Tipping their caps to history
Throng of eager onlookers braves cold in Baltimore to greet whistle-stop tour
By Sara Jerome
BALTIMORE — A retired geologist from Maryland discovered his hat-twin in a petite, blond budget director from New York on Saturday evening near the Baltimore train station. They waited in matching, fur-lined, earflap hats and 20-degree weather for a chance to glimpse President-elect Barack Obama traveling by rail from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., the last leg of his inaugural whistle-stop tour.
“We’ve got the warmest ears here,” said the budget director, Amber Steinhilber, pointing at her Yukon-ready headgear and resting her elbow on a rusty mailbox that she considered climbing to improve her view.
The geologist, Dennis Coskren, marched in place to keep the blood flowing. In the thick of this disparate but rapidly bonding pocket of Obama supporters, he chatted a little about politics—“It’s not all going to be sweetness and light”—but mostly about having the shivers.
“I wonder when the last time it was that there was a frost in Belize City,” he said to Yolanda Hollis, a California fashion designer originally from Belize who had stood by the tracks for four hours.
Coskren posited a date near the Ice Age.
“I should’ve crafted something warmer to wear,” Hollis said.
Next to Hollis, Audrey Armstrong rubbed her hands together for warmth. A Maryland resident who works at the Department of Agriculture, she lamented the tourists who will obstruct her commutes to the capital. But she also dragged her two sons to the train viewing, insisting that no matter how numb they are, “They should be part of history.”
She had a suggestion, however: “They need to move the inauguration. May is a beautiful month.”
As it grew colder and darker, security guards with dogs arrived amid murmurs that he must be getting near. A train whizzed past—“Slow down! You’ve got to be kidding me, Barack!” False alarm—not his train. More chatter and waiting and shivering.
But for at least a minute, the gray-bearded Coskren seemed distracted from the cold. He pointed out Venus to a 10-year-old girl standing beside him.
“It’s been rising and rising these last few weeks,” he said, kneeling to her eye-level and pointing to the sky. He paused for a moment, as though contemplating the suitability of some kind of cosmic metaphor to sum up this occasion, then exhaled deeply. The sight of his breath clouding the frigid air snapped him back to Earth.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “It’s 8,000 degrees on there.”
