Last weekend we were in DC to visit our granddaughter and her parents. Something special still stirs in me when I first see the Capitol and the city’s skyline.

I thought about the first time I drove from New York to the nation’s capital.

I was joining a group a students for a solidarity march. I was supposed to be on the bus but it was overbooked and I, with a few other students, was put in a car that one of the other children’s mothers was driving.

She was an awful driver. I had very recently gotten my driver’s license and I knew enough to know that she couldn’t drive.

My suspicions were confirmed when a state trooper pulled her over for driving too slowly on the New Jersey turnpike. After a brief discussion, the officer asked whether any of the passengers could drive.

And so it was that I drove to DC for the first time.