The ordeal began the day before the inauguration when color-coded tickets were disbursed by the Members of Congress in control of them. Each U.S. representative got 198 tickets and each U.S. senator got 393. Do the math. That’s over 125,000, or, in practical terms, enough to wrap lines of people around all of the House and Senate office buildings waiting to endure metal detector logjams. As the minutes before closing time ticked away and the line lengths remained unchanged, enterprising members of Congress emerged onto the chilly streets and searched for marooned constituents. “Anyone here from Memphis?” shouted one Congressman as he paced the line around the Longworth Building.
It was a scaled-down sneak preview of the mayhem that ensued the next morning. With bridges into the District closed to vehicle traffic, parking lots at suburban Metro stations filled at 6:00 a.m. Metro trains riders did their best imitations of Tokyo commuters. Metro trips that ordinarily require 30 minutes took two hours and trains frequently were forced to move through stations without stopping because of crowded conditions on the platforms.
Emerging from the Metro station at Capitol South still hours before the inauguration ceremony, rivers of people were flowing in every direction. Like getting elected president, getting to your ticketed space at the inauguration ceremony required equal parts ambition, luck and occasional lightning fast cutthroat decisions. We narrowly avoided the fate of thousands of purple ticket holders who lemming-like plunged into the I-395 tunnel – aka the “Purple Tunnel of Doom.” (They were warmer down there, but missed the ceremony entirely.) We also unexpectedly profited from the sudden emergence of a minor motorcade as several black Chevy Suburbans parted the crowds and allowed us to bogart a better position in the silver ticket throng mashed into Third Street.
But restlessness mounted as the freezing throng inched closer to the Mall as minutes to the ceremony raced ahead. A few chilled souls, mainly those carting small children, tried to bail out. But getting back out was no simpler proposition than getting in. It was gridlock.
Just minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the silver ticket line surged forward. Unbelievably, a wide expanse of open space surrounding the Capitol’s reflecting pool remained unoccupied. Officers struggled to head off the stampede. One woman in a wheelchair was pinned against a concrete barrier. But the panic soon passed, the space filled, conviviality returned and O-Ba-Ma became president.
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