Memories of the Mall

By   |  March 13, 2009

The Mall in Washington is officially the National Mall and Memorial Parks.  It runs from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, a distance of about two miles.   As I watched the Obama inauguration on CNN, I couldn’t avoid a flood of personal memories of the Mall.  I lived and worked in the Washington, D.C. area at different times for 10 years.  I also spent time in the area on vacations and personal visits with friends and relatives.  I lived in the District, in Southwest at 4th and M Streets, for three years.  At other times, I lived across the Potomac in Virginia or in Maryland.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw downtown Washington and the Mall on a warm summer day in 1963.  For a naive kid from Texas, it was awesome.  That was a different time in Washington, before being in the wrong part of town after dark became deadly.  I often roamed the city with friends, especially at night, going to clubs downtown or in Georgetown, walking around the city center, and strolling the Mall in the darkness and just talking.  One of my frequent roaming companions was my friend Jan Barry, another writer at Opinion Forum.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on the Mall.  Hundreds, for certain.  I’ve attended rallies, parades, cultural events, and displays; watched firworks (one of my favorite things); visited museums; and walked to relax or ran for exercise.  I suppose it became too familiar at times, but I never lost at least some of the awe I felt the first time I saw it.

I was on the Mall on Saturday and Sunday, November 23 and 24, 1963 in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy.  On Sunday we managed to get to the roof of the Russell Senate Office Building, as it’s now known.  Standing beside a CBS news camera, we watched the procession come up Constitution Avenue, along the north side of the Capitol, and then turn right to the East Front of the building.  The sights and sounds were unforgettable.  Muffled drums and the funeral dirge, the clatter of the hooves of the white horses pulling the caisson (the same one that bore Lincoln’s body), the caisson wheels rattling on the pavement, soldiers marching, and a sailor with the presidential flag following the caisson.  Last in the cortege was a riderless black horse, led by a soldier.  The cavalry boots in the stirrups were turned backward, symbolizing a fallen commander.  Every time I see film from that day, it comes back to me as though it were yesterday.

I even had a connection to the riderless horse, Black Jack.  He lived with the other ceremonial horses at Fort Myer, in Virginia just across the river from Washington.  I saw him there frequently and even patted him on the nose a number of times.  Black Jack had something of a reputation.  As you can see from his prancing and the difficulty the soldier had controlling him in film of the Kennedy funeral, he was high-spirited and a bit unpredictable.  In fact, a young lady I knew very well got too close to him at the stable one day, and he bit her on the neck.  Didn’t break the skin, but she wore a scarf around her neck for a while to hide the bruises.

I was there with a friend on July 4, 1976.  It was the culminating event of the Bicentennial celebrations.  We sat on the grass not far from the Washington Monument and the stage where everything happened, including Johnny Cash.  It was a clear day and very hot.  The authorities in Washington, expecting a big crowd, tried to convince everyone to use public transportation, with special arrangements made for a huge number of city buses.  The Metro subway system barely existed then, with only a couple of miles of one line finished.  Not trusting the bus promises, and being generally contrarian, I drove my car.  I actually found a parking place not far from the Mall.  I thought I had beat the system again.

Then came what has since been called the Meltdown of ’76.  There were a million or so hardy souls melting in the sun that day, with not enough porta-potties.  (If you’ve ever been in a large crowd without enough porta-potties, you know what I’m implying.)  The worst came when it was over, after the fireworks.  The bus arrangements fell apart completely, and thousands of people milled around with no way to go anywhere.  In my car, we quickly found that traffic was so jammed that movement was impossible.  Being a brilliant tactician, I decided to go northwest through the suburbs up near American University and cross Chain Bridge into Virginia.  Big mistake.  It took over four hours to get home–normally about a 20-minute drive.  It got so bad (remember the porta-potty issue) that I briefly stepped out of my car on a traffic-clogged suburban street at about 2:00 am and anointed some homeowner’s shrubbery.  I’ve never told anyone about that before, so please keep it to yourself.

I watched the President and Michelle walk a couple of blocks on Pennsylvania Avenue.  The crowd along the street went crazy.  They got back in the car near the Old Post Office building.  They were surrounded by the Secret Service, of course.  Despite the cold, the Secret Service men all had their overcoats and suitcoats unbuttoned.  Know why?  So they can get to their weapons quickly.  What a world we live in.

(This article was also posted at Opinion Forum.)

Comments? Leave your intelligent feedback down below or consider following CollegeTimes on Facebook or Twitter to stay updated or to get in touch!

Share This Story:

Page ID #1188  -  Last updated on
Tags:  

Please scroll down to leave a comment.

One Comment on “Memories of the Mall”  (RSS)

  1. When do you get to hand in the letter?If it’s any omfocrt, of the two evenings I’ve spent questing so far yesterday was far better than Tuesday. Tuesday night was insane with the levelling hordes, and you could barely move for other people. So much more enjoyable last night. We actually almost had an argument Tuesday night because of how stressful the leveling was being! But we snapped out of it and went and ran a dungeon instead. It’s so easy to lose perspective when surrounded by hordes of morons.So I expect that this weekend should be a whole lot more fun.

Leave a Reply to Moo Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.*



You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*

2019 MBA Admissions Consulting

These days, college is expensive and not the best choice for everyone. But do you know which degree is still highly valuable? That's right, an MBA degree. If you study at a high quality MBA program in the United States, you can use that degree to improve your reputation and career ANYWHERE in the world, unlike law or medical degrees (or worthless degrees from diploma mills). Contact our experts to see if you're a good candidate for our top MBA programs... all our programs are accredited by AACSB! Official MBA partner of The Economist.

[contact-form-7 id='66877' title='Aringo Form']