Express Metro trains, I found on a May visit, shoot down to D.C. from Baltimore on the hour until way in the night. Passengers hardly unfold their newspapers before the train pulls into Washington Union Station. Cars are clean, the conductors polite and in control of the passengers of the many creed and classes.

Once outside the Washington station, a starter loads long lines of cabs. Fares are based on zones and the driver's honesty. Stern signs on the dividing window between the front and rear seats warn that the city exacts a $50 fine for passengers riding without the seat belts buckled. The law also keeps riders from bouncing on the broken seat cushion springs, bucking across the potholes of the capital's streets.

The luck of the draw in Washington cabs falls five to one against hiring an English-speaking driver in the daytime; twice those odds of hailing one after dark, when the shadows down every alley turn the trash cans the size of three muggers. One night going to a concert, a cabby in a turban and dressed in silk costume like Sinibad the Pirate, was so alarming that I shook so much after the ride, the screws holding my seat at the auditorium came loose. Good thing the music echoed the beat of castanets, or the usher would have thrown me out for making such a rattling racket.

But a zoning map wasn't necessary to check the fares as I always go to the National Gallery by taxi and ride the subway to the Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian museums. Our art treasures are the most positive part of being in the capital. We own thousands of pieces of precious objects. One hallway in our gallery contains more paintings than the entire collection of a country like say, Yugoslavia. Also, seeing once again the white domes and marble pillars of stately buildings, crowned by the "Stars and Stripes" fluttering on gold-capped poles makes me choke up the way singing the "Star Spangled Banner" did in the fifth grade.

I always become emotional visiting the capital. However, on this visit, an article in the Washington Post intensified my feelings. On the way down from Baltimore, I read Congress had appropriated 11 million dollars to help the sheep and goat herders. In a bill giving tobacco farmers three billion dollars, the paper said we were to receive 20 cents a pound on wool, 40 cents a pound on mohair and a nickel a pound, or three bucks a head, on 60-pound feeder lambs and five bucks a head on fats.

It made me ashamed of all the ugly things I had said about the Congress not knowing or caring what happens to the domestic sheep and goat industry. I'd been so selfish, I'd overlooked the tobacco farmers' troubles. The very morning the newspaper hit the stands, homeless guys in front of the Baltimore station were picking snipes off the sidewalks, enjoying free smokes without a dime going back to the farmers' pockets.

The important thing, however, was that somewhere in the Texas delegation, we had an old friend who understood we'd jump at any size bait. Whoever he was, he knew we were so dispirited that such paltry sums were not going to be intimidating. As Knute Rockefeller, or maybe it was John D. Rockne said, "It's not how you play the game, it's how much dignity you show limping off the field after you have lost the game."

The trains leaving D.C. become crowded early in the afternoon. The rush hour seems to be earlier where the majority is government employees. The five or six-hour days in the federal offices wear those folks down until a feeling of exhaustion overrides the aura of the car. Nearly all the passengers carry heavy briefcases home. That may be the reason so much stuff is missing when there's an investigation. I know I am always taking papers from the office to the ranch and misplacing them.

Something about living in Washington makes people lousy housekeepers and flat destroys memories. High moguls are forever losing records and misplacing files just as a congressional investigation hits full force. Seems the rap of a gavel in a federal judge's hand is the best memory stimulant; however, on her own, Mrs. Clinton found one missing file on a coffee table in her bedroom. She was probably straightening up after the maids changed shifts and there the file was, between a copy of Vogue and Good Housekeeping magazines.

Back in Baltimore, a second edition of The Post confirmed the appropriation passed the House. We might get a break after all. With that much dough in the tobacco farmers' pockets, they may get around to buying a new wool suit next winter, a mohair rug for the wife's Christmas, and a big platter of lamb chops to celebrate the windfall of the new century.

June 29, 2000