THE SUMMER

I WAS

TWELVE

by Rick Davis

The summer I was twelve, Dad and Mother let me go to Washington all by myself to stay with Uncle Richie over the Fourth of July. It was the first time I was ever on the train by myself. All the people on the train were swell.

Uncle Richie met me at the train in Washington. Boy, that's about the biggest depot there is, I bet. I bet you could put the biggest building at home there in the waiting room. Gosh, but it's big.

Uncle Richie had this beat up old car parked down by the big post office next to the train station. I didn't even know he had a car, but he said it belonged to him and his roommate together. Gee, I didn't know he had a roommate either, and, boy, was it ever hot outside that train station. I asked Uncle Richie was it this hot every summer and he said he guessed so and that part of the city was built on a marsh, kind of.

Anyway, we drove out in front of the station where all these streets came together and ran around in a circle around a flagpole or something. There was an awful lot of

taxicabs driving around there. I bet two out of every three cars we saw was a taxicab. We drove out a street where Uncle Richie pointed out the Senate Office Building and the Capitol Building and we went down Pennsylvania Avenue past a lot of hotels and government buildings and by the White House. Then Uncle Richie said he better take me to his apartment and get me settled since it was so late and we had a big day ahead tomorrow. Besides, his roommate ought to be getting in from work and we could go out and get some supper after I got washed up. Boy, we must of driven two miles or more to get to where Uncle Richie's apartment was-up on top of this big hill. He said it's called Columbia Heights.

You never saw anything like the traffic in Washington. I bet everybody in town was going out that way. Uncle Richie got on this street where more cars and taxicabs was going out-five or six lines of cars all one way solid all the way out. He said it was everybody going home from work; most of them work for the government like him he said and