Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 22:04:32 EDT
Subject: Terwood Road/Memory Lane
It has been a lot of fun as Elsa takes envelopes of photos to photocopy for my birthday party. We have a wonderful time when she brings home the goodies and starts cutting them out for framing.
A frame that usually holds three pictures from our 1997 trip to DisneyWorld now holds some treasured black & white snapshots - a wedding picture of Pete and myself in the center spot and two photos of the family on a walk.
The pictures of the walk brought back ancient memories. Mim looks like she was around two, which would have made Mike four and Peter around eight. The four of us are pretty bundled up, so it was probably in the fall. The five of us - including Pete - had walked up Fettersmill and down Terwood Road. As we walked toward Welsh Road, we met Randolf Childs coming in the other direction.
"It's so good to see people walking outside of Bryn Athyn!" he greeted us. "Lots of folk just never leave our little boro. Seems to me they don't know much about the larger world and want to know even less. They don't know what they are missing!"
This from one of the staunchiest pillars of the church - I was dumbstruck!
I always liked Randolf Childs, even though I was very much in awe of him.
He did not suffer fools gladly. I recall the story of a couple who made an
appointment with him. They laid out their problem and he neatly summed up the situation and gave them his advice, all within a few minutes.
The husband and wife looked at each other and quietly conferred - they valued
the advice, but had expected him to take longer to get to his conclusion. The
husband fished out two dollars and, explaining that since it didn't take Mr. Childs very long to figure out the solution, it must have been a pretty easy problem, so two dollars was about what he and his wife thought it was worth.
Mr. Childs, from what I was told, drew himself up and said, "All I have to sell is my mind. What I know is worth a great deal more than $2.00." And handed back the money.
Mim was so taken with Randolf Childs as a little girl - he was tall and distinquished looking and a kind man - that she named one of her dolls "Randolf" in his honor.
To return to my opening - every day, I enjoy getting ready for this party more & more. If the event is half as much fun as the preparations, it is going to be beyond words.
Love to all - the soon-to-be Birthday Girl
reposted in sweet memory of its author, KATHARINE REYNOLDS LOCKHART, by her scribe/daughter, Elsa Lockhart Murphy aka Deev, in celebration of the 05/14 centenary of the soon-to-be Birthday Girl's centenary
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