Jeremy returned home, but as elated as we were to see each other (and never being more than three feet from a working bar), we both agreed that we were agitated by forces beyond our control. We decided to make the best of it, though, and it was a steamy day so we retired to the comfort of the inside bar, or reception room as we call it. (Neither of us were willing to mingle with the sweaty, near naked bodies at Ditmar's bar.)

All went well for a while, given our state of minds. Mark was still showing off his working limbs and Cosette dazzled all with her upbeat, vivacious way. People drifted in and out of our receiving line, and I was describing with great fanfare yet another strange dream where Queen Elizabeth (II) came to dinner and how flustered I was with which friends were best seated near her; (I kept the riff-raff by me). Suddenly, Jeremy whispered something about a rather pleasant guy named Dale who was visiting from San Francisco and who had been enjoying our conversations.

"What was that?" I asked. "Dale is a Republican," he said. "A REPUBLICAN?" I shouted, and the room came to a halt. We have them now and then, the ones who actually dare announce the fact, but tolerance has been ebbing of late, and we tend to chase them off like the fools they are. Jeremy wanted to bayonet him right then and there, but I said, "No blood must be spilled on the terrazzo floors of The Palace", and I told him he was safe and welcome. Dale said something about having to defend himself all the time and I replied, "You must have a harder time defending Bush. He has become the worst president we've ever had." That's when it happened.

Dale said, "Oh, no; Bush isn't the worst. Ummm, Hoover was." "No," I condescendingly replied, "Hoover was a decent, if conservative man, who did much to bring aid and reconstruction to Europe after The War and found himself at the wrong place in the wrong time." Dale hesitated and said, "No, I meant the other one. Grant. He was a drunk."

With that, poor Dale found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. "HOW, just HOW can you confuse Hoover and Grant?" I asked incredulously. "And, my best friends are all drunks (shooting a loving nod to Jeremy), and secondly, I'd rather have a drunk for president than an idiot and a liar who has let his friends plunder the treasury!" Other voices jumped in, Dale shrank, and I ended my participation by saying that he could still enjoy his afternoon there, but would be treated with benign neglect by our group. We were sorry for him, but we have our limits.

Just how do you confuse Hoover and Grant?