Our family spent the week of July 4 in Washington, D.C., a far remove in miles, but not in influence, from the wet, wild, scenic and historic environs of Traveler Country.
One of our stops, for example was the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, overlooking the Tidal Basin. Touring the site reminded me that it was FDR’s jobs programs that put the craftsmen to work who built the stone entrances, lodges, waterways and other structures that give Missouri State Parks their distinctive, attractive appearance.
We toured the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, next to an ancient red brick building with the familiar green emblem of the U.S. Forest Service out front. If this obsolete structure is the only home of the Forest Service in the nation’s capital, I wonder if the agency has the tools to do its job.
Somewhere near the capital, we saw a statute of General U.S. Grant on horseback. According to biographer Jean Edward Smith, Grant took command of the Union army on August 30, 1861, at Cape Girardeau.
Grant’s footprints, of course, are all over St. Louis, where he even has a car wash named for him. Grant was posted to Jefferson Barracks after graduating from West Point. He met his wife, Julia, in St. Louis, and they built a home called Hardscrabble, which still stands, and lived later on Julia’s home place, White Haven, on Gravois Road. We’re all familiar with Grant’s Farm, where you can tour Grant’s cabin.
When he was president, Grant intervened to help his friend James Eads finish his bridge over the Mississippi River, over the objections of steamboat interests, according to information published by the St.Louis Public Library.
You can’t walk around downtown D.C. without dealing with the National Park Service, which manages the National Mall and many of the monuments. I couldn’t help but think of the Park Service and its stewardship of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.
Congress was in July 4 recess and many Washingtonians had fled to avoid the crush of tourists like us, so we didn’t see many of the elected officials and agency employees whose decisions have so much impact on our daily lives in Traveler Country and beyond.
As I gazed down on the empty House of Representatives chamber from the gallery, I was reminded how interconnected we all are in this representative democracy.
That’s how it is and how it should be.
Emery Styron
River Hills Traveler
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