Believe me, Tom. The family has a couple of houses there, up in the mountains.

This is a place where the people of Blue America come to summer, and have done since the Roosevelts' day. That would be Teddy, not Franklin.

The Federal Government used to decamp to Franklin County between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, along with many financiers from the Baltimore/DC nexus. Eisenhower's farm is there on purpose. Camp David is just across the Maryland border. Anwar Sadat was given a driving tour of the region when he was meeting with Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter; it helped him understand what America is about. One of its communities, Buena Vista, was named by a Spanish princess who was hanging out there and admired the view. Just as a bit of trivia, the birthplace of Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, is usually given as Baltimore, but it wasn't. She was born in Blue Ridge Summit, a little community that straddles the Mason-Dixon Line, where her wealthy family was spending the summer. Franklin County. It is home to numerous retired Federal employees, including top military brass, as well as psychiatrists, lawyers and bankers to the powerful.

Sure, there are classic rednecks, but to quote a statement made by a native of the area (and the father of my children) when we were part of the fight against fundamentalism in the public schools here, "I'm their worst nightmare: I'm a redneck with an education."

Franklin County is just as far from the unsophisticated Red America as it is from the effete Blue America. Come to think about it, I wonder how effete a citizen of the Bronx is...

Thank you for an interesting, entertaining bit of fiction! It was fun to read!

Regards--
Mary Anne