It is early， too early， when we wake up on January 20， 1977， in
Blair House the morning Jhnmy is to be sworn in as the thirty-
ninth President of the United States. It s dark outside and bone-
chilling cold， so cold that the outdoor concert on the Mall last
night had to be canceled for fear the mouthpieces of the instruments
would stick to the musicians mouths. In Union Station， the doors
on a train filled with people coming to the inauguration froze shut
and couldn t be thawed open for several hours.
Now， at 5:30 A.M.， Jimmy and I can see the White House
dimly across the street， a few lights twinkling in the morning
dawn. Already two hundred soldiers are at work along Pennsyl-
vania Avenue， using jackhammers to break up the ice on the
sidewalks in preparation for the inaugural parade.
I look at Jimmy， the President-elect， the man for whom the
Kennedy Center was fdled just last night with some of America s
greatest artists performing for him， the one person who would
command all the world s attention today. He is still the same
person who spent yesterday morning with me， mopping up the
garage in Plains after the hot water pipes burst from the cold， the
same son who had called Miss Lillian later to admit the motorcade
had forgotten to pick her up on the way to the airport. \"Stay right
there，\" he told her. \"We ll send someone for you.\"
This morning we are all safely in Washington somewhere， even
Misty Malarky Ying Yang， Amy s cat， who had crawled all over
the plane on the flight from Plains.
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