleep in until 6:30, certain that Sunday night's rain and ensuing gray skies would keep away the competition.

He was wrong. There are apparently enough determined summer-holiday barbecuers in the Washington region that competition for the most prized spots is always fierce -- even when the weather feels nothing like summer.

And the number of parkgoers has grown during the recession as people have turned to public green spaces for inexpensive, close-to-home getaways, said Gary Waugh, a spokesman for Virginia state parks, where attendance over the July 4th holiday weekend was up 14 percent this year over last.

At Anacostia, Caldwell, visiting family in the District for the summer, was rueful Monday morning. The pavilion he had hoped to snag had been taken over at 2:30 a.m. by David Meade and Rafael Gonzalez, who spent the night wrapped in thin cotton sleeping bags in order to save eight tables for a church cookout.

"If it hadn't been for the rain, we would have been here at 2 a.m.," Caldwell, 57, said as he looked out at the river as eight men in a rowing shell glided past. He had spread red-and-white checked cloths over six tables in a less-desirable spot with no roof.

Meanwhile, Meade and Gonzalez, who live at a drug recovery home in Southeast Washington run by the church, Victory Outreach International, didn't complain about their overnight camping as they rolled out of makeshift beds atop a couple of tables. "I slept in worse places than this when I was in my addiction," said Meade, 46.

He grinned and pulled his arms inside his T-shirt to stave off the morning's chilly wind. "Should have worn long pants, though," he said.

Wilhelmina McKeathean, 54, did not arrive until 7:45 -- awfully late but, on a day when the park was not full, in time to grab three tables under a tree.

"We used to do it that way," she said, nodding over at Meade and Gonzalez, 32. "But I can't get up that early anymore."

McKeathean, a day-care provider, has marked the end of summer with a Labor Day cookout at Anacostia Park ever since she was little, the youngest of 14 children. It was a chance for her sprawling extended family to eat and enjoy each other's company. She played with cousins she barely knew; her father fished in the river and took children out for motorboat spins.

"I have never missed a year," she said, and she was determined that this year would be no different, especially because the cookout would double as a celebration of her granddaughter's first birthday. "We're passing on the tradition to our grandkids, and hopefully they will pass it on to their kids."

McKeathean and her 8-year-old grandson, Calvin, left home in Gaithersburg at 5:30 a.m. to lay claim to a piece of the park's riverfront real estate. Never mind that she doesn't drive and that MetroAccess, which she usually uses, wasn't running at that hour. She forked over $45 to come by taxi with a pile of food, including corn on the cob, collard greens and potato salad made with her father's secret recipe.

"This was the spot," she said, taping balloons to a table and surveying the park. "And it still is the spot."