For our third anniversary my wife and I spent a few days in a northern California B&B. It was run by what I thought of at the time as an “older couple”, though they were probably not much older than we are now.

Carol was the personable one who greeted us on arrival and said hello when we were coming and going. George was quieter, less in evidence. He brought the breakfast tray to our cottage each morning, but left it at the door. The few times we spoke with him we noticed his thick accent; Carol told us that he was from Hungary, having been one of those who made it out in ‘56.

We only had one real conversation with George. It was after we’d been there a few days, when he’d relaxed enough to open up a bit. I don’t remember how we got on the topic, but we ended up talking about politicians, and political protest (this was during Reagan’s second term, and the local community was outraged over plans for offshore oil drilling).

“Eh,” he said. “The thing with politicians is, every now and then you have to take a few of the worst of them and hang them from a tree.” He nodded at us, grinning. “Nothing else works. After that, whenever they start getting too full of themselves, all you have to do is point at the tree.”

I’ve thought about that conversation over the years. Lately I’ve been thinking about it more.