Tuesday the 20th

So, I was without a ticket for the Inauguration. Having briefly been packed into the crowd at the Sunday concert and having seen the long line around the Cannon Building, I didn't really relish the idea of squeezing into the ticketed area of the National Mall. I'd been thinking this for some time, in fact. Even before I left Johnson City, I'd figured that I would probably find a bar near the Mall and watch the events from there. The more my time in DC progressed, however, the more I knew I had to be there on the Mall.

My roommates in the Rockville apartment got up with their groups in the wee hours of the morning, caught the Red Line by 5:00 or 6:00 and arrived downtown before dawn. Some of the students in my group did the same. The reports I received were that one group didn't even get on the Mall, even after arriving so early, and watched the event on an available jumbotron. One of my students said she was packed into the ticketed area (silver section) but behind some trees, so she couldn't see much. She saw people carried out on stretchers, suffering from hypothermia. She heard frantic parents calling for children lost in the crowd and frantic people suddenly struck with claustrophobia and frantic to get out of the crowd. My friends, to whom I'd given the two tickets, never made it onto the Mall. I don't know what time they arrived downtown, but after standing in a line to get in, they realized three things: 1) they'd moved ten feet in a couple hours of waiting; 2) they had 500 feet to go with only 30 minutes left before the event began; 3) they weren't going to make it in. So, they went with my original plan and found a bar where they could watch in greater warmth and comfort.

I left the Rockville apartment around 8:00 that morning and got on the Red Line easily. As we moved from station to station into DC the train became more and more packed. I was pinned next to the right-hand doors, and the doors were opening on the left at all the stations. I thought they opened on the right at DuPont Circle, but as many times as I'd been through there the past few days, I couldn't remember for certain. Finally, we arrived at DuPont, and indeed the doors opened on the right, so I was the first one off, popping out the doors like a cork from a bottle of red wine. I journeyed up out of the station and began the long walk from there to the Mall.

The streets were packed with people all moving in the same direction, shepherded by police and military personnel. I knew where I wanted to go, so I moved off to the west a bit, to 20^th or 21^st Street. I stopped at a Subway and bought a breakfast wrap and took a last pee.

When I arrived at the Mall, I entered it about halfway between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials. I worked my way along the frozen reflecting pool and through the crowd, past the World War II Memorial and the place where Linda and I had stood for Sunday's concert. I got just far enough over the rise upon which the Washington stands that I was able to see the Capitol. After a long look, I turned and retreated to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Once I'd decided that I had to be on the Mall for this event, I knew that this was the place from which I wanted to experience it. Obviously the media had made legitimate (if excessive) connections between Lincoln and Obama. The President-elect had fully participated in making this connection—the train ride over the weekend, for example. But that wasn't the reason I wanted to experience this beautiful event from the Lincoln. I wrote in another recent post—Sunday the 11^th, I think—that the Lincoln Memorial is my favorite. I'm not sure I can explain why. The tremendous statue of the man. His tremendous words on the interior walls. The way his statue has him looking east past the Washington to the Capitol. The history of conflict and change over which this president presided. All of this and more is bound up together to inspire in me something ineffable that tightens my throat and brings tears to my eyes.

So, there I was. I took up a position just between the Lincoln and Korean War Memorials (the latter being inspired by a conflict in which my father was involved). The crowd wasn't too tight. I had a walkway fence to lean back on and a jumbotron a couple of hundred feet in front of me. And now and then the sun broke through and warmed me in spite of the temperature that remained in the 20s.

I put on my headphones and listened to the broadcast on NPR, realizing that I was in pretty good shape here two miles from the Capitol. The NPR broadcasters obviously weren't able to see a jumbotron—or weren't watching one they might have been able to see. A roar would go up from the crowd, and the broadcasters thought it just some spontaneous burst of emotion or excitement. But I could see on the screen that Obama was leaving the White House, where he had been with President Bush. I could see President Carter, President Bush I and President Clinton making their way through the Capitol to the steps where the Inauguration ceremony was to take place.

I was there, and I could sense it all.