Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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Trip To Washington At S:15 a.m., on Sunday, 18th June, thirteen boys from the Junior School set out for Washington, D.C. The tour turned out to be a lesson in geography, history and meteorology. The route south took us through central Pennsylvania, through the Appalachians to Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River. It was slow and placid and dotted with islands. We arrived very late at night having had enticing glimpses of the floodlit Washington monument and Capitol as we approached our lodgings at Mount Vernon College in stately Georgetown. Monday morning saw us sweltering in the capital ' s humid heat as the sightseeing started. We began with a tour of the F.B.I, building where we saw the astonishing arsenal of weapons used by the Brinks robbers and a display of firing with a Thompson sub-machine gun. From here we went after lunch in the museum of History and Technology, to the Air and Space museum. What a contrast of exhibits there was. Suspended from the ceiling was the Wright brothers ' string and paper airplane, right next to Lindberg ' s ' Spirit of St. Louis ' , and on the floor beneath them was the command capsule of one of the Apollo flights, a Gemini capsule andShepard ' s first U.S. flight in space capsule. Elsewhere there were balloons and world-war 1 fighting planes. Then on our way back to our bus we went into the original red brick Smithsonian build- ing designed with Victorian splendour, a very sharp contrast from the modern concrete and stone Smithsonian buildings. After dinner that evening we played softball and soccer for two hours until the dusk, and we ended a great day by catch- ing fireflies in the dark! Tuesday dawned brightly; it was perhaps fortunate that we had not listened to a weather forecast. The day ' s tour began at the Lincoln Memorial. As we approached the memorial which had appeared large from a distance grew into truly massive proportions with Lincoln the benign giant surrounded by two of his great speeches, the Gettysburg address and his second inaugural. The American reverence for Lincoln is typified by the name ' temple ' that they have given to the memorial. Central Washington, which reminded us all so much of Rome, seemed even more Roman with this giant brooding over ' urbs et cives Americani ' . Leaving the memorial we walked along the Reflecting Pool towards the Washington monument, but since the line-up was so long we decided to visit the White House. It was interesting to see this famous house but unfortunately there were no guided tours, only an endless line of visitors moving through the rooms. That afternoon we saw more money than any of us had ever seen before, for we visited the Bureau of Printing and

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Engraving where all notes are printed, as well as invitations to White House receptions and various government documents. From here we went to the Capitol where we sat in the public galleries of the Senate and the House of Representatives. By now, the weather had been so bad we had to change our plans. We stayed in the city and visited the Washington monument, the National Gallery of Art and the National Archives where we saw the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then proceeded to the National History Museum. Since it had now rained steadily for twenty -four hours we thought it wise to contact the weather bureau. Since wherever we went there would be rain we decided to move on to Gettysburg. This is a magnificent museum. The National Park Service have a fascinating centre where there are exhibits, a movie and an evocative description of Picket ' s charge up Cemetery Ridge using spotlights on an enormous painting. Finally we drove round the battlefield with a guide who gave us an exciting blow by blow account of the three day battle. At the end of it I think some of us felt as though we had been there . So the visits and sightseeing were over and we were faced with the long drive home, but we wondered whether we would get home on Friday in view of the fact that huge parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York were under water - the aftermath of Agnes ' record rainfall, as much as ten inches in twenty-four hours in some areas. However, our roads were clear and we arrived back safe and sound shortly after nine in the evening. It might have been considerably earlier had not Howard Johnson taken well over an hour to produce a hamburger on the Pennsylvania Turnpike! While in Washington we made a visit to Ford ' s Theatre where an intriguing Son et Lumiere gave us a good idea of how Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln. The theatre has been recently restored and it is easy to see how Ford thought that he was building the finest theatre in America. The boys who went were: Peter Abel, Paul Bateman, Ray Bell, Christopher Bramall, Desmond and David Burke, Edward Dickens, Alan Gray, Hugh Jackson, Nicholas Jackson, Stephen Johnson, Brad Thomson and Peter Thompson. M. Nightingale, Esq.