enlarge Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Baltimore residents Vanya Jones and Patrick Sears listen from the National Mall to President Obama’s speech Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — I was a pretty miserable guy on inauguration morning.

By 9 a.m. I had been up and working for almost four hours, most of it in weather hovering around the freezing point. This was after getting about four hours' sleep, thanks to traffic hassles and working until the wee hours of the morning.

Luckily, I had survived multiple security checkpoints and was where I needed to be for the next four hours – just a few rows back from the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where Barack Obama would become president by midday.

It was literally cold comfort.

There had been something that kept ringing in my ear, something other than the relentless biting cold. For more than a week, I had the chance to interview Mainers who were making the trip to Washington for the inauguration. Some had the best access that money or favors could buy. Others simply had a car, friends willing to pay for gas and "hope."

But they had one thing in common. When I asked why they wanted to make the trip, the answer was always the same: "Just to be there."

I'd make a note of it, but it nagged at me: Castaway platitude or heartfelt sincerity?

And there, on the front lawn of the Capitol, as I clapped my hands to a silent beat and jumped in place to try and generate some heat, it finally hit me: History has bystanders. More importantly, history needs bystanders.

It's one thing to be witness to something historic, but for the million-plus people on the National Mall on Tuesday, most far out of sight and on the edge of being able to hear the new president, what they saw were the faces around them -- and if they were lucky, a Jumbotron.

Like a bystander, they were just "there."

For many, the president might always be a far-off face, but for one day, with thousands of people they'll never know, they'll have a share of new American history.

They'll have that memory, of their feet touching the ground, their hands clasping someone close, and the knowledge that off in what seemed like an immeasurable – yet close – distance, history was being made.

For many of those same people I talked to, it didn't matter that the security lines would be long and traffic rerouted into endless snarls. It didn't matter that the trip would be long or the cold intense.

Obama had captivated and inspired something in them. His new American tale, his promise of a bold direction for the country and his barrier-shattering place among our presidents led them to Washington.

It's why, in spite of the weather, some wore their finest attire, or why parents walked their children along the better part of the Capitol grounds, encouraging them at every step. It's why elderly people, some with walkers and others in wheelchairs, took a chance on being out in temperatures that would make their doctors furious.

And here I was, with what felt like an unlikely ticket to the swearing-in of America's first African-American president, ornery and gruff to my surroundings.

Suddenly, I knew what it was like to "just be there."

Now I know that years from now, when I tell my kids (who'll already be tired of it), grandkids (who might not completely understand it) or the random unsuspecting bystander (who should know better than to talk up an old journalist) that I was there, I can describe the sea of people that went deep past the Washington Monument.

I can tell them about the people shedding tears under a brilliant blue sky.

I can make a funny story out of my frustrating attempts to file updates to the Press Herald's Web site.

I can brag about the brief moment I saw Samuel L. Jackson, or maybe lie about seeing Oprah.

And I'll always have the cold. (Or at least remember the vicious cold I got after being outside for almost nine hours straight.)

But most of all, I'll be able to say I had pretty close to a front-row seat to a new chapter in America's...