July 4th, 1976 was an

I was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base at the time (which is where they "park" Air Force One) just outside of Washington D.C. Both my wife and I had the day off and we wanted to watch the fireworks show being held in the capital that night.

All of the radio and TV stations were telling everyone to leave their cars at home and ride the busses, as they were expecting over a million people in the mall and promised to have everyone out of the mall within 2 hours after the show was over.

Something told me they were a little off in their calculations, so we drove our car and parked within 2 blocks of the mall. We walked over to the mall and within 15 minutes found the place we spent the rest of the evening, dead center in the middle of the White House lawn... (a great location...)

It was the best fireworks show I've ever seen and within half an hour of the show ending we were back home. As it turned out, it was a good thing we drove our car. Traffic was a total disaster and it took more than 12 hours before they were able to get all "TWO million" people out of the mall...