Long, long ago

Since I never have any actual wildlife to blip on Wednesdays, except for the occasional shot of Minkelina, I've decided to take up the new challenge for Whensday.  This is a photo of me (center), EW (right) and our older sister taken during a family trip to Washington, DC when I was about twelve  (so, 1959.) It must have been in the late Fall or early Winter, as I remember it being very cold and windy, and getting dark  very early.  

We were accompanied by my father's Aunt Rose, a feisty woman in her 70's who loved us in a very gruff way.  She lived with my grandparents, having come to the US from Poland with her sister in about 1910, and was a "Pioneer Woman," one of the founding members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union after the Triangle Fire.  I don't remember why she made this trip with us, but she made things more interesting.

In this photo, we are sitting on a bench outside the Smithsonian, waiting for my parents, who had gone to get our car after our day's outing.  We waited and waited, as it got darker and colder, and Aunt Rose and I did our best to keep EW and May from getting too frightened and upset.  About three hours later, the parents finally arrived, and the reason for their lateness will be appreciated by anyone who has lived in or visited DC.  Once they had picked up the car, and headed back to us, they got caught up in rush hour traffic and ended up stuck on a road going over a bridge to Virginia from which they were unable to exit.  Once they were finally back in DC, in trying to get away they got caught in the same traffic loop.  They ended up going to Virginia four times, before traffic thinned enough for them to escape from the loop and come for us.  It was a day none of us ever forgot.  

My last visit to DC was for an American Psychological Association convention in August, about 35 years ago, and the weather was as different as it was possible to be.  Temperatures hovered around 100 degrees and the humidity was 98%.  It was memorable in a totally different way.