eerie beauty

 

[excerpt from A Thousand Days:  John F. Kennedy in the White House, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.]

PROLOGUE:  JANUARY 1961

It all began in the cold.

        It had been cold all week in Washington.  Then early Thursday afternoon the snow came.  The winds blew in icy, stinging gusts and whipped the snow down the frigid streets.  Washingtonians do not know how to drive in the snow:  they slide and skid and spin their wheels and panic.  By six o'clock traffic had stopped all over town.  

People abandoned their cars in snowdrifts and marched grimly into the gale, heads down, newspapers wrapped around necks and stuffed under coats.  And still the snow fell and the winds blew.

        At eight o'clock the young President-elect and his wife went to the Inaugural Concert at Constitution Hall.  An hour later they left at the intermission to go on to the Inaugural Gala at the Armory.  The limousine made its careful way through the blinding snow down the Mall.  Bonfires had been lit along the path in a vain effort to keep the avenue clear.  Great floodlights around the Washington Monument glittered through the white storm.  

It was a scene of eerie beauty.  As stranded motorists cheered the presidential car, the President-elect told his friend William Walton, "Turn on the lights so they can see Jackie."

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