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Washington,
D.C.
Sat., Dec. 12, 1925
During
the eight days we stayed in Egypt it rained, snowed, froze
or blew on every one of them. Sunday, the day it froze,
the sun came out, so to celebrate, we took a long walk and
had dinner in a small country inn near Ballietsville. The
dinner hour being past when we arrived, the proprietor gave
us what was left, but the roast duck, fresh killed pork,
celery, pickles, bread, butter and coffee tasted darn good
to us. The owner put nickel after nickel in one of those
awful electric pianos that sound like a whole brass band
off key. Between firings, a little girl played melancholy
records on a raucous phonograph, so altogether we felt very
festive.
When leaving Egypt on Thursday we were bundled warm, and
the new windshield, the mattress and a hot water bottle
made riding in the sidecar very comfortable. Shifting seats
often, the driver had little chance to get really cold.
As it takes so long to pack and unpack in the cold we spent
the night in a small hotel near Lancaster, where my Dad
had lived as a boy. I wish I had known earlier that we were
passing this way, for I would have loved to visit some of
his old haunts. Because of fog we could see little of the
country, but the Susquehana River was splendid, twice as
wide as I had expected. Crossing it on a toll bridge I wondered
where my Dad's old swimming hole had been.
Although the old machine worked irregularly, we managed
to reach Washington in pretty good time. Bill immediately
called a business friend, H.E.C. Rainey, who directed us
to a hotel where we revelled in hot baths and clean clothes,
before dining with him at the University Club. It seemed
queer to be so grand after having been so otherwise. Next
day we moved into a cheaper room--large, clean but not elegant,
with a bathroom far from modern. Bill took the motorcycle
to the Harley agency, not only to find out what ails her,
but to save garage rent.
Today Rainey showed us embassy and residential sections
of town. Bill is crazy about Washington and, having been
overseas during the war, says the European cities, being
older, are more picturesque, but for sheer beauty, they
can't beat this town. We spent an interesting and instructive
evening with the Bells, my mother and dad's best man and
his wife.
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