President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes on the porch of Spiegel Grove, the Hayes family home in Fremont, Ohio.

It should also be noted that the character Cathy Timberlake, played by Doris Day (b. 1924) opposite Cary Grant (1904-1986) in "That Touch of Mink" (1962) is a naive country girl from Upper Sandusky, Ohio.  Fremont was onced named "Lower Sandusky," ostensibly to distinguish it from the town further up the Sandusky River, on Lake Erie, although visitors and mail were often misdirected.  In the feverish excitement of John C. Fremont's campaign as the first Republican Party candidate for President the town changed its name, thus easing confusion on the part of the fast-growing stagecoach travel industry, not to mention the post office.

"Even if you did throw your sister under the bus," my friend Bianca began.

"To the wolves," I corrected her.  "I said I threw her to the wolves.  Or not that I really did, although I worry sometimes --"

"To the wolves then," Bianca continued.  "Even better.  It just so happens I was raised by wolves and believe me, your sister would have been fine.  Wolves are very accepting."

Meanwhile my sister called to report additional items she had remembered about living in Fremont.   "There was that German lady who attached herself to me," she recounted, "I think her husband worked for Dad and she was always so sad, but I was too young at the time to understand.  Perhaps she lost family in the Holocaust."

I suspected she meant the Nazi cleaning lady who drank a little, but I did not correct her.

"We were just normal crazy kids," she observed.  "Relatively speaking."

I was grateful to hear her characterize our (my) misspent youth in that fashion, and said so.  I was so happy to know she bore her older brother no grudges, that she did not blame me for old wounds, scars --

"I only bit you once," she added.

"You BIT ME?"  This was news.  Suddenly my whole perspective on the matter shifted.

"I was very angry," she explained.

"I see," I said.  I tried to remember the circumstances; curiously, I could not.  How could you forget such a thing?  Apparently quite easily.

"I have to admit," she added, "it was oddly satisfying."

Now as you know, here I had been lamenting my failure to come to her rescue and defend her honor against hypothetical hordes of brutish unwashed farm boys, their sticky hands pawing roughly at her person, threatening heaven only knows what kind of indignity and disgrace, imagining all sorts of vile degradation -- and this was my thanks?  Or rather, yes, you're right, not thanks exactly, since I had failed to do anything in fact, and nothing of the sort had actually transpired but still... I reconsidered the situation.

"You bit me."

"Yes."

"Okay.  Then we're even."