Those of us who love to read are truly blessed. My mother was a reader, as was Sally’s mother.
Our two girls are readers, and so far our grandchildren seem to be “trending” in that direction. For their sake we hope reading will also become a forever part of their lives.
Depending upon one’s perspective there are three kinds of people: those who know, those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know.
Those who are not readers would seem to fit the third category. A wise person will not engage the “third category” in any conversation of a substantive nature, especially where there may be differences of opinion. Let’s just leave that line of reasoning right there.
My fabulous First Wife even writes a summary of each book she reads. She has filled many a notebook in this way. Me? I have a hard time telling you the name of a book I’ve just finished after I have begun another.
And speaking of such, I am now reading “The Last Lion — Winston Spencer Churchill — Defender of the Realm, 1940-65.” (1,053 pages)
This is the third and last of the trilogy chronicling the life and times of the “Great Man.” I have read the previous two. (By the time this column appears in the Daily News, I suspect I will be on to another book.)
Now. For a little concatenation of this Churchill book and our Little Washington.
First, please let me lift just a bit, verbatim, from the book:
“Randolph, not yet thirty, displayed neither his sister’s reticence nor her sly humor. He was, recalled Colville, ‘a most unattractive combination of the bombastic, the cantankerous and the unwise; and yet at times can be pleasant. He has none of Winston’s reasonableness.’ He drank heavily, Colville noted, and was not a drinker of good cheer. … Colville found him to be one of the most ‘objectionable people he’d ever met: ‘Noisy, self-asserting, whining and frankly unpleasant’ … and ‘at dinner anything but kind to Winston, who adores him.’”
Now for the “linkage.”
After an alcohol-fueled tirade and furniture-breaking episode at the Patrician Inn (which was located where a parking lot is now, next to the building formerly occupied by Renn-Taff office supplies) Randolph wore his welcome out.
Mr. and Mrs. Pickles were the proprietors of the charming forerunner of today’s bed-andbreakfast establishments, but Mrs. Pickles also served dinner, (supper it was then) open to the public.
The story goes that Mr. Pickles threw Randolph out and chased him down the street with a shotgun. The veracity of the “chase” I cannot verify.
So. For you history buffs out there in reader-land, you can tell folks from other parts that the “Great Man’s” son spent a night right here in the first town named for Gen. George Washington.
Well, at least part of the night.