Jo, Jen, Evan and I drove up to DC on a Sunday morning. We started with a s’more donut for Evan and ended with a very nice lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill just a block away from the Casa Blanca. In between we walked. We wandered past Ford’s Theater and the people waiting outside Lincoln’s Waffle Shop, along the brutalist exterior of the FBI Hoover building, past the neoclassical doorways of the Robert Kennedy Justice building and up to the Natural History museum where people were already lining up to get in.
We stepped out on to the grass and the huge open space of the Mall with the Washington Monument to the west and the Capitol to the east and that’s when Evan realized that there was quite a bit of walking in his near future. I think this picture sums it up pretty well.
It was hot and muggy in the sun but there was a breeze and in the shade it felt okay. We stopped at the Washington Monument, WW II memorial, the Korean War memorial (it was closed due to construction), the Vietnam memorial, and the Lincoln memorial. At the WW II memorial, we stood in front of the Freedom Wall with its 4048 gold stars, each marking 100 American deaths. Evan was surprised to note on the plaque next to the wall that more Americans had lost their lives in the Civil War than in WW II.
I stood by Evan as he read the full inscription of the Gettysburg Address to the right of the seated Lincoln. I remembered standing right there and reading it three decades ago.
We walked around the Ellipse to the front of the White House, while Jo scootered up on a Lime. A smattering of Cuban protesters wearing “patria y vida” t-shirts were waving Cuban flags. Evan flashed a smile for the camera and then whined “how much longer?” The tall fences from the Trump era are gone. But in his memory we threw up in our mouths a little bit. And there endeth our trip to DC.
Notes from Dad 