It was near this statue, you see...

I told you we got lost almost every time we left the motel. I also told you we rented a fire engine red 1978 Mercury Cougar in which we got lost most every time we left the motel. I even told you we were there for a March on Washington during which we drove a fire engine red 1978 Mercury Cougar in which we got lost most every time we left the motel. What I haven't told you is that we were too sophisticated to notice he was naked when we were marching on Washington in a fire engine red Mercury Cougar in which we got lost most every time we left the motel.

So let me fill you in on the bits and pieces I may have left out. I was young and politically naive which made me marvelously certain of my position. I joined the National Organization for Women and I participated in marches and campaigns and consciousness raising groups. This particular march was to extend the deadline by which the Equal Rights Amendment must be ratified. 100,000 women, men, and children dressed in white with yellow banners in the heat of east coast July celebrating our right to assembly and freedom of expression. This is something everyone should experience at least once in his/her life. Years later, I knew a woman who resigned her post as a federal employee as a matter of conscience and traveled to Washington to march in protest. She returned home and took her job back. I asked why.

She explained she had gathered with a group of people determined to tell our government that they were wrong and it was the intent of these people to run them out of office if they didn't change what they were doing. And that government put members of the armed services along the path of their protest to protect the protesters from anyone who intended to interfere with their demonstration of free assembly and speech. She said she could disagree with that government and work to change its policy. But she had no problem being employed by a government who protected it citizens even as they declared how much they disagreed with it and intended to vote every member out of office if they could.

In short, I'm just saying you need to vote, but voting isn't always enough. But I digress.

HRH and I found a parking place that wasn't in Virginia and we hooked up with the Iowa contingency. It was a long hot day and seemed to take forever before we began to move. Frankly, since Iowa was the third state to ratify the amendment I was thinking we should have gotten to be closer to the front but those who had water shared it and we sang all the songs and chanted all the chants as we waited. Finally we began moving. The energy was almost enough to dispel the onset of heat exhaustion, but more about that later.

We waved our banners and chanted, "What do we want? ERA. When do we want it? Now!" down the Mall, swept along by youthful enthusiasm and the swell of humanity when HRH turned to me and said, "Do you remember where we left the car?"

Well, that puts a damper on a middle-aged woman's enthusiasm. However, a 20-year-old, not so much. "We'll worry about it after the March." I'm not really clear on what else happened after that. I remember finishing the March. Well at least we were near enough the end that I could hear the speeches. But HRH was leading me to a place to sit down where she could splash water on me. Ok, it was the Reflecting Pool. In any case, she found a place under a tree and a lemonade vendor and got me cooled, rested and hydrated before we thought about the car again.

We weren't really worried. I mean how hard is it to find a 1978 fire engine red Mercury Cougar? Even in 1978 I knew it was a big-assed car. Besides, we remembered a lot about where we parked it. First, you could see the Washington Monument from where we parked the car.
  And it was near a park. And there was a statue in the park. The statue was of a naked Man, a Woman, and a Boy Scout. So we hailed a cab and asked the driver to find our car with this description. We didn't mention the naked part because we wanted him to think we were too sophisticated to notice. This good man drove us around and around the Mall five times before one of us called out, "There it is."

DC Cabbies didn't use meters back then. You paid them by zones and he didn't leave the zone. But we didn't balk at the $10.00 fare and even tipped him a couple of bucks, even though we never heard of anyone who ever had a fare of TEN DOLLARS.  But it was worth it just for the fact he didn't laugh at us until he got home that night. 

It just goes to prove my old saying, there is nothing so bad that can't be made better by having a good story to tell afterwards.