Memories.

I first came to DC when I was four (almost five).    My brother was not yet born.  I remember the carousel on the National Mall (nowhere as cool as the one at Nutley’s Happy Land on Hempstead Turnpike on the border of Levittown and Seaford), the Castle(Smithsonian), the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument.

I remember the 898 steps to reach the top.  (Each step is  7 inches tall, the standard size, which means the steps don’t really make the top of the 555 foot tall monument; they only extend 524 feet.)   My father made me count them as I went up.  And, saw the open spaces that no longer surround the monument.  I also remember RUNNING down those steps, with my father screaming at me to slow down.

My next trip to DC was 9 years later.  My 8^th grade class made the trip to DC.  We stayed at the Willard.  Which was then a dump.  No, a dump would have been a step up.  But, it was in the middle of everything.

I also remember running up and down the steps of the Washington Monument again- about four times, maybe 5.  Me, Mike Morris, Carl Flatow, and a few others (who couldn’t keep up).  To me, traipsing up and down those steps was almost as entertaining as the view.

The government, in its inimical wisdom (read as outright stupidity), prohibited us from walking up the steps (walking down was acceptable)  by the time I moved to Boston.  And, then, during the bicentennial celebrations- 1976, it blocked the public from using the steps altogether.

I admit that I probably couldn’t race up the steps any more- but I’m positive I could race down them.  It’s a pleasure I miss.

The monument construction was started on 4 July (of course), 1848.  Representative Abraham Lincoln and President James K. Polk were on hand.  The structure even had to be moved- it was originally designed to be on the East-West line with the Capitol and the North-South line with the White House.  (You do know that the entire Mall [and most of ‘downtown’ DC] was a marshy mess before we filled it in, right?  So, to make sure it wouldn’t be like the Tower of Pisa- or worse, lying on the floor- the nexus is 370 feet east of the White House axis and 123 feet south of the Capital axis.)

But, that’s only part of the ignominy?  Government funding dried up, so it lay fallow from 1858 to 1878.  It wasn’t until December 1884 that the 3300 pound marble capstone topped off the obelisk.

(The George Washington Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Virginia [George Washington’s home town], personifies the original concept for the Washington Monument.  This structure is situated just beyond the original confines of Alexandria, DC, on the land that was always Virginia.   [You do recall that DC originally was comprised of land from both Maryland and Virginia.  The last time Alexandria was under direct federal control was during the Civil War.])

But, there have been more prohibitions at the monument.  Of course, the government blames it on the earthquake (23 August, 2011), which shut the monument down intermittently.  (Think of the DC Metro that shuts down intermittently.  It’s a DC tradition to never do complete repairs.)  But, we all know the problem was the terrible repair job- the elevator simply was unable to perform.   (On two dozen occasions in 2016, the elevator simply would not perform.  With folks in the elevator!)  So, the entire monument was shut down.

And, today, the 19^th of September, we, the people, will be able to visit the Washington Monument, look out over Washington- but only via elevator.  The steps are still verboten.

If you elect to go (it’s opened from 9 to 5 every day of the week), you should be thanking the philanthropist David Rubenstein.  He provided more than $ 10 million to re-open this wonderful monument.  (Millions in Parks Department funds were diverted for TheDonald’s ridiculous hijacking of the DC July 4^th event.)