Hooray for Tourists!

I live in the nation's capital, and I have never made any secret of the fact that there are places I would rather be, especially in the summer. No need to explain that to any resident of the D.C. Metro area; you all know what I'm talking about. When it's 95 degrees here in the great dismal swamp, and the humidity is almost the same as the temperature, when the paper towels in the bathroom come off the roll with a soggy slurp instead of a crisp tear, and the air conditioners are wheezing and sweating and dripping like melting popsicles on the sidewalk, I think we're all pretty much of one mind: whose stupid idea was it to put a city here, much less make it the headquarters of the U.S. government?

But there is one, if only one thing I like about summer in Washington. The city fills up with tourists.

What, I hear you cry? You LIKE that?? Tourists. Eeeww. They're so...touristy. Walking around in shorts and Nikes, herding their little pointy-headed kids around, slowing up left turns as they crowd the crosswalks, standing around scratching their heads on street corners, looking lost. Crowding the mall when you want to jog there.

But there's one thing I will say for tourists, and as far as I'm concerned it trumps all else. In the summertime, Washington fills up with nice people from the midwest, west, south and even Canada. People who will actually talk to you on the Metro as opposed to the D.C. locals, who have snottiness down to an art form. When I visited Washington for the first time, in 1980, I jotted down in my notebook, "The two national pastimes of the nation's capital seem to be jaywalking and rudeness."

Man, was I right on at age 24 or what?

Yesterday I went downtown to run an errand at Voice of America, where I work part-time as a contractor. I usually take Metro when I go downtown so I don't have to hassle with parking.

I had just changed from the Red Line to the Orange Line at Metro Center when a typical, stay-out-of-my-zone D.C. local pushed past me like I wasn't there, didn't bother apologizing for bumping into me, and went on her merry way to take her seat.

I made a face at her retreating back. A man who was obviously visiting town saw me do that and started laughing out loud. I went over to him and said, "I live here. You'd think I'd be used to it."

A bit later, when I had run my errand and was on my way home, once again I found myself riding with a family of visitors, on their way, as visitors so often are, to the Smithsonian museum. The father, sitting next to his son, look down at a copy of the Washington Express sports page lying on the floor and I heard him say to his son, "That man went to the same college as Daddy. Yeah, see? University of Illinois."

I asked the man if he were from Illinois. He said yes, and we chatted a bit for two stops. When we reached Smithsonian station, he, his wife and their three children got up to get off. "Have fun," I said. "Watch your back and your wallet. The bottled water is $3 out there."

Back at Metro Center, switching back to the Red Line, I encountered a couple from Wisconsin. I figured out they were from Wisconsin because the guy was wearing a T-shirt advertising a Harley-Davidson dealer in that state. I chatted these people up too, as we walked to the platform. I drove through Wisconsin last year and noticed that there is a resort there called Chula Vista, which just happens to be the same name as that of the city in California where I grew up. They were as pleasant as could be. I described my overnight stay in Wisconsin last year, mentioning that the town my wife and I stayed in "Had a huge street full of amusement park rides and stuff like that." "That had to be Wisconsin Dells," the woman said. She was right; as soon as she mentioned the place, I remembered. I helped them get on the right train, promptly forgetting that it was also the train I was supposed to get on, and off it, and they went, without me.

When I realized that I had been brain-dead enough to skip my own train and walk over to the wrong side of the platform, I of course promptly went back and caught the next one. What do you know, I encountered yet another visiting family group, this one on its way to Union Station, probably for the food court since they weren't carrying luggage. What nice people! How refreshing to ride the Metro and get something other than the usual combination of cold shoulders, cell-phone blabber and looks intended to kill.

The train largely emptied out at Union Station. My stop is Brookland/CUA, three stops further along. With the train nearly empty now, I strolled along the aisle. I sometimes play a little game on the Metro, checking to see what people are reading. It’s usually either pulp junk or something obviously career-related, but every once in a while you get a surprise.

And I sure got a nice one. I noticed a man sitting near the front of the train and, glancing over his shoulder, I could see that what he was reading was obviously verse. Poetry. Poetry? On the Metro? This merited a closer look. The train was lurching, but I came closer closer and caught:

“O sweet everlasting voices be still;
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold…”

Religious verse, was my first thought. But then I caught a glance of the book’s dust jacket.

The man was reading Yeats. William Butler Yeats. On the METRO.

Tourist or local, I could have kissed him. Yeats. On the Metro. Not Dan Brown, not Danielle Steele, not How To Get Rich And Have Fun Stepping On People At The Same Time by Morally Q. Bankrupt; and not Securing Government Contracts The Virgil Poodinsky Way.

Yeats, my favorite poet of all time. I had to chat up this guy. And I did. We talked about poetry for the short way I had left to go. I recited some Yeats that I had memorized long ago. “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, and live alone in the bee-loud glade…”

I’m always underestimating people. I assume they’re going to do, say, and on those rare occasions when they do read, read something stupid. Then I meet someone in the act of communion with something wonderful, and my faith in the human race is, if not restored, at least given an I.V. I left the train with a slight bounce in my step. On the way back to my car I passed a priest, going the other direction. “Morning, father!” I said. “Morning!” He replied. I couldn’t contain myself. I added, “I just saw a guy reading Yeats on the Metro! I think I’ll go home now and die happy!”

The priest might have thought I was crazy. Professor Harold Bloom, the nation’s premier literary critic, might also think so come this Thursday when he gets a note in the mail from me saying basically the same thing I said to the priest.

Yeats! On the Metro! There’s hope for humanity.

Hurray for tourists!