Followup on Enos

"Life of Enos," which appeared in this blog some time ago, was repeated as a weekly serial in the Observer-Reporter, concluding Aug. 10. It reached a much wider local audience than did the blog, and I received a good deal of oral comment on it from readers, despite the fact that the style and length of chapters were much more suitable for the Internet than the newspaper.

Charlie Begley, a contractor and member of the Washington Rotary Club, was surprised to read about Enos Christman, the ancestor of a family here in town for which he had done much work. So, on Tuesday he invited Enos' great-great granddaughter, Jackie Christman Anderson, to the weekly Rotary luncheon to meet me.

Jackie's uncle, Ron Christman, was a photographer for this newspaper until he was killed in a helicopter crash in 1973 while taking aerial photographs for our annual Progress Edition. She said that her sister lives two doors down from the home on East Prospect Avenue where Enos lived the last three decades of his life.

Jackie related one story that I'll pass along. In his home on Prospect, there was a little shelf at the foot of the stairs on which always sat a whiskey bottle and a shot glass. In the later years of his life, Enos was said to take a shot every time he ascended the stairs, and another every time he came back down.

A newspaper man, of the old school.