As Washington gets buried in what might end up as two feet of snow, we cats are sitting in front of the fire, listening to the plows going by, and thinking back to the Ghosts of DC Blizzards Past.
Sure, they say that 1922 or 1979 or the "Snowmageddon" of 2010 top 'em all. But since this is a political blog, the storm that's most on our minds this evening is the one that dumped close to a foot of the white stuff on Our Nation's Capital back in January 1961.
Goodness gracious. Knowing how Washington shuts down at the slightest flurry, we're wondering: How did the Kennedy inauguration ever come off? How did they do it, when you read stories like this?
"Before the night [of January 19] was over, the storm would bury Washington under more than eight inches of heavy, wet snow. 'Traffic that night was the worst I’ve ever seen,' Russell Baker, 85, The New York Times color reporter assigned to the gala that night, remembers. 'The city has always been famous for grinding to a halt at the first hint of bad weather, and the snow that night was the real thing, real Minneapolis-quality, a genuine Washington paralyzer. The downtown streets were choked with motionless cars locked bumper-to-bumper, nothing moving at all...'
"A cocktail buffet at the home of Philip Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, and his wife, Katharine, that had been intended as a drop-by reception for 600 people instead became a marathon for 'about 200 who got to our house mostly on foot and wouldn’t leave,' Kay Graham would recall years later.
"The newly appointed White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, was stuck for two hours in a White House car with a Secret Service agent and a reporter, finally persuading the proprietor of a shuttered liquor store to open up and let them buy a bottle of Scotch. 'We had our own gala...We got out of the car at one point and danced in the snow.'"
That's the spirit! But in light of the "Snowzilla" that we're getting today, should we maybe consider going back to the old Inauguration Day of March 4? Just sayin'. In the meantime, we cats PURR.
No comments:
Post a Comment