34. The Youth Tour ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

For a week between his junior and senior years in high school, Robert participated in the Rural Electric Membership Corporation Youth Tour of Washington, D.C. Delegates were chosen through the state 4-H organization in a fairly selective process. The bus left Indianapolis in the wee hours of Monday morning so as to arrive in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for a visit to the battlefield at dawn. Robert noted the low ridges that the soldiers formed for their protection. Fog crept across the ground of Pickett’s Charge. The vapor swirled as if churned by wounded soldiers walking back to the woods. The hills and patches of meadow could have been idyllic, but the landscape seemed weighed down by the carnage that occurred there. The guide took the group past monuments, markers, and statues, including the new Indiana monument. Ultimately, the students ascended Little Round Top and looked down upon Pennsylvania’s Elysian Fields.

Later that day, the enormity of the Capitol impressed Robert—especially when he stared at the ceiling of the rotunda. A young guide exclaimed, “You’re all from Indiana? Far out!” A tour of the Supreme Court Building included the courtroom with its red plush curtains hanging between pillars. Robert found the atmosphere dark and forbidding. As each chair was different, the chairs became the judges—in Robert’s imagination.

After the group relaxed at the Marriott Twin Bridges Motor Hotel, the delegates from all the states took part in a boat cruise past Ladybird’s Fountain, jutting high above the Potomac and lit by colored lights.

Tuesday morning found the Indiana group at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) Building. Arthur Mitchell, NRECA director of youth activities, kept the delegates laughing with his “Johnny Carson” style of humor. At the Rayburn House Office Building, delegates from Robert’s area of Indiana met Congressman John T. Myers, who represented the Hoosier State’s Seventh Congressional District, and Congressman William G. Bray, who represented the Sixth Congressional District. Robert sat next to Congressman Myers at lunch. A waiter gestured toward Congressman Myers and said, “This is the nicest man in the House.”  

Then the bus took the students to the Smithsonian Institution. Robert was mesmerized by the Hope Diamond, although he considered rumors about its curse both unfounded and silly. Robert appreciated seeing a mockup of the Apollo Lunar Module.

Robert found the Iwo Jima Memorial imposing. The struggling forms of the statues called to his artistic spirit.

The Lincoln Memorial and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial were visited in turn. Robert found the quiet of the Jefferson Memorial a peaceful change from the chatter of tourists elsewhere. He looked out upon the great rippling bay with its reflection of the Washington Monument.

On Wednesday, the delegates from all the states filled a ballroom at the Marriott where they listened to a speech by Senator George McGovern, who was running for President of the United States. Then buses took the students to the South Lawn of the White House, where Secretary of Agriculture Clifford M. Hardin, from Knightstown, Indiana, greeted them. Secretary Hardin had hardly begun his prepared speech, when he was interrupted by President Richard M. Nixon, who put in an unscheduled visit. Secretary Hardin glanced over his shoulder, saw the President, and said, “Well, here is a man I think you all know. May I introduce President Richard Nixon.”

“I saw these young people gathered here, and I thought I should come say ‘hello,’” President Nixon said. Robert happened to be standing only ten feet from the podium, so he had a close view of the Thirty-Seventh President. Robert heard hardly a word of President Nixon’s extemporaneous speech, but he knew it focused on the importance of the 1970 Farm Bill.

Thursday began with a tour of the Washington Monument. Robert took the stairs from the top of the obelisk back to the ground. Next, the bus transported delegates to George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Robert stood silently before the graves of George and Martha Washington as he tried to imagine the Colonial Era.

Robert doubted that the people who lived in the past could ever have felt that anything was new and fresh. They wore historical clothing, they lacked present-day conveniences, and they depended on primitive means of travel, such as sails and horses. They might have felt glum. They might have sighed, wistfully wishing they, too, could live in the 1970s. Robert tried again to picture that, in George and Martha’s day, the present moment was just as present to them as the present moment was to him. Their lives unfolded as a succession of surprises, for their history was not yet written. All at once, Robert felt that George and Martha could walk around the corner of their home and say hello to him.

Robert was surprised to learn that George and Martha Washington’s house was sided with yellow pine that was rusticated to give the illusion of sandstone blocks with beveled edges and that it was painted with sand paint.

Later, the guide at Ford’s Theatre said that planning was already underway for a salute to entertainment that would star Bob Hope and Raymond Burr in the autumn. Despite the bright lights, Robert felt a gloom lingering about the stage and the box where tragedy had occurred on Good Friday of 1865. The black cloud of melancholy hung thickly over the Petersen Boarding House across the street where Lincoln had been carried.

Later, at Arlington National Cemetery, Robert stood at the grave of John F. Kennedy during the changing of the guard. He could hardly believe the number of graves of those who had lost their lives in Vietnam.

On Friday, Robert and the other delegates from Indiana toured the Vietnam Embassy before going to the Washington Zoo, where Robert found the gorillas and the elephants fascinating.

When Robert returned to Indiana, he felt a growing affinity for the study of American history—a fact that might help to explain why he would eventually earn a PhD in early American literature.