Monday, 22 June, Chapter Four, “The Big Trip,” 1975-1976 >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

The presidential election of November 1976 was about a year away as we pulled into Washington, D. C. and headed for the public galleries of the United States Capitol Building to view a session of the U.S. Congress.  What we witnessed could have been seen as a nascent form of the Democratic primary election season, and a review of major players in United States politics of the past half-decade:  Below our appreciative eyes appeared Frank Church, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Shirley Chisholm, George McGovern and Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson.  Notable among Republicans on the floor were Robert Dole and Howard Baker, the latter of whom had emerged as a hero of the impeachment process as one of those leading members of the GOP who had ultimately pushed the impeachment case against their party’s own president, Richard Nixon.

 

For Barbara and me, this was one of many such scenes on the Big Trip wherein images of our youth and young adulthood came alive in our visual spectrum.  The visit in the nation’s capital was a joy.  We opted to pass on the Smithsonian for a later trip of the singular focus the complex requires for a viable viewing.  Instead, we walked the grounds to and around the Washington and Lincoln memorials, toured the Whitehouse, had a highly informative foray around the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and drove around the city to bear witness to such contrasting scenes as the impoverished neighborhoods of the urban core and toney neighborhoods saliently represented by Georgetown.

 

We departed the nation’s capital with much of the conventional tale of the nation’s founding and putative status as a democratic republic bouncing around our brains, full of images, information, and insights from our rambles through New England and the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington.  As is the case for many a child who first becomes privy to the religious faith of parents before working her or his own spiritual innovations thereon, Barbara and I appreciated having the visual images and verbal accounts of places firm in the nation’s story as conveyed in fact, myth, and legend to contrast with the truth that we sought relentlessly.

 

As we turned toward the South, the story and a counter-story also true but more recondite in the North would bolster the images and augment our rapidly accumulating store of facts regarding the tale and the reality of life in these less than United States.