Margaret & Riggo

I’ve been a Redskins fan my whole life but the truth of the matter is I had no choice, I was born and raised to be this way. Most of it comes from my grandmother, the great Margaret Pearson or Nanny as I affectionately called her. Nanny had a bar in Herndon back in the day and lots of former Redskins utilized Margaret’s Inn as their watering hole. One of the players that frequented Margaret’s Inn was John Riggins. Riggo is/was my favorite player of all-time and I always enjoyed listening to Nanny tell Riggo stories. Riggo actually came to visit my grandmother in the last few days before she retired…and in classic Riggo fashion asked for a 6-pack to go.

It was sometime in the later years of my Nanny’s life that I was sitting with her playing cards and we were drinking beers…yep that’s the way we rolled. Nanny looked over at the telephone hanging on the wall and said “I bet you one G-damn thing, if I had John Riggins number he’d meet us out for a night on the town any old time.” Despite everything I’d known about my grandmother’s relationship with Riggo, I kind of blew that off. However, I’m pretty certain now that she was right. You see, there was no Twitter or facebook back in those days…hell, cellphones weren’t even common. So, it came as a suprise to me that nearly 30 years later, Riggo sent me this tweet (this is from Aug of 2009):

That’s exactly right, if you’ve ever set foot in the Ice House in Herndon, VA…then you’ve been to Margaret’s Inn. A place where Hall of Famers like Charley Taylor and John Riggins would drink beers and shoot the shit. I was much to young to have remembered her place, let alone have a beer there. On the day of Nanny’s funeral my wife and I snuck down to the Ice House (which was just a block away from the funeral home) to grab a beer. Unfortunately, it was closed…I still have yet to tilt one back in Nanny’s old establishment, it’s on my bucket list. Maybe Riggo will meet me there because the more things change, the more they stay the same. On the very night Riggo sent me the above tweet I asked him what he was drinking, his response below:

Cheers and Hail