An Encounter With Keith

THE GRESHAM PALACE FOUR SEASONS, Budapest

Keith  (photo by Musictimes)

       Arriving at the Gresham Palace from Budapest Airport, we saw considerable crowds camped on the hotel grounds.  We knew they weren’t waiting for us, so we figured someone important must be coming or going.

The Gresham's special grill doors

 Much later, en route for the fifth floor swimming pool, we noticed large gilded double doors flanked by two men standing guard.  Just as we turned the corner, the doors opened.  

I could glimpse what was undoubtedly the royal suite and out marched single-file a procession of the most eccentric and oddly attired older gentlemen.    At least one of them seemed to be wearing  a clown’s wig, and the four men made me immediately think of the Marx Brothers. 

The Gresham Palace Budapest 2007

As we approached, Brenda, who was holding my hand, gave a tug, and I saw she had run nose-to-nose into Keith Richards.  It was the Rolling Stones, who were nearing the end of yet another triumphant world tour.  

  “Well, hello,” said Brenda in her rather confident, British matter-of-fact manner.  “How very nice to see you.”  I hadn't yet twigged on, and momentarily thought she had run into an old friend.

Keith Richards probably thought the same thing.  He appeared genuinely taken aback, as though he should know this rather elegant older woman --indeed just about his own age-- who showed no signs of being a tongue-tied groupie.

  “Well, hallo to you,” he said.  “How ARE  you?  How are you DOING?”  His darkly died hair struck out in all directions from under the ubiquitous bandana.

                                                                       

“Oh, never better,” said Brenda.  “So good to see you.”

“Good to see you again,” said Keith, clearly straining to remember the identity of this Anglo-Saxon couple in their swimming robes on the fifth floor of the Budapest Gresham Palace. 

 Just as we began to move away, he called after us, “and …. really, we MUST quit meeting like this!”  

That's Brenda in the Gresham Palace lobby

The Gresham Palace seen at twilight from the Chain Bridge

SIDEBAR:  A look at Budapest's special architecture  

The Danube, Budapest

On my first visit in the 1970's, the building facades were so dirty and gray that the specialness of the city's skyline was almost completely camouflaged. Today the transformation is spectacular.

On my most recent return in 2008, I was surprised to see how beautifully and colorfully the city had been restored since the disappearance of the so-called "iron curtain".  

 

 

I photographed buildings that appealed to our aesthetic senses, but it never occurred to me to find out the names or histories of what I was photographing.  So here are a few anonymous but often colorful and original buildings, frequently representing the turn-of-the-century art-nouveau era when Budapest was very much the fashionable place to be and to be seen.      

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

  [Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Budapest was also featured in:  blog No. 20, "Decaffeinated coffee ... in Hungarian?" Jan. 11, 2013 (to access, click on above title).

Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run

THE ABERDEEN HOTEL,  Aberdeen, North Carolina

(originally appeared March 1, 2013) 

Aberdeen street scene circa 1906 (hotel on right)

 
The hotel seed may have been planted somewhere in my genes.  Although none of my family ever voiced any particular interest in hotel life, my father and his sisters more or less grew up in one.  

My grandfather worked for the railway.  He was a conductor, and in those days in the early years of the last century, a conductor's job description included various administrative and office duties.  His sister and her husband owned the Aberdeen Hotel, and as Aberdeen had well under 800 souls at the time, one assumes the hotel facilities were, like most small town hostelries, on the modest side.

The white-frame hotel seen in the distance around 1900

Aberdeen is located approximately in the center of North Carolina in what is known, for obvious reasons, as the Sandhills.  Although on U.S. Highway 1 and serviced by the major North-South railway line, it was never more than a sleepy southern community.  Still, in its earliest years it boasted a plentiful and profitable supply of lumber, and was relatively rich in cotton and tobacco.

(I sometimes enjoy recounting to Parisian friends my cotton-picking days, but am no longer very sure just how long I survived in this arduous adolescent endeavor.  I don't think I lasted as much as a week. )

Uncle Ralph, Aberdeen hotel keeper

 When Great Uncle Ralph died in the flu epidemic of 1918, Aunt Zadie made an impassioned call to her brother, Ernest, who was my grandfather.  In short, she beseeched him to take a leave of absence from the railroad and move his family to Aberdeen to help her manage the hotel.  Which he did.

So my father settled in for several years with his four older sisters, living in an annex to the three-story hotel.   

He rarely spoke of those years, but once towards the end of his life he reminisced with great nostalgia about racing up and down the hotel corridors with his cousin little-Ralph  (who much later became big Ralph after fathering another little Ralph; just as his wife was big Polly after she became the mother of little Polly).  I wasn’t certain, but I think there were tears in Daddy's eyes, as though this were a most cherished memory.

 My father, Norfleet (left), with cousin Ralph (circa 1920).  
The hotel is seen to their right.    Ralph, the only member  
of the family actually born in the hotel, was later thought
to bear a remarkable resemblance to Clark Gable!

  



Norf with Buster Brown haircut 1923

  Daddy talked affectionately about walking with his dad in front of the hotel during the 1927 World Series.  It looked much like those saloon-style structures in the old Saturday westerns.  From the balcony, someone would fill in a chart on a large board as the baseball results came in by telegraph, and townspeople would wait for the scores below.



Granddaddy in later years

 As my grandfather used Morse code in his job on the railroad, he could “hear” the results at the same time as the telegraph operator.  To my father’s great pride, his dad announced to him and to nearby spectators, “Babe Ruth just hit his 60^th ... ”  well before the telegraph operator had time to transcribe the information. 

Ruth, called the Home Run King, was the most famous and highest paid baseball player of his generation.  He broke his own record for home runs in one season in the eighth inning of that historic final game of the 1927 season.

 

Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium 1924 (Google photo)

The Aberdeen Hotel suffered a serious fire in 1941.  It was replaced by a brick structure, reopened as the Sandhill Hotel, then in 1942 --the year I was born-- it burned to the ground.  It was never rebuilt.  

The Aberdeen Hotel, the early years  --The hotel's clientele was principally comprised of commercial travelers, including a myriad of tobacco-related businessmen.  Those pod-like things leaning against the ground floor railings are undoubtedly bunches of tobacco leaves, awaiting shipment to the auction markets.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr