The People's Business

D.C. was like the Big Rock Candy Mountain on Inauguration Day.

by Isaiah Thompson

shining happy people

The Chinatown bus came through. Despite increasingly hysterical warnings from newspapers, radio, TV and all my friends, the Chinatown bus was ready for the Inauguration. (I had hoped so; a picture of Obama mysteriously appeared on the Web site of New Century 2000, indicating the company might be on top of the event, but was unaccompanied by any text.)

Nearly everybody was going to D.C. Even the ticket lady — who never smiles — gave a nod to history, pausing from shouting "Ticket, please!" to murmur, "Obama. Obama, Obama."

The high spirits were almost palpable. The Ethiopian woman sitting next to me announced she was moving seats to be with her sister.

"I won't be hurt," I said, joking.

"No, no," she replied sternly. "I love you."

That's how it was for three days.

And for three days, the streets of D.C. were filled with bands of joy-drunk (and drunk-drunk) revelers. Obamamania in Washington is very, very serious. In Philadelphia, you see signs, T-shirts; in Washington you see altars.

Everyone was thank-yous and excuse-mes, good-mornings and "O-BA-MA!s." Three young people from Montreal were picked up by an out-of-service bus. "The driver was like, 'Hey, whatever,'" one told me.

Beautiful-but-run-down upper 16th Street got a face-lift on Monday when hordes of volunteers complied with Obama's call for service and ran outside with gloves and trash bags. The small confines of Joseph's House — a local nonprofit where terminally ill homeless go to die a decent death — were filled to capacity by a 40-person-strong choir from Austin, Texas.

There was fear, too. Marja Hilfiker, a friend of mine who helped found the Academy of Hope, a nonprofit that teaches GED classes, told me that her adult students, black students especially, were quietly terrified for Obama. "They all say they're sure he's going to be killed," she told me. "That white people won't let a black man be president."

And as night fell on the eve of the main event, there was an uneasy ecstasy. The security perimeter went up, the police were everywhere and helicopters circled the city. It only made Washington giddier.

A 20-foot-tall inflatable George Bush effigy appeared in Dupont Circle, and the lefties — usually the stars of the show, but not this inauguration — happily lobbed their shoes at it. At some point, a gigantic ice sculpture of Obama's name arrived. The drinking began in earnest, and the drinks were strong, the bartenders at Reef pouring the booze in reckless economic disinterest.

Then, suddenly, it was 6 o'clock in the morning and things were moving fast. A guy made eggs. There was something like a prayer.

Word was, no bags: Sandwiches were strapped to chests like armor; cookies were packaged; careful steps were taken to minimize the need for urination. I wandered up to my host's roommate, a stranger, in my underwear. I didn't know I wasn't wearing pants.

In the dark, and then the dim light, came a steady stream of people, then a flood of them, toward the Mall. The buses were full; the subways jammed. Crazily, a woman was hit by a Metro train in the middle of it; crazily, she lived.

The Mall is big, much bigger than it gets credit for being. "The Mall is full," cried NPR commentators, but it wasn't. It was open, bright and beautiful. Everyone followed everyone else, but slowly and without rush. The best view from near the Washington Monument was the backward one: waves of people, all colors, all ages, slowly plodding their course to the top of the hill.

Each JumboTron TV had a following, and so the many people separated into what felt like little families.

Obama came out.

"I'm gonna keep crying," said the man next to me, crying. When pastor Rick Warren said the benediction, he bowed his head and cried; and when Obama raised his hand to swear the oath, so did this man tearfully raise his own.

During the speech, it was so quiet that when someone's cell phone went off — one among thousands — we heard it.

Afterward, I thought I'd visit Lincoln — but so did everybody else. So I wandered instead to the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial, which is home to the best of the annual cherry blossoms. A man was showing his three daughters a plaque depicting the site on which the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial is to be built.

And then it was over. There was little hugging, little dancing. America had come, after all, to do business. When the concluding prayer was uttered, we said amen. When the National Anthem played, we sang. Pouring north along every street in the city, the crowd looked happy, but tired, like people coming home from a long day's work.

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)