This story starts so innocently on a city bus travelling down Wisconsin Ave in Washington D.C. I was returning to Georgetown coming from my travel agent Maggie Vater’s office with a brand new Let’s Go Europe and a map of Europe. Looking at the sectio of map with England and Ireland, Scotland was there also,, the girl in the seat in front of me asked if I was going to England in a quit little English accent. I told her my girlfriend and I were headed to Europe for three months starting in Ireland , Scotland, And England, then off to the continent. She introduced herself, Mary Coswell and told me told me she was from some little town near Bath and her family owned a country pub named the Red Lion and if we went to Bath, as most tourist do because stone hedge is close by, and would we be kind enough to look in on her folks? On this map of Europe, England is about as big as two silver dollars and she made a circle the size of a quarter wrote the name of the pub, her parents name, and her name with a small note in the margin. Never to be seen again.

Fast forward two months and we were at a car rental place in London renting a small small small car for our day trip to Stone hedge, Bath, and the Red Lion Pub. Stone hedge first and then on to Bath stopping in each little town and village looking for the Red Lion Pub. One odd thing we noticed was that in almost every other town or village ther was a Red Lion Pub. Oh, we drove all over the place, starting out on a roadway that had only one number, then onto the two numbered roads, then the three numbered roads and finally the almost two track four numbered roads.

Half in the bag from visiting all of the Red Lion Pub, losing count at 7 or 8 we limped into a little town about a quarter the size of Oscoda, and lo and behold, we came upon another THE RED LION PUB. Map in hand we entered the pub and asked if the Coswell’s owned the pub and the barmaid said yes and that she was a Coswell. We had arrived and it was only four-thirty in the afternoon, plenty of time to get acquainted with the Coswell’s Once she saw the note on our map she ran into the back room and out came her mother and father, my acquaintance’s parents How do you do’s all around and then onto some drinking and story telling of how I met their daughter and how many Red Lion Pubs there seemed to be near there.

We were made at home,asked to dinner, and a nice sort of merriment, nay revelry seemed to be happening around us as several more Coswells kept coming in. Soon it was a family party and my how time flies when you’re having fun. As the time flew we got a might tipsy and soon it was too late to drive back to London with our daily rented rental car suppose to be returned by 8 o’clock . And, we were too drunk to drive anywhere so a guest room was set up for us and Mr. Coswell called the rental company and explained that we were friends of his daughter and wasn’t letting us drive back that night and made sure we wouldn’t be charged for an extra days rental

The rest of the night was a drunken blur except finding out where the loo was before going to bed.

Hearing noises downstairs around 7:30 we rose and went to find the source of this noise. Mrs. Coswell was making an old fashioned English breakfast to send us on our way. We stayed till about 10, thanked them all profusely, and told them to tell their daughter Mary that I had made good on my promise. We didn’t hurry back to London, taking in all of the beautiful country side and reveling in our great experience.

P.S. No extra charge for the car and we never heard from the Coswell’s again