A White House Fourth

My most memorable Fourth? That's easy: 2001. White House staff were invited to bring their children to the South Lawn to watch the fireworks.

My most memorable Fourth? That's easy: 2001. White House staff were as usual invited to bring their children to the South Lawn to watch the fireworks on the Mall. My wife was still pregnant with our third child to be, but I took Miranda (then almost 10) and Nathaniel (then 7). They were old White House hands by then: security was laxer pre-9/11, and I brought them with me whenever I had to work on a weekend. Quite against the rules, they helped themselves to the run of the place, ordering hamburgers at the White House mess and on one grand occasion, meeting the president's dog and its walker, and volunteering to do the walker's job of ball tossing for him.

We were all served soft drinks in red plastic cups blazed with "The White House" on them. Nice souvenirs. Then - wham - the sky opened up in one of those Washington rains that is less like rain and more like being immersed in a lake. The only shelter could be found under trees, and that was not shelter: it was water punctuation. The children were quickly drenched, rain spilling from out their shoes.

Washingtonians are used to cloudbursts that end as rapidly as they start. This rain obviously intended to last a long time, and would pound Washington for the rest of the day. The fireworks somehow managed to ignite anyway - but they were best watched that year from TV.  Except for an intrepid few staffers who had thought to equip themselves with waterproof ponchos, the staff quickly decided to flee. Soon I was marching all the long way from the east gate of the White House, around the long curve of the south lawn, to my car parked on the west side.

Once we were home and dry, the story seemed quite funny. Not for long though. That flight from the White House grounds foreshadowed another White House evacuation, on a truly beautiful day three months later.