The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

I have been to the nation’s capital city.

My efforts have been to see as many famous places as a day there will allow. My first visit was a real disappointment. We had hired a tour guide to shepherd us around, believing that we would see more if we didn’t have to worry about the traffic, a wise decision.

I recalled these visits when I went out to cut several tulips for the house. We were driving around, and our driver stopped and said, “I’m going to get those tulip bulbs.”

There was a large flower bed where someone had dug up the tulips. They were just lying on top of the ground. 

We picked up about two dozen bulbs, and when we returned to Bothell, I planted them. We enjoyed the huge red tulips for several years there. We dug them up, brought them to Electric City, and planted them again.

The tulips have huge blooms, the best bulbs money can buy. It was a government planting and we were assured by our driver that the bulbs would just be wasted.

We spent the full day hitting the high spots.

Driving around, we were unaware of the problems the city was having with garbage. There was a strike on, and most corners in the streets were piled high with garbage.

It brings me back to how this must have shocked visitors to D.C.

The many enjoyable monuments seemed tied together by a bunch of drabby neighborhoods. Safety, we were told, was an issue there. A neighbor of mine in Bothell who was attending a conference in D.C. was stuck up outside his motel by a gunman, not an unusual occurrence, I was told.

It seems we could do better than this.

I have traveled to Asia where I visited several countries, and not once did I feel unsafe.

Visits to the White House, and the mint where we watched as they busily printed money, were worthy stops. Probably the most striking stop was at the Vietnam Wall, where I found the name of my cousin who was killed there. I had just returned from Vietnam, and the visit to the memorial wall had special meaning.

We were visiting my sister who lived in Vineland, New Jersey.

Every time I went to see her, we tried to spend a day in the capital.

We also spent a day in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where we visited the Amish area.

On one of the trips, we drove through the Piney

Barrens, a place where it was rumored that the mob dumped its victims.

One of the things that makes seeing a lot on a trip back east is that there isn’t a great distance between a host of interesting places.

I think it was embarrassing to see the condition of the capital city.

Perhaps it is time to give the area statehood, maybe they could better deal with their many problems.