... Perhaps in recognition of the natural beauty surrounding it, someone had set up a picnic table and benches along the road. Sitting there, one could see that they were at a place that was once of some importance -- for beyond the small stone bridge that led into it, an old bank building (now a private resi-dence) stood, its imposing granite columns and grand cupola rising incongruously within the road-side’s woods. Further indicating there'd once been a village here, a ramshackle building rose opposite the bank but far enough beyond the timberline as to nearly be concealed by it.

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Within this setting, a clowder of cats appeared. They ambled back down the road past me and Soren, sometimes pausing to look back as if beckon-ing us to follow. Things had changed in the time it had taken for us to each pound down a couple of Guinnesses. For one, the moon had risen against a sky still aglow with crepuscular light; and for ano-ther, a pair of elderly women had taken up what must’ve been their nightly post alongside the bridge.

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The cats led us directly to the senior of these – a frail but scrappy Ma Kettle type, who, as it turned out, owned the old wood building, which had been hotel dating to 1850. The woman – who introduced her-self as Dotty – further introduced us to her compan-ion and each of her assembled felines. She then pointed out a handmade sign she’d posted beside the bridge claiming that, built in 1809, it was the oldest in Maryland. This prompted me to ask about the bank, the granite version of which, she told me, had replaced a 19th-century wood structure – also a bank -- that burned in 1912.

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By this time Dotty, Soren, her friend (whose name I can’t remember), her cats Cincinnatus, Bottom, Uriel, Chief-Inspector Gutiérrez, Tablescrap and Zerubbabel (I’m making these up – I don’t remem-ber their names either) and I were settling into a companionable moment. It was becoming clear that -- beyond the affection she held for her kitties, Dotty’s greatest regard was for the old wooden ho-tel, which she now occupied, and at which Abra-ham Lincoln had called during a stop made by his train to take on water (the "Ma & Pa" -- or Mary-land & Pennsylvania Railroad -- had once run through the town).

 

“When I was a girl, one here claimed to remember him,” she said, warming to an oft-told anecdote. “He described him as we known him now – tall, kindly, wanting to greet as many folks as he could.” “He had Marfan’s disease,” Dotty’s friend chimed in with a nod, after which Dotty continued: “After taking on some water himself in the hotel, Abe (oh -- so it’s “Abe” now, I thought) proceeded up that hill yonder where there was a church – you’d see the steeple if it was still there -- where he stopped and greeted every one of the soldiers treated there as it was being used as a sort of army hospital.” Now Dotty raised herself up in her lawn chair, indicating that she was coming to the reveal of her charming sketch. I thought I knew where she was headed – and I was right: “It was only then that the president walked back to and re-boarded the cars – cars that were to take him right on up to Gettysburg -- where he delivered his famous address!”

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I stood in the moonlight of a fall evening and thought: This is an anecdote about Lincoln that only a handful of people (who now included me and Soren – and now you, dear reader) knew of. It was a perfect History on the Road encounter. If only we had it on film.

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