Did I ever tell you that I once met the Princess Anastasia (as she claimed to be)? Well, I did. It was on Yorktown Day, October 19 of either 1980 or 1982, and I thought of it just now because Yorktown Day has come around once again. I hope everyone sent their Yorktown Day greeting cards early this year and you will all commemorate the occasion with proper dignified festivities.
Anyway, it was Yorktown Day and my assignment as a park ranger was to keep the small parking lot across the street from the Victory Monument clear during the wreath laying ceremony. The governor of Virginia would do the honors.
Shortly before the governor was to arrive, however, an old rattletrap stationwagon pulled in to the parking lot before I could stop it. I went over to the car to tell the driver he's have to move, but an elderly gent climbed out as I approached and introduced himself as a Dr. Manahan of the University of Virginia and said he had Princess Anastasia in the car with him. As I tried to explain that I didn't care who he was he would still have to remove his car I heard what I can only describe as a kind of barking from the passenger seat. Dr. Manahan and I went to the passenger side of the car, I because I was concerned that someone was being abused, but Manahan explained that the Princess had been stricken by a stroke and no longer could speak.
Well, of course I felt a great deal of sympathy for both of them, ewspecially as I looked at the squalor of the car they had, but still had to insist that they move, which they reluctantly did.
And that's how I not only met royalty, but actually gave it the boot. (Almost everyone now agrees that the woman was in truth named Anna Andersen, and her claims to the throne of Russia were a mad delusion.)
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