This is my favorite flag photo.

I took it about a half a dozen years ago when our family went East and spent a day in the nation’s Capital.

We didn’t plan well enough to know that one needed to make a reservation to go to the top of the Washington Monument.

But, we lucked out.

I had been once before when I lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I don’t know whether that was the trip when I saw President Harry Truman walking to work at the White House.

“Walking to work” sounds strange, doesn’t it?

But he was living in Blair House while the White House was being refurbished. “Rebuilt” is probably a better word.

We were on the sidewalk in front of the old War Department Building that became the Executive Office Building where I worked for the better part of a year as a baby Budget Examiner, having responsibility for the Small Business Administration’s budget. Now, it has Eisenhower’s name affixed to it.

The wedding cake building is located just to the West of the White House.

Visiting the Washington Monument reminded me of my father’s telling me he and other 4-H All Stars had camped on the grounds. Since he was born in 1916, that was probably in the early 1930’s. Undoubtedly due to a politically astute Ag teacher at Sudlersville High School, Dad was elected President of 4-H at a convention in Hagerstown, Maryland.

I think he told me that story as we drove past the County Fairgrounds where the convention was held on a trip from Crystal Lake to Washington for his treatment for lung cancer at Georgetown University Hospital.