Bonnie Nadzam, an author from Cleveland, Ohio, recounts the curious tale of how her parents fell in love, started a family, raised her, bought a washer and dryer, saw it break and had it fixed by none other than General Ulysses S. Grant. The same name that stuck to a portrait that hung in their home, that they had bought in 1974, on their honeymoon.

You need to read the whole thing to get the punch, but here’s a little taste, courtesy of The Paris Review:

The painting hung above our fireplace in northeast Ohio when I was a girl. It matters only peripherally that Grant was an actual man who lived and died in the nineteenth century; who was the eighteenth president of the United States; and who, as commanding general of the United States Army, led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War. What matters is how single-minded I found his gaze, his eyes staring down at me—to say nothing of the distinguished crinkle of the eyebrows above them, those bright buttons on his jacket, that thick beard and head of hair, sculpted like cake frosting.

It’s awesome. And, in a way, a silly ode to one of the most important military figures in American history.

Who — side note! — was a damn good writer himself.