I longed for Loretta to be sitting there too, witnessing my little moment in the spotlight. Before coming to Middlebury she’d spent one year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and another at Oberlin College. But she’d finally found her collegiate home here and earned a degree in art history.
Her graduation, which had come three weeks prior to mine, had been a magical affair. Unfortunately, that celebratory atmosphere had come to an abrupt halt. Today she was grieving the loss of her father and was back home in Philadelphia arranging for his funeral. His illness had progressed during the last year, and he’d rarely been conscious the last time we’d visited him together. I figured that would be the last time I’d see him and had said my good-byes back then. Still, it was comforting to know that Loretta had insisted I stay here and allow Momma to see me graduate.
With the ceremony over and degree in hand, I headed to the reception the engineering department was having for a few of us. My mind raced to come up with a good reason for visiting Washington, D.C.—one that I could legitimately tell Momma about. As I arrived at the auditorium, she was waiting outside. We embraced.
“I’m so proud of you, Sugar.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you. I love you, Momma.”
The pending trip to Washington crept into my mind even during that long motherly hug.
A week later I was standing in the train station lobby in downtown Chicago on my way to the nation’s capital. I’d said my good-byes to Momma back in Milwaukee earlier that morning. My “good reason”? I’d told her I’d been asked to interview for a position on the Public Buildings Commission, a government committee established in 1916 to make suggestions regarding future development of federal agencies and offices. It was the first time I’d lied to her, and the guilt was heavy on me.
The Bureau had sent an automobile to pick me up at Momma’s place in Milwaukee and drive me to Chicago. It was a wondrous black vehicle—a 1919 Ford Model T.
When my train was announced, I headed to the car where all the colored passengers were sitting. Unlike the South, here in Chicago there were no Jim Crow cars I was required to sit in, but I guess most of us just felt comfortable sitting apart from the whites, and vice versa. Was the way things were in public. But it was a feeling I never wanted my future children to have.
All the folks on the train were immaculately dressed, and I felt comfortable in my cream-colored three-piece suit and brown newsboy cap. We gazed at one another with curiosity, each probably wondering, as I was, what special event was affording us the opportunity to travel such a distance in style. The car was paneled in walnut and furnished with large, upholstered chairs. It was the height of luxury.
I began studying the brand-new Broadway Limited railroad map I’d purchased. Ever since my first year of college, I’d been collecting every map I could get my hands on. It had become a hobby of sorts, running my finger along the various lines that connected one town to another, always discovering a new place various rails had begun servicing.
The train passed by West Virginian fields of pink rhododendron, then chugged through the state of Virginia as I reflected on its history and absorbed the landscape with virgin eyes. This was the land of Washington and Jefferson I was entering.
Carrie H. Johnson has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Herald, and Worcester Telegram and Gazette. She received her MA in Journalism from Northeastern University and is currently a professor teaching communication and business courses at Worcester State University, Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, and The Center for Women and Enterprise in Boston, MA. Visit her website at car-riehjohnson. com.
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