Visiting Washington, 1949

I was three years old, and could walk and talk, and my grandmother was taking me to see Washington. Her oldest son, my “Uncle Bubba”, who, as she told me, “worked for the government”, lived with his family near Washington, in Alexandria, Virginia, and as I understood it, we would be staying with him prior to seeing Washington. This was the most exciting trip of my young life so far, and judging by all the excitement surrounding the trip, and all the care given to what I would be wearing, I knew it was an important one as well. I had never been to see Washington before.

We loaded our suitcases into the trunk of our black ’38 Studebaker and my mother drove my grandmother and me downtown, to the old Union Station, to catch the overnight train.

We got settled into our compartment in the Pullman car for the overnight trip to visit Washington and my grandmother and I were waving through the window to my mother outside on the platform. She was standing less than ten feet away and she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her voice. I could see her lips moving, but couldn’t make out the words because of the thick glass window. She must have seen the confused look on my face because whatever she was trying to tell me, she said it over and over three or four times. I wondered what it was she was trying to tell me. Maybe it was, “Say hello to Washington for me!” I really don’t know.

Suddenly, it seemed as if the station, and the platform with my mother on it, and all the other people waving to me, in fact, the whole world all started to slowly and silently slide away to my left and though I pressed my face hard against the glass window, I couldn’t see my mother or any of them anymore.

Then it was suddenly bright light out, we were out of the station and out into the late afternoon Georgia sun. It was shining in warm through the glass where I had just seen my mother. Thousands of tiny specks of dust hung in the air that I hadn’t noticed before. I wondered if my grandmother could see them too. I thought about asking her, but then decided not to, just in case she said she couldn’t. She was very old and wore glasses and her eyesight wasn’t the best. Anyway, I didn’t want to bother her. She was sitting back on the seat now, her hands clasped in her lap. She looked a little worried, I thought. Perhaps she was nervous about seeing Washington. I turned my face away and looked back out the window.

There was no sound at first, but then, in a little while, I heard the creaking of the train car on the tracks and a couple of muted pops and snaps and felt my body weight shift slightly as we rounded a curve and began picking up speed. We passed houses with black people sitting on porches who smiled and waved at us. I smiled and waved back while “Mamaw” read her Bible.

As we passed, other people sat patiently behind the steering wheels of their cars, held back by flashing red lights and muted, clanging bells. The train went faster and faster, until looking out the window at the passing scene made me dizzy and so I shifted my attention onto something close by that didn’t move. It was a small glass window on the train that was different from any window I had ever looked through. It had what seemed to be a spider-web design in the glass. I wondered how the spider had done that.
I didn’t see any spider, so I touched it and felt the texture of the glass with my finger.

The next thing I remember, the cab was pulling away and my grandmother and I were standing in front of a row of tall houses that all looked alike. My uncle in his family lived in one of them. I don’t know how my grandmother knew which one was his, but she did, so we climbed the stairs and I pressed the doorbell, a little black button in the middle of a rectangular gold plate. I heard a bell ring on the other side of the glass door. My uncle’s wife, my Aunt Katherine, met us at the door and invited us inside. While she talked to my grandmother, and finished ironing some white shirts, my cousin Nancy and I sat at the kitchen table and drank a glass of milk and ate some oatmeal cookies from a red and white striped bag. Neither of our feet touched the floor. When we finished our cookies we were both kind of stuck there. I thought only horses ate oatmeal.

Later that day, while my grandmother waited for her son to come home from work, Nancy and I sat in a little room with a big wooden cabinet in it. Through a small glass window in the front of the cabinet, I could see a little freckle-faced boy inside. He walked funny and moved his mouth funny, but I liked him, anyway. I didn’t like his name, though. It had the word “Doody” in it. Whoever named him that wasn’t very nice. He was friends with a nice man in a cowboy outfit but there were other characters there that were mean, and there was a beautiful Indian princess and a clown that couldn’t talk with a box on his belt with a horn attached to it, and all he could do was blow the horn for “yes” or “no”. I felt sorry for the clown. The whole thing was very upsetting. But I liked the little freckle-faced boy who walked funny, even though he was a little strange.

The next morning we got up early. We were going to Mount Vernon. That was where George Washington lived. We had to take a boat to get there and the boat was loaded with lots of people who all seemed very happy and excited to be going.

My grandmother and I followed the crowd of people to the door of Washington’s house and were ushered inside. While some of the people went into different rooms, my grandmother and I stayed in this big main room with lots of pretty furniture, but no one was allowed to sit on any of it.

While we waited for George Washington to finish talking to the other guests, or whatever he was doing, my grandmother passed the time looking at his plates and dishes and silver trays. Meanwhile, I kept wondering where George Washington was, and why he hadn’t come out to greet us. I was getting a little annoyed. After all, we had come a long way to see him, and although he was an important person and the Father of His Country, according to my Grandmother, it still seemed just a little rude. I wasn’t used to seeing my grandmother treated like that.

Finally, after we had waited for what seemed like a very long time, my Grandmother and I left and went outside to get some fresh air. We walked around back of the house to see if he was out there. On the way we passed some cherry trees. I wondered if those were some of the cherry trees George Washington had cut down when he was a kid. As I was thinking about that we came to his tomb, a little house built into a hill with an iron gate on the front. I thought of looking for him in there, but it was locked. We walked around the grounds some more to pass the time. Finally, my grandmother got tired of waiting and we walked back down to the dock and took the ferry back to Alexandria.

I never did get to meet George Washington.

I guess we should have called.