My Trip Abroad" is bound in blue leather, with a flapped closure, and measures 4-3/8 by 6-3/4 inches. Aside from one early entry in brown ink, it is written entirely in soft pencil, and as the tour progresses, the handwriting becomes crabbed and nearly illegible. The diary is a gift, inscribed "From "Muzzie to Ruth Feb. 14, 1928." Most likely Muzzie was a school chum of my aunt's, or perhaps a fellow teacher at Starrett Academy for Girls. Below the dedication is one large red heart encircled by eight more little red ones, arranged in a random but artistic pattern. Women do these things with each other. (Insipid!)

The steamship is the Andania, the line Cunard, the captain M. Doyle (and he has autographed the entry after his name), the time of departure 3:30 P.M., July 6, 1928, and below this is a space on "The Log" for the ship's position, course, and dates. Ruth has carefully filled in most of this, but I will save it for the specific days of the crossing, and while the diary begins its first page with the 6th and their departure, a few pages hence it truly begins one day earlier, with Ruth and her mother's arrival in Montreal a day earlier. So I begin there, and use my own words, or paraphrasis, keeping as close to the text of the diary as is possible, and sometimes resorting to its words directly, when they are precise and charming and superior to anything I can come up with. (Which is often.)

Deep in the diary, under a section labeled "Memoranda," Ruth notes that they left Chicago at 9:12 A.M., Central Standard Time, on Wednesday, July 4, with no snide comment that it was hers and Mother's Independence Day, as well, leaving Gramps at home to manage his "realestate." They arrived in Montreal at 8 A.M., Eastern Standard Time, on Thursday, July 5. A full day was to follow.

A man named Lee met them at the station, as arranged ahead of time, and helped settle Ruth and her mother and their baggage into the Queen's Hotel in Montreal. That day she left her mother in their room to write some letters and went with him to Victoria College, McGill University. She sat in on a most interesting class in contemporary French poetry, taught by a Mlle. Lefame [?]. Also attending were Professor and Mrs. Davidson. Afterwards, she went to a rather unusual class in French Diction. Lee told her the teacher "had it," but Ruth didn't think so. When the class ended, Lee introduced her to various students and teachers, and then he took her back to the hotel and her mother. Along the way, he showed her the St. James Episcopal Cathedral and its beautiful interior, along with two or three large department stores.

Ruth found Montreal such a medley of the old and the new, with the street signs and almost all signs in stores rendered in both French and English. English, she noted, sometimes came first.

Later in a delightful French music store, where French and English were both spoken and understood with equal facility, she bought [sheet music? to] the popular song, "Ramona," with words in both languages.

They had lunch together at the Queen's Hotel and spent the afternoon seeing more of the city, which included a trip to the Bank of Nova Scotia to purchase additional travelers' checks. She and Lee had previously bought some at the Royal Bank of Canada. Then they headed for the French Quarter which "we found to be exceedingly interesting." Montreal, she states, is the largest city of Canada, with a population of over a million and has over 600 thousand French, some of whom can't speak English.

They first visited Place d' Armes Square, a typical French "place," in the center of which is the statue of Maison neuve [stet] who founded Montreal in 1641 under the name of Ville Marie and withstood hardships from the Iroquois with his little band of followers. The city was later called Montreal after the montain, Mont Real, or Mount Royal, just outside the city christen by Cartier, when he visited it (then the Indian village of Hochelaga, in 1535, 106 years before. On Mont Royal [stet] is a cross—always visible from the city and lighted with electric lights at night placed there to commemorate the cross which was carried by Maison neuve up the mountain and placed on the summit in fulfillment of a promise that he would do so if his people were saved from a plague that was then threatening to cut down their already scanty numbers.

Facing Place d'Armes square is the Cathedral of Notre Dame which they also visited—said to be one of the finest types of Gothic Architecture in America. Its interior is huge and very awe-inspiring and beautiful, with its high vaulted ceiling and continually burning candles around the various altars. Beyond—they looked into the chapel of Scarè Coeur—smaller, of course, but also very beautiful. The church of Notre Dame has a seating capacity of 10,000 and its great bell, "Gros Boudon [?]" weighs 24,700 lbs.; it is the largest suspended bell on the continent. Sometime earlier they saw the exterior (only) of St. James Cathedral, an exact replica of the famous St. Peter's at Rome, and just one quarter its size.

They took "a peek" into Chatealude Ramezay [?], now a museum of historical relics and the home, in 1704, of the governor of Montreal. Benjamin Franklin set up a printing press there in 1775. They visited the interesting old sailors's church down near the water's edge—Bon Secours, built in 1657. Hanging models of ships suspended from the ceiling is a different feature of this church, she adds. But most interesting of all is the Bonsecours [stet] Market, a typical old-world outdoor market; dirty, smelly—like nothing else in America.

Then they took a "street car" to St. Catherine St., the main street of Montreal, [brown ink begins a new page here] and took a sight-seeing bus around the city. The bus was one of those long topless affairs, she said, "like I am told they have in California." They saw some interesting sights, went around Mount Royal [stet]—not up it— you have to use a horse-drawn carriage for that, passed St. Joseph's Shrine, and saw the best residential section of the city, Westmount. Then they went back to the hotel and scarcely had time to bathe and dress for dinner. They were Lee's guest as Victoria College, McGill University.

Of course everyone in the huge dining room was speaking French but they had a table by themselves—Lee, Mother, and Ruth. After dinner she introduced Mother to Professor and Mrs. Davidson and they all had a nice time together. There was a dance at the school. She danced with Lee the first two or three times, then they started mixing the people and Ruth "drew" tall ones, one of whom was very nice, and two who came up about to her shoulder, one of whom could not speak English.

The diary now reverts to its beginning order of several pages earlier, and to the morning of the 6th, when the ship was to depart, which Ruth probably saw as the true start of their journey.

Lee came to the hotel about eight in the morning and had breakfast with Ruth and her mother. Then they took a taxi to the Cunard pier and the two women had to stand in line for almost an hour going through the red tape necessary before boarding. Finally, she reports, that was over and they walked up the gang plank, which was a thrilling experience. Shortly after boarding they learned that the boat was to be delayed in sailing "on account of a train wreck."

They found their stateroom to be a very nice one, clean and attractive. Many steamer letters awaited them, plus gifts, boxes of candy, a basket of fruit, and a book from a Mrs. Drybread, Paris in Seven Days. Lee gave them a box of candy. He arranged for their deck chairs and "steamer rigs." They had lunch together, but Lee soon heard the "visitors ashore" call and departed. Finally, the gang plank was pulled and the ship began to move "majestically and almost imperceptibly at first out into the river." Ruth says she will never forget the thrill of that all her life. It brought tears to her eyes.

The tugs pulled the ship out into the river, the St. Lawrence, and they waved farewell to Lee until he could be seen no more, even with binoculars. The other members of the Student Travel Club posed for a picture together. Then they had lifeboat drill. Ruth was dead tired; she returned to their stateroom and went to bed. Her mother awakened her for dinner. After it was over, she wrote the amorous Captain Horace B. French, her friend Becky, and a Mr. Matthews, perhaps from the school. The letters were posted from Quebec, which they reached early the next morning and she did not stay up to see it. She regrets not doing so.

The seventh was a Saturday, a wonderful day, warm and bright, with the sea so quiet that it seemed hardly possible the ship was moving. They spent the day in deck chairs, writing letters to friends, or strolling around outside for exercise, exploring the ship, sunning, studying the water. That evening they danced on deck, but Ruth reports a scarcity of men.

The next day was Sunday and religious services were held in the ship's lounge. The purser conducted them. In the afternoon, she played deck tennis with Molly, who became a shipboard companion. That night there were more services; these were held in the third-class dining room. Ruth stayed up to nearly 2 A.M., watching the northern lights and hoping for a glimpse of icebergs. She was disappointed at seeing none. Early Monday morning they cleared the Straits of Belle Island.

On Monday there was a lecture to entertain them. It was on "Literary Landmarks" and was conducted by a Miss Riley (perhaps a tour guide who accompanied them), but Ruth had to leave because her mother got sick. They stayed out on deck for a while, but Mother got chilled and went to bed. There the stewardess brought her lunch and dinner. For that and the next two days, Ruth's log reports rough seas. In the afternoon, Ruth read to her mother. It was a cold, damp day and not so nice out on deck.

That morning her mother and Mrs. Saunders got up early to see an iceberg, but Ruth didn't have "the pep to." Later in the day she saw several, some of them lying low in the water and others standing tall. Mrs. Saunders reported one that looked like a castle, with high pillars. At the time, though, Ruth was busy taking care of her sick mother.

That night she and Molly [whose last name was Kennedy] explored the ship and stood at the stern, looking over the rail at the wake. Ruth says she hadn't known until that moment how fast the ship was moving. On their way back to their respective staterooms, they got thoroughly lost.

There is a gap in the shipboard diary for the next five days and only entries from the crabbed and crowded log. She gives their position by longitude and latitude daily and a number indicating the length of the run. It may be in miles or knots. Whatever, it averages out to about 250 units per day. The sea that started out so smooth that Ruth could hardly believe they were moving on the second day became rough, though the day remained "clear and fine." It was followed by days of moderate breeze, strong breeze, and gale, though only the two middle days of their crossing contained clouds. On the 13th, the wind turned moderate, the sea slight, the sky fine and clear again. No mention of how Mother weathered it out.

A week later, they docked in Glasgow about 2:30 in the afternoon. Soon they were riding through the beautiful Scottish landscape, where they observed long, low, whitewashed country houses and hamlets. The houses were almost identical, the architecture with pointed gables, flat fronts (no porches, of course, she notes), and myriads of chimneys like this, and her sketch indicates a raised, flat surface with four circumcised penis pointing skyward, all in a row. She says sometimes there are 25 or more chimneys together.

The countryside is beautiful, rolling, without the mar of billboards, as in America. But it is really not country, as we are used to thinking of it, as only villages and hamlets strung close. The pair are traveling by train and the coaches are "solid comfort itself," each one two long seats facing each other and upholstered in bright colored material. The arms dividing each long seat could be put up, thus making a sort of bed that one can stretch out on. The doors of entrance are on the side and there is no aisle.

They enjoyed the ride so thoroughly that it seemed very short. Arriving at Glasgow, they were conducted to the St. Enoch Hotel. The railroad that had brought them there was the L., M. and S.—the London, Midland, and Scottish. The hotel was owned by the railroad and positioned right next to the station. They immediately had lunch and went to their room.

Theirs was huge, with beautiful flowered wallpaper, a double bed and a single, a Venetian mirror hanging over the wash stand and another mirror over the dresser, and a wardrobe with a full length mirror. Three mirrors ought to be enough for two, hadn't it? Afterwards they were told that the St. Enoch was the finest hotel in Glasgow and they couldn't doubt it.

She left her mother to rest in the hotel and joined the two Misses Richardson and Mrs. Richardson, presumably their mother, to tour the famous botanical gardens. It was her first glimpse of the streets of a foreign city and she thoroughly enjoyed it from the window of a tramcar. A tramcar is a cross between a bus and a streetcar in America, she notes. Glasgow is the second [largest?] city in Scotland and a manufacturing center. Though supposedly not very beautiful as cities go, they found the gardens to be beautiful anyway.

They met a very pleasant, agreeable Scotswoman who offered to take them around the gardens and of course they gladly accepted her offer. She took them into the conservatory, where they saw many beautiful and unusual flowers, among them fuchsias loaded with red and purple blooms that were cleverly trained to grow out across the top of the conservatory, some large Canterbury bells, and double begonias, etc. Afterwards, the woman took them outside and to the gardens themselves, with its wooded glens and narrow paths winding in and out of the trees, stones and rocks, and high banks on one side covered with moss. Their guide then returned the four women to their tram, which took them back to the hotel. Afterwards, Ruth went out and bought some postal cards with scenic views of Glasgow.

They dressed for dinner at, I presume, the hotel. Then she joined George Sutter for window-shopping, a visit to George's Square in the center of the city, where they saw the cenotaph to those [men] killed in the last war.

The following morning the tour left at ten in the morning for Edinburgh, the whole party in a big "char-a-banc" bus. They passed through some beautiful, typical picturesque country. It was mining country, coal, and an oil country. They saw a paper mill. There was very little agriculture, she noted. Most of the land between villages was pasture.

In this part of Scotland wheat, barley, and hay were grown, and Ruth noted potatoes and turnips. The houses were built of stone, none of them wood. Some of the houses were whitewashed, some of them set close to the street and many of them having bright yellow curtains in the window; she attributed this to Scotland's "notorious lack of sunshine" and the people's desire to brighten up their lives. The front yards were filled with colorful flowers and pretty, bright gardens that she found attractive. So far in their trip, though, they had been blessed with sunshine.

People tended to walk a lot and she observed many narrow, well-worn footpaths. She saw only two or three private automobiles and found the empty streets quite a contrast to Sunday traffic in our country. Still, the spell of Scotland had been cast around her from the first and she had fallen deeply in love with it on her ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

They arrived in the great city around 12:30 and were taken to a private hotel at 26 Royal Terrace. That street is high and from the top windows of their room they had a lovely view of the city. Without exception, she says, it is the most fascinatingly interesting city she has ever seen. Back of their hotel is a beautiful little garden bounded by a high stone wall.

After dinner they went up the garden path, through a gate in the wall into Royal Terrace Gardens, a large private garden in the rear of the street and meant for only the people living on Royal or Regent Terrace Streets and whose back garden gates open up on it. There they met an interesting, intelligent, and very good-looking Scotsman, Archie Bogle, though they did not learn his name until later. He very kindly offered to take Ruth, Mother, Mrs. Bennett, and Miss Harris through the locked gate; he had a key. They climbed the hill that led to Lord Nelson's Column and saw the unfinished work which was to be an imitation of the Greek Parthenon, built in honor of the soldiers [killed] in the Napoleonic War but was left uncompleted because of lack of funds. The monument was called the disgrace of Edinburgh.

From Calton Hill they had a lovely view of Old Town of Edinburgh—the Royal Mile, or in other words the slums of the city, which stretched between Holyrood [?] Palace and Edinburgh Castle. From the other side of Calton Hill they could make out another portion of the city and, beyond it, the Firth of Forth, with the island Inch Keith in it. They climbed down the hill, led by Archie Bogle, and passed through the gate, which he unlocked again, and he took them to a spot where they got a wonderful view of Holyrood Castle and Arthur's Seat, a mountain somewhat in the shape of an elephant and supposingly a fortification of some ancient Arthur[ian] king of the Scots.

Holyrood Castle is the imposing, historical building no longer occupied by the Royal family when in residence in Edinburgh. It is associated rather closely with Mary Queen of Scots and where she spent some of the tragic years of her life. Next to it is the Abbey built by David I in 1128. Mr. Bogle stayed with them a little longer, then went off in search of his shaggy little black dog, Buddy, which was his inseparable companion and from whom, during the hill climb, he had gotten separated.

They returned to their hotel enthused, but were prevented from further explorations because the sky began to pour down rain. Instead of more they had tea and waited. Skies cleared and Ruth, Mother, Miss Green, Miss Demarest, and Miss Harris took a tramcar to Princes Street, which was the main street of Edinburgh and one of the most beautiful in the world. There they visited the Walter Scott memorial again, one of the most beautiful and graceful structures she had ever seen. In the center stood a statue of Scott. They circled it admiringly. It was surrounded by statues representing chapters from his novels.

Then it was on to Edinburgh Castle, where Ruth stood drinking in the beauty of the lofty castle on its impregnable heights, the first sight of which had taken her breath away. Recovering it, they returned to the tramcar and the ride back to the hotel, where they had supper. Afterwards, Ruth and her mother took the two Misses Richardson and Mrs. Richardson out to the gardens in back of the hotel and over to Terrace Gardens, where they were delighted to find the charming young Mr. Bogle again pottering about. He agreed to take Ruth to the top of Arthur's Seat and Mother permitted it, since one of the Miss Richardsons was going along as chaperon.

It was a long, stiff climb, she reported, but she wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was a little too much of an effort for her friend, so she waited while Ruth and Mr. Bogle completed the ascent. The view was wonder, superb, but they could not remain their for more than a few moments, for the rains had begun again and the patient Miss Richardson would get wet. They returned to the hotel quickly and Ruth reports dryly that they made it by about 10:45, without mishap.

The next day was Monday, July 17. They traveled from Edinburgh to the Trossacks and back, leaving about ten in the morning, under a glorious sunshining sky. One of the first things she had learned was that Edinburgh was not only the home of the inventor of the steam engine (Watt) and the telephone (Bell) but also of chloroform, whose inventor was celebrated with a statue which the tour soon passed and learned about. They were told about, but did not have time to visit, a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the old Calton cemetery, the only such memorial outside of the United States. Imagine that.

They passed a real gypsy caravan, which Ruth found interesting. The countryside was fascinating, though substantially the same as they had experienced traveling from Glasgow to Edinburgh. She was impressed with the beauty and neatness of the picturesque cottages, with their washed steps and door knockers and brass plates made to shine so.

One of the first towns they passed through was Kirkleston, where there was an old Roman church built at the time the Romans had invaded what is today Scotland, and they all had to see it. The countryside was given over to mining and Ruth noted mounds of waste material that resulted. Oil is mined in Scotland just as coal is elsewhere and is afterwards distilled. They passed Lilinthgow Palace, the birthplace of Mary, the queen who lost her head; it was the royal residence for hundreds of years. James IV had left there for the Battle of Flodden, where he was killed. In the town was a statue of the first governor-general of Australia, who was the Marquis of Lilinthgow. Lilinthgow is one of the oldest and most historical towns in Scotland. Its old, old houses and narrow cobblestone streets bear witness to its age.

They passed the River Aston, with its many-arched stone bridge, and went through Pulnet, Lourston, and finally Falkirk, the center of the iron industry, which their guide said was to Scotland what Pittsburgh was the USA. They came to Camelon and crossed a bridge like the earlier one over the River Carron. Sarbert [?] was the next town.

Everywhere they passed huge estates buffered by stone walls, and in front stood vine-covered lodges by the barred gates. She could see a road winding off to "the hidden, invisible manor house." The guide told them that a great many of these places formerly were owned by the landed nobility but are now empty, or rented out, or sold; some were turned into boarding houses or hotels. Taxation on the land is so high that it has "killed off" the owners. Accordingly, they saw a sign reading, "To Fen [?] or to Rent." One of the vacant estates belonged to the Earl of Callendar.

Soon after leaving the coal-mining town of Pleen, they saw rising majestically above them Ben Lomond and knew at once they were approaching the town of Trossachs. But the next town proved to be Bannockburn, where the Battle of Bannockburn was fought in 1314. They observed the monument and flagstaff where Robert The Bruce planted the Scottish standard in their battle against the British. They came to Sterling and got a glimpse of Sterling Castle and the monument to Sir William Wallace. The guide told them they would be stopping by the castle for a tour on the return journey, as they sped on.

The range of hills in the distance were the Ochill. They crossed the River Forth. The passed through Sterling and observed in the distance Blair Drummon, a beautiful castle now belonging to Captain Muir. Crossing the beautiful River Teith, they came upon a lovely view of Doune Castle and on the other side of them an equally lovely view of Dounston House. The former is owned by the Earl of Moray, a descendant perhaps of the half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots, and the latter by Lady Muir.

They came to Landrick Castle, owned by a Mr. Strand, a big-game hunter, and then to Cambus Moor, the beautiful mansion where Scott lived when he wrote Lady of The Lake. They got out and the guide allowed them to poke around grounds, where Ruth took a couple of pictures she hoped would be good. They had lunch at Callendar.

Soon after they entered the Trossacks. They are indescribably beautiful, somewhat like Branff but on a smaller scale. They got out of the tour bus again and walked around Loch Katrine, with Ben A'an, Ben Ledi, and Ben Lomond looming above them, until they came to Ellen's Isle, where Scott's Lady of the Lake presumably lived. They all enjoyed the scenery and took several "lovely" pictures, which Ruth said she hoped they would be lovely. For insurance purposes, when they got a chance they bought some postal cards with the same scenic views, the place being so beautiful.

The return trip was equally pleasurable and Ruth, her eyes tired, only mentions a few of them. One was the town of Allowa, famous for its knitting wool. Another was Airth Castle, just outside of the village of Airth, which was partially destroyed, their tour guide informed them, by "Mussolini." When asked how this was possible, he added, "The English Mussolini."

They crossed over the Union Canal, which runs between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Before returning to Sterling and its castle, they rode past Binns Castle, now owned by a Captain Deel. His forefathers raised a troop of calvary to fight against the Coveranteers. These troops later became the Scotch Greys. Beside the castle is a monument to the Scotch Greys. Lately the castle has been turned into a windmill to pump water.

Before coming to the town they stopped at the Castle Sterling and climbed the steep, narrow, cobblestone stairs to the turret, from which they had a lovely view of the town, the fields, and the Wallace Monument. "A rather snappy guide" showed them some of the castle, which is now headquarters for the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. Ruth took as picture of one of the soldiers in his kilts. The grounds, the gardens, were very well kept up and bright with flowers; the dungeons where prisoners were kept was now brighten with electricity and lights. The guide reminded them that Mary lived in the castle as a baby and a child, before she was sent to France for her education.

In the chapel of this castle Mary was crowned queen when she was only nine years of age. [Pen and brown ink resume here for a few pages.] It is called the Royal Chapel. Ruth and her mother bought some postal cards and two books as souvenirs in a tower room at Sterling, where "there were many other interesting things" they did not buy, including a pulpit of John Knox.

On the return trip they stopped for a few minutes at Lilinthgow and viewed from the outside only the palace they had seen earlier; it was where Mary was born. Also, a cathedral was there and they glimpsed it. Across the bridge over the Forth they went, a bridge built in 1895; it took seven years to build and was the engineering feat of its time. In the distance was the home of Andrew Carnegie and it was pointed out to them; they all squinted to see.

They were beat when they arrived back at Edinburgh and had a late dinner. But—tired as they were—Ruth wanted more of the Royal Terrace Gardens. Myrtle wanted to see them, she had heard so much about them from Ruth and her Mother. So they went, but the handsome Mr. Boyle was not there; he was evidently walking Buddy somewhere else, or else had retired for the night, for it was late. Ruth and her mother consoled themselves with reading the life of Mary Queen of Scots before they went to bed.

On Tuesday the 18th, they remained in Edinburgh and left in mid-morning for a tour of the city and its principle places of interest. Their guide was "efficient, capable though sometimes unintelligible"—perhaps because of his brogue or because he mumbled. He led them down a street on the way to Holyrood Palace and they came to a stone turret, which he informed them was Mary's bath. What? At the palace itself, there are apartments in which the royal family stays when they come to Edinburgh. The present building was built by Charles II, though the south-eastern tower where Mary lived goes back to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.

The first room the tour entered was a portrait galley, containing paintings of all the rulers of Scotland, starting with Robert the Souce [?] and continuing in chronological order around the hall. One item that interested Ruth was a glove box with a picture of Robert Burns in the middle of it. It was a gift to Queen Victoria. It contains 365 spaces, one for each of the days in a year for different pairs of gloves. Imagine.

They saw Lord Darnley's bed rooms and dressing room. From his room they climbed the narrow stone stairs to Mary's rooms, her audience chamber, her dressing room, her private supper room. The conspirators who murdered Rizzio, Mary's faithful Italian secretary, climbed that stairway, after having entered through a secret gateway into the palace, entered the private supper room where Rizzio was one of Mary's guests at a dinner party, attacked him, dragged him from the protesting queen's side, and finally left him dead on the queen's audience chamber. That spot on the floor is now marked with a metal plate.

In Queen Mary's bedroom we saw several interesting objects. On the wall hang two portraits of her bitterest enemies, Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. On the table is Queen Mary's work basket and in a glass case nearby is a large plate presented by Queen Elizabeth on which the infant James VI was to be carried to his christening. We saw a picture of a tear bottle into which Mary's tears are supposed to have fallen and which she used instead of a handkerchief. Also there was an ancient mirror on the wall and the tour group was told that anybody who looked in it might have three husbands or may be beheaded. Ruth doesn't say whether she looked or not.

They next visited the ruins of Holyrood Abbey next door. It was founded by David I in 1128. Many ancient Scotch noblemen and their families were buried in the courtyard and the bones of many rulers of Scotland were in a vault back of the high altar. Queen Victoria was responsible for gathering together the remains of so many kings and queens, and placing them all in their final resting place, there.

A few of the tour group went on to view the state apartments in the palace, but most of them, including Ruth and Mother, went back to the bus. First though they saw the monument to King George III, which Ruth states is really to King George, because if they entered the number "III" after it they would have to acknowledge the other rulers named George before him, which they were loath to do. Then they headed for John Knox's house, but not before Ruth—greatly moved and inspired—wrote down the little rhyme quoted by the tour guide, as they came to Radical Road, which ran up to and around Salisbury Craigs: "Round and round the radical road the radical rascals ran." Now, how many ars are there in that?

Answer, there are no ars in that.

John Knox's house was an interesting old place in an old, old street, crammed full of interest, formerly a very fine street, full of "closes" and "winds," where many famous and interesting people used to live or stay, and now was very dingy, dark, and dirty. They entered a house with low ceilings and doorways, being warned to watch their heads. The guide inside explained the "different objects of interest" to them. [One wonders if Ruth ever came across anything that did not interest her.] Knox's was the only pre-Reformation dwelling house in Edinburgh still preserved with its original architectural features, she notes.

Knox (1505-72) lived in the house during different sojourns between 1559 and 1572, and died there. The house itself dates from 1490. On the walls of the first room they entered were pictures of various events in Knox's career, with the dates when they took place recorded above them. His motto was printed along the top of one wall, but Ruth does not give it. Ruth records more of what the guide told them, but I omit it here and hasten on to the next point of interest, which was Parliament. There she saw some of the advocates in their gray curled wigs and black floor-length robes. The king's counselors had white shirt fronts additionally. All were engaged in earnest conversation, she reports. The group went down to the Advocates's Library, where they saw an interesting old manuscript of Scott's preserved in a glass case, a letter in Queen Mary's handwriting to a cousin in France, and a letter from Charles I, when he was only the Duke of York, to his father, James VI. Ruth copied it down, and I relate it in full. It begins nicely, "Sweete Sweete Father. i learne to decline substantives and adjectives, give me your blessing I thank you for my bestman/Your loving son, York."

After viewing more of the library and advocates at work and engaged in talk, and noting another statue of Walter Scott, perhaps the best [one] ever, but the sculptor sadly unknown, they went on to Giles Cathedral, whose spire they all had admired from a distance. A cannon was fired, signifying one P.M. Then the ball rose to the top of Nelson's Column, but they could not make it out. They returned to their bus. The guide told them that James IV was not really who he said he was, since he didn't behave like a Stuart. Perhaps he had been "done away." Edinburgh Castle, built in 1089, was used presently primarily as a barracks for soldiers, but they got to visit the ramparts and had a magnificent view of the city. Outside was a dog-and-cat cemetery, where the soldiers buried their pets. Exhausted, a few of the tourists managed to revive back at the hotel, and set out to visit the National Art Gallery, where they viewed Van Dyke, Reynolds, Rubens, among others, until it closed at five. After dinner they packed their bags, for they anticipated an early start in the morning.

However, before they could leave for Kessvick, via Abbotsford and Melrose, there was an altercation to endure. It had to do with a waiter at the hotel and became heated. The waiter "accused" the Misses Richardsons of having a guest at dinner, for whom they had not paid, and tried to get Ruth identify her, saying that Ruth had been at the same table with her another evening. Miss Fairfax, their chaperon, who was supposed also to be their "conductor," finally shut the waiter up and he went off grumbling about "these Americans who make such a fuss about paying sixty cents."

Ruth was disappointed that there wasn't time to see more in Edinburgh. After all, hadn't Scott described the city as "mine own romantic city"? She felt the same way about it. Scott's statue beamed down from on high, as though blessing it, and Ruth's own visit had been extraordinary for a girl from Chicago. Nonetheless the tour bus pulled out.

She was enchanted with the Lake Country. But before leaving the Scotch countryside, she recalled more mysterious walls and gates, with roads behind them wandering off to unseen mansions that Ruth could only try to imagine. Perhaps the tourists were all the richer for having to guess. On the way in to Abbotsford, they saw white-washed cottages with thatched roofs and flowers blooming in well-tended gardens; Ruth lists the colors of the flowers as red, yellow, blue, and purple.

At Abbotsford they were shown Scott's mansion, which he built in 1810 and in which he did most of his writing, and where he died from worry, strain, and overwork in 1832. Ruth was specially responsive to these problems. Scott's great-great-grandson was the present owner and occupant of the mansion. He was Brigadier General Maxwell Scott. The mansion was the handsomest one she had ever seen, she who by now had seen many. An interesting young boy took them through the house with relish. Even the hallway Ruth found most interesting, since all the panel work on its walls had been done by monks. Inside there were some weird instruments of torture preserved and hanging from the walls, including one "iron arrangement that went over the head and had a bit which went into the mouth—for those who talked too much."

Also displayed on the walls were the coats of arms of the Lowland families, because it was Scott's wish that this hall be like all the others he had seen. In a glass case was preserved the last suit of clothes that Scott wore. They visited his study and saw the very table and chair at which he worked. They followed a private stairway that went up to his bedroom, which contained bookcases that held materials for his novels. A small, adjoining room was his "speak-a-bit," where he conducted private conferences and which now held his steel death-mask. The paneling of this room was made from the wood from the bed in which Mary Queen of Scots slept when she was sick in Jedburg in 1566.

Ruth found a glass case full of many more interesting items which she says she didn't have time to note them all down, but adds that they included Bonnie Prince Charlie's wine cup, which was rather small and made of pewter, Bobbie Burns's huge drinking glass, a book and a pen used by Napoleon, and the ivory crucifix carried by Mary Queen of Scots when she went off to be decapitated. There was even a bit of her gown from that day and a lock of hair from Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The drawing room was hung with the original wallpaper from 1810. The room contained a beautiful Chinese cabinet that formerly belonged to the Marquis of Montrose. The walls held paintings of Scott's daughters, James IV, Scott's mother, and one of his great-granddaughter, who was the mother of the present owner. Also hung there were portraits of Scott by Raeburn, one of Scott's wife, and a rather terrible painting, Ruth notes, of Mary's head, after it was separated from her body. And there was one of Dryden and Hogarth doing Hogarth, plus fine screen embroidery by Scott's granddaughter. The French chandelier in the drawing room represented the rays of the sun, they were told, and thus the cracks in the ceiling gave the effect of clouds.

They entered the armory, where suits of armor stood round the room. Bonnie Prince Charlie's iron fighting suit was there and so was an iron jewel box of Mary's. There were two dueling pistols donated by the Duke of Wellington—given him by Napoleon, it was said. And there were more wonderful items of torture—thumbscrews and a set of "bleeders" used by ancient surgeons. The tour guide pointed out to them that, today, bleeding was performed by hotels, and everybody laughed appreciatively.

The next room contained etchings of a comic nature by a friend of Scott's: probably the W. E. Hill of those times, Ruth notes.

They left Abbotsford regretfully, admiring the beautiful gardens there on the way out. They moved on to Melrose. The old abbey had been built in 1136 by King David I. Edward II burned it in 1322, and it was rebuilt four years later by Robert the Bource; his heart is buried within it. Richard II tried to burn it again in 1385 and was partly successful; Lord Hereford wrecked it during his expedition in 1545. At the time it was a beautiful old ruin, its architecture still magnificent, its stones colored dull reds and browns. The tour group was not allowed to entered the abbey, though, and had to content itself with viewing the ruins from the porch of a nearby house. Ruth was greatly disappointed. Still, they enjoyed the Gothic windows and the "romantic glamour" that seemed to hover over the place, in the bright sunlight, and which enhanced the burdens it had lived through over so many centuries.

They lunched at "the George" at the Abbotsford Hotel and were served a good meal by a genial old Scots waiter, whose effervescent spirits and ebullient manner enlivened them all. Again they found pictures and busts of Scott everywhere. There were two drawing rooms and they were filled with beautiful old etchings and pictures, plus bric-a-brac and antique furnishings. They learned that on the next lap of their journey they would not even be passing near Dryburgh Abbey, which they all had counted on seeing because it was the burial place of Scott and Earl Haig.

They departed Melrose, passing through some more rolling wasteland with clumps of brush and heather; these were the moors which were probably the site of Scott's Bride of the Lammemoor. They came to the border between Scotland and England and all piled out; Mrs. Grounds [?] took a picture of the cottage on the Scottish side, while Mr. Grounds went over to the English side, and then they shook hands with each other across the border, while everybody laughed. Then it was on to Keswick.

Ruth found the English countryside beautiful, but not so wild and rugged; hilly instead. A few brick houses began to appear—quite a contrast to Scotland. The gardens were equally well-tended and lovely, perhaps a bit more formal. Again there were fields of oats and barley and wheat; the oats were yellower than in Scotland. Instead of stone walls dividing fields were now neatly clipped hedges. In Scotland there had been black-faced sheep, whose wool she was told by the guide was sent to the United States because it was so coarse; in England there were many more sheep in the meadows and on the hillsides. The first English town they stopped at was Carlisle

They arrived at Keswick about six in the evening. It too was beautiful, picturesque, with its narrow, shady winding streets, delightful little shops, and charming houses and gardens. Their hotel was nice, with an abundance of blue China and pewterware. The gardens were the best to date, with the trees and bushes trimmed in the shape of pyramids. There was an arbor at one end and at the other groomed rock and flower gardens. The roses were huge—four or five inches across the blooms, the largest she had ever seen. Ruth recalled the fields of both Scotland and England, and the wild flowers she saw there—Shasta daisies, wild foxglove, and poppies.

* * *

Ruth was coming down with a cold and, consequently, was unable to go for her usual long walk around the visited town. She missed seeing the most beautiful view in England, according to Ruskin, which was from Friar's Crag, where there was also a memorial to Ruskin she wanted to see. Instead, she and Mother contented themselves with a short stroll around the hotel garden. They returned early to their room and bed, "blowing" themselves to a blaze in the fireplace. It felt good because the weather was quite chilly, though the days were long now and it was as light out at ten as it was at home at six in the evening.

The next day was Thursday, the tenth. They traveled from Keswick to Windemere by way of Dove Cottage. It was but a short drive and they had the luxury of a late start, not getting underway until ten. At breakfast, Mother asked her waiter if it would be possible to buy one of the beautiful blue and white dinner plates and, after a conference with the management, one was given her as a souvenir of the hotel.

They drove through the famous Lake Country for only two hours, Ruth wishing they had more time. They stopped at Dove Cottage. The Lake Country was so beautiful that Ruth was at a loss for words and said she didn't dare try to describe it but that she could well understand how it had inspired the poets living in its midst, with its wooded hills, sparkling lakes, winding shady roads, and picturesque cottages sitting at the foot of their hills, surrounded by their bright flower gardens. She hoped she would never forget the sight.

The stop at Dove Cottage was most enjoyable, very much as she had imagined it to be. Their guide was a woman, very much up on her Wordsworth. She showed them through the tiny rooms of the cottage. When Wordsworth had lived there, his annual income was only about $400 per year, his rent $40 a year. Imagine. They saw the living room, the larder, Dorothy's room, the family sitting room, where many of his poems were corrected or read to Dorothy. The poet liked to write outside in good weather, only moving indoors for more work. All of the furnishings in the house were from his time, but the counterpane was embroidered by school girls with quotations from his poems.

Scott slept in the spare room when he came to visit Wordsworth in 1805; three of Wordsworth's children were born in the adjoining room of Dove Cottage. A room built on as an addition somewhat later is now a museum containing first editions, original manuscripts, and letters from William and Dorothy to each other and to friends and relatives. The garden, Ruth relates, was kept very much as it was in his time and is very beautiful; it is where he composed many of his most beautiful lyrics.

They moved on. At Windemere they enjoyed more of the beauty of the Lake Country, arriving at their hotel in Bolso-on-Windemere about noon and visiting the terrace gardens overlooking the lake. Before luncheon they had a few minutes to write some postal cards and Ruth wrote more afterwards. Then they went into the village and bought stamps, more cards, film, and pictures of the Lake Country, as prudent travelers often do, in fear that their own pictures won't turn out. They visited a drug store and a linen shop, where the articles were all handmade by the women of Windemere and there was linen for sale woven by the men. Everybody bought something. Ruth purchased a towel with beautiful cutwork and some dainty handkerchiefs. Then the tour moved on to an antique shop, where after much deliberation she bought an antique silver bracelet for her friend in America, Becky.

There were only moments in which to dress for dinner. Afterwards, they hung around the dining room, sipping coffee. Then she and Myrtle went across the road to see the view of Lake Windemere from the hotel opposite. It was lovely.

The next morning was Friday, the day they were to leave for Chester. With much regret they departed Windemere; in fact they hated going and knew well they would not see such scenery again and could have gladly spent several days or weeks there. As they sped along on the bus, behind them stretched the vanishing hills and lakes, and the landscape grew flat and "incidentally less interesting."

As they approached Chester, they stopped at Treston for an early lunch. It was a good thing nobody was hungry, because the food was terrible and the hotel was awful, smelling of alcoholic beverages. There was no lounge for them to relax in, however briefly. The tour bus moved on. They arrived in the ancient city of Chester about two. At the hotel, on the board, they learned the rooms to which they had been assigned and went to them immediately. They rested and cleaned up and then set out to explore the city. They located the old East Gate and went up to the old city wall, built ages and ages ago. They walked along the wall and located the Chester Cathedral, which was not so imposing on the outside but promising "an excellent example of the transitional style" on the inside. However, a service was going on inside and they could not enter, so it was on to the Phoenix Tower, where Charles I saw his troops defeated in 1645 at the Battle of Rowton Moor.

They climbed up into the tower and stood where Charles had stood to watch the battle, saw several souvenirs of ancient Roman coins, weapons, and armor, and viewed the imprint of a soldier's foot in clay or some other substance that had hardened. There were also relics of the Norman occupation, including a sedan chair that had been used in Chester until 1870. At the foot of the tower they bought postal cards from "a very interesting, typical old woman" who had a shop there. They went on past the Goblin Tower to the Water Tower. The old walls along which they walked dated back to 61 A.D. and the Roman occupation. The top of the wall was commissioned by the daughter of Frederick the Great in 907.

The watch tower only went back to 1322. On the tower was a placard, words of which Ruth was moved to write into her diary: "Bonewald Esthomes or Water Tower. Built in the 12th Century. Was used to guard the city approach from the river. The lower or new tower was built in 1322 at a cost of about 100 pounds. In 1645 during the civil war the Roundheads placed [?] a battery at Breweas [?] Hill Farm and bombarded the two towers, but without the desired result." [Handwriting pretty jerky here.]

In the tower a young artist had his studio and many of his etchings were on the walls. The artist's name was W. C. Turner and his work seemed to be very fine. They had heard of him before and that he would probably be famous some day. We studied his etchings and Mrs. Bennett bought one. Then they retraced their footsteps and returned to the hotel. They were pretty tired because they had walked several miles.

She found Chester a quaint old town and one of the more interesting in the whole country. Their room at the Westminster Hotel was very nice and the dining room very interesting and quaint. However, the napkins were soiled and stuck in their drinking glasses. Everybody sat at a single table and was served by one of two maids in stiffly starched aprons and caps. The meal was typical English food—soup, fish, meat, potatoes, and one vegetable. Dessert was a sweet, served with cheese and crackers. Instead of going out again that evening, they returned to their room, packed their bags, and turned in early.

They started out early on Saturday, the 22nd, because they had a long drive ahead on the way to Warwick and many interesting places to see. The tour was scheduled to go through Litchfield, the home of Samuel Johnson, where there was a famous cathedral, and through Coventry, where George Eliot had lived and worked, and Lady Godiva had been made notorious through her ride, but the driver detoured and took them instead to Shrewsbury, where he had been stationed during the first war at the headquarters of the Royal Air Force. What a disappointment to a person with a strong literary background. Nevertheless, Ruth managed to find it interesting, but then she would find an abandoned coal mine " interesting."

Though the city has many famous parts, they saw none of them. It was famous for its cakes and its many half-timbered houses dating from the 16th century. She does not say whether they got to sample the cakes or see any of the houses. Instead, she turned to the gift book, So You're Going To England, by Clara Laughlin, where she learned it was the birthplace of Charles Darwin. They had a delicious lunch at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham, a large manufacturing city and the largest city they had been in in England, so far. They drove on to Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Ruth cautions that the house they visited was probably not where he was born, but it surely was where he lived as a child. There were two houses, actually, and they were next to each other. Both are 400 years old.

They were shown "Inspiration Chair," where The Bard supposedly sat and wrote a great deal of his work. They were told that people often sat in it "with good results." Naturally, Ruth and Mother promptly plopped down in it. By the fireplace was a large saltbox; the fire kept the salt—which was expensive—dry. A great oak beam ran across the ceiling over the fireplace and was said to be hundreds of years old. On the wall was a picture of London in The Bard's time; also a picture of the Globe Theater. Ruth notes that men took women's parts in Shakespeare's day and women themselves did not appear on the stage until the time of Charles II.

Upstairs they found a bookcase with early editions of The Bard's works. One wall held the famed Ely Palace [?] portrait of the Bard, thought to be the most authentic. They left through a lovely little garden in back of the houses and bought some postal cards and souvenirs. Then it was on to Anne Hathaway's cottage, "a dream of a place," Ruth reports, with a beautiful, fairyland garden. I must say, if there was a garden any place, Ruth would find it and it would be lovely.

The small, low-ceilinged rooms had been lived in by Anne Hathaway's descendants until the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Ruth found the old, courting settee an interesting sight; it stood by the fireplace, where the warming pans still shone from their many polishings. She saw some quaint old China, and a wooden plate that was square in shape and hollowed out in one corner to hold the salt that was so expensive that it had to be protected from getting wet and ruined. They came to two bedrooms, the first and largest with a heavy, carved bedstead and chest, the other opening off of it and reportedly where Anne Hathaway slept. Old-time flowers continued to grow outside in the garden, which Ruth found perfectly beautiful.

The tour moved on to Trinity Church, and it did not fail their expectations, for it contained the tomb of The Bard and members of his family. The registry of the parish contained the dates of his baptism and burial. These were 1564 and 1616, respectively. The font was consecrated for Holy Baptism more than 1500 years ago and is still in use. The Bard's grave was in the chancel, and when they stood over it in the midst of the quiet of the old church, they were filled with quiet awe and a feeling of reverence. The grave bears the familiar old inscription, "Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear," etc., and more words to the effect that he did not want his tomb disturbed after he had been laid in it. This was carved in stone, which was badly effaced by time.

Next to him to the left is laid his wife and in the same row his granddaughter's husband and Susannah, his favorite child, and her husband. Reluctantly the tour left Trinity Church and drove on to Warwick Castle, which Ruth found perfectly beautiful. There was a long, tree-lined drive leading to the castle and they walked it. Ahead loomed the outer wall; on the right rose Guy's Tower, in the middle the Gateway, and to the left Caesar's Tower. Guy's was completed in 1394 and was 128 feet high, while Caesar's was done between 1350 and 70. Its height in not given. They entered the castle by way of the chapel entrance and the first room they came to was the drawing room. On the wall they found a portrait of Margaret, the wife of Charles II; the top part was done by Van Dyke and the lower by Sir Joshua Reynolds, about one-hundred years later. They saw a cabinet crammed with family silver and tortoise shell, with a carpet that bore the coat of arms of the Warwick family. The chandelier was of Italian crystal and delicate Venetian glass.

The red drawing room came next, or rather The Red Drawing Room. The wainscotted panels of the walls were a deep ruby color, with gilt molding. On the wall was a portrait of Martin Ricot, done by a pupil of Van Dyke, and against the wall stood a beautiful cabinet of Chinese lacquer. The floor was covered by a Turkish carpet. Both this room and the first were full of portraits, Ruth hastens to add, for she had not mentioned this aspect.

The oldest part of the castle dates from the eleventh century. The walls are ten to twelve feet thick. A fire destroyed part of the castle in 1871, and when the rooms were restored, "clerestory" windows were discovered in the great hall and the new roof was placed above them; this made it much higher than it had been. In olden times, the chambers probably existed over the hall, Ruth adds. From the three large recessed windows of the hall, which were of modern construction, they had a wonderful view of the Avon and Castle Bridge. In the recess of the right window was a huge iron cauldron; it is called Guy's Porridge Pot. It holds about 120 gallons and is in reality a garrison cooking pot.

The hall was used as a smoking room by the present Warwick family and contained a collection of old armor, including a knight in German Fluted Armor on a horse in English Armor of the Fifteenth Century. They spotted a helmet attributed to Oliver Cromwell and it was due to him, they were told, that the castle was still left standing. Also preserved in the castle was the marriage chest of Isaac Walton and on the wall a huge French tapestry representing an army on the march. The old mill wheel in the castle river, the Avon, was now rebuilt and used to generate electricity for the castle.

The Great Dining Room was lighted by a Genoese Crystal Chandelier. In this room was a large picture of Charles I on horseback by Van Dyce, one called "Lions" by Rubens, and a remarkable collection of Chinese Luster china. Next was the Dancing Room. Here they found a wonderful Seventeenth Century Florentine table, the work of a lifetime, with precious stones inlaid in black marble. Over the mantle was a painting, "The Spanish Warrior," by Murtello [?]. And there was the portrait of the Earl of Stratford painted by Van Dyce just before his execution, when he had been informed of the upcoming event involving him. Ruth says the expression on his face was remarkable. There was also a portrait of Prince William of Orange when he was a lad, wearing his cap and plume. Then they returned to the private chapel of the castle by a route they had seen on the way in. The chapel had a window of old Flemish glass artfully pieced together. Again there were portraits on the wall to admire.

In The Boudoir hung the famous original of Henry VIII by Holbein, a portrait of Anne Boleyn, and one of her sister Mary and many other famous paintings. Ruth found them interesting. The ceiling of this room was done by Italian workmen and there was a lovely Florentine mirror; also there was a clock that had belonged to Marie Antoinette. The clock still ran.

The furniture in the old State Bedroom was presented by George III to George, Second Earl of Warwick, and formerly had belonged to Queen Anne. Accordingly it was called The Queen Anne Bedroom. Its walls were hung with an old Flemish tapestry that took 300 years to make and was finished in 1604. The bed of salmon-colored damask had coverlets and counterpanes of satin richly embroidered in crimson velvet and the traveling trunk bearing the initials A.R., surrounded by a crown, formerly was the property of Queen Anne. There was a large picture of her in coronation dress of brocade with the collar and jewel of the Order of the Garter. They came across two more portraits of unusual beauty, one of the grandmother of the present Earl of Warwick (now 17 years old) and the other a Van Dyce portrait of the actress Mrs. Sarah Simmons.

The Armory Passage was a narrow corridor at the back of the State Bedroom and The Boudoir; there they saw a fine collection of medieval arms, a suit of chain mail, a Turkish beheading knife, some genuine and some phoney armor of Cromwell's soldiers from 1642, the revolving gun from which Colt got his idea for his revolver, and the first revolver made by Colt. There was also an old jack-leather [?] pitcher from which beer used to be drunk. The manner in which the black-jack pitcher had to be raised in order to drink from it gave rise to the expression, "More power to your elbow," Ruth adds. They also saw a square-toed leather boot formerly worn by one of Cromwell's Roundheads and a helmet bearing the crest of the Earl of Warwick.

Their cultivated and courteous guide completed their tour, he turned them loose at the gate through which they had entered, hours ago, and they retraced their path down the winding, tree-lined drive until they came back to their bus. The tour group moved off to the Kenilworth Castle ruins, the last item on their sightseeing program for the day.

Ruth had not realized the castle was so destroyed. Still, the sight was very romantic, for the ruins were covered with ivy and what was left of the high walls and graceful arches gave them a faint idea of how vast and imposing the castle must have been in its time. She recalled that it was the seat of Scott's novel, Kenilworth, and had inspired Tennyson to write the familiar lines, "The splendor falls on castle walls/And summits old and in story."

The castle was enveloped in a romantic haze, which even the bright sunlight could not dispel, although she could imagine it even more romantic in moonlight and could picture to herself "the hosts of nobles—the luxury and splendor of the time when Elizabeth [the Queen] was entertained on such a magnificent scale there." [Brown ink again.] The guide took them up to the top and showed them what used to be the lake where the great pageant was held when the Queen visited and was to be entertained. Again Ruth was reluctant to leave a place of such historic import and return to her hotel in Warwick in time to get ready for dinner. Mother had wanted to drive to Coventry that evening, but it was so late that they knew there would be no one to drive them there, nobody who knew anything about the place, that is, so again they retired to their room and turned in rather early.

Unusual for her to do, Ruth underlines these last three words. Perhaps it only means that they were tired, though they may have been disappointed, as well.

On Sunday, the twenty-third, they left for Oxford, being allowed first the luxury of sleeping in. It was not very late. The drive was not a long one. They arrived before dinner and had a fair meal, after cleaning up a bit. On the way they passed through Branbury and stopped for Professor Grounds to buy some of the famous cakes sold there, which he and his family graciously shared with the others. Dinner being the main meal and served at around noon, the afternoon stretched before them. They headed for the college about 2:30 or 3, but since it was Sunday, most of the buildings were closed. Their "fairly competent guide" managed to show them the quadrangles and buildings of most of the colleges, each college being separate, distinct, and of a unique nature.

Oxford students have breakfast and lunch in their rooms, but get together for dinner in the dining hall of their particular college, she learned. She notes that choosing a college is rather like choosing a fraternity in the States. Often they select the college of their ancestors or else of their friends. All the colleges offer the same courses; each has its own dormitories, dining hall, and chapel. She found some of the quadrangles beautiful, others small and not so attractive. Each boy had his own two rooms—a bedroom and a sitting room. Most instruction was by private tutor and attendance at lectures was more or less optional.

The first college they were shown was Exeter. It was founded in 1314, and it was followed by Jesus College, by Queen Elizabeth. The Radcliffe Cameron [?] Library was the oldest and third largest in the country. It was built by one of the pupils of Sir Christopher Wren. A remarkable system of tunnels and subterranean passages ran beneath the library, with "trained runners"—messenger boys who when given the name of a book could fetch it for you in a very few minutes.

They saw first the exterior and then the interior of St. Mary the Virgin's Church, dating from the Thirteenth Century. Cardinal Newman was formerly the vicar there. The church contains the tomb of Amy Robsart, immortalized in Scott's Kenilworth. Degrees used to be conferred here, but were now passed out in the Sheldonian Theatre. Another interesting college was Brasinose [?], which counted among its students Haig and Heber. Heber was the author of the hymn that began, "From Greenland's icy mountains. . ."

They visited All Souls College, the Law College, and the Sheldonian Theatre, where degrees are conferred, some amid hectoring and raucous taunting from the assembled students, who hold no one (no matter how distinguished, she observes) in awe. Christopher Wren was architect for the theatre.

Wadham College was being done over at the time of their visit. This was the college of Wren. The Wadham College Gardens were extensive and the site of the famous Oxford pageants. The chapel contained a particularly beautiful window, dating from 1622. They visited the college dining room, which was typical, and each night the boys assembled at six to eat their meal. The walls were covered with portraits of famous men who had gone there.

They went on to New College, not so new, actually, being built by the Bishop of Winchester in 1348. The chapel window was by Joshua Reynolds. The main figures are life-size and represent Faith, Hope, and Charity; this chapel was the largest at Oxford. Out in front were statues of the saints and ones marking the birth and ascension of Christ, carved of marble. The ceiling inside had carved figures representing angels. They went into the gardens, which she found beautiful and extensive; the gardens butted up against the old city walls. They spotted several students sitting under the trees, reading and studying. Through a window in the trees they could just glimpse the tower of Magdalene College. (It is pronounced "maudlin," she notes.)

They went on to the smallest of all of the Oxford colleges, St. Edmund and its hall. St. Edmund only had 40 boys. (Perhaps Ruth liked it best because it had the same odd name as her brother, a name that went back to the early rulers of Britain.) Their Oxford guide permitted them a glimpse through the windows of the quarters where the boys lived. Though they could not see well, Ruth thought the rooms rather dismal and unattractive. The group moved on to Magdalene, where the Prince of Wales had gone and which was the most famous college. It was founded in 1448.

Magdalene was famous for two things. One was windows of the Prince of Wales's rooms. [Edward, who was to abdicate the throne] The other was the pulpit set into one college wall, where services were held on June 24, St. John the Baptist's Day. She found the chapel "a little gem of beauty." It boasted of, among other things, painted windows done in brown tones. She apologized for forgetting the name of the artist. There was also a picture of Christ taken off of a boat in the Spanish Armada. [?]

Again there were gardens to explore, at the end of which was a gate that led to a shaded path named Addison's Walk because the famous English writer used to frequent it while a student at Magdalene. Across from the gardens was a wooded space known as Grove Park. Some wealthy individual died and left it to Oxford, along with 40 pounds for its maintenance and to keep deer in the park. There was also five pounds for the Magdalene cat. Ruth reports that there is a cat, to this day, but the deer seem to have disappeared.

Ruth interrupts her narrative for "one more little item of information," before she continues describing her tour. It is that there are 24 colleges for men and eight for women, with 4500 male students and 950 women. Seven years previously those colleges were opened to women.

She and Mother left the tour at this point because they intended to return to Magdalene at six for vesper services. They went wandering down the street in search of a place to buy some ice cream. Along the way they spotted a shop featuring postal cards with pictures of the various colleges of Oxford and, of course, they stopped and bought some for their growing collection. A warm day, they continued their search for ice cream and found a shop selling it, but it was only marginally good. Still it was cooling. On their way back to Magdalene, they stopped at Mary The Virgin's Church and viewed Amy Robsart's tomb; at least they saw what they thought was it; they had no one with them to tell them what they were really seeing.

At Magdalene Chapel, however, they were distraught to find the service had already begun and they probably wouldn't be admitted. They were very disappointed, "for their hearts were set on it." The attendant told them there was a place further on where they could at least stand and hear the music. So they stood there, "desolate and woe-begone," and a few minutes later the attendant came by and told them they would be admitted, along with a couple of other late-comers, much to their delight; there were no seats left in the middle, but there were some along the sides, which was just as good for their purposes because they wanted to hear the very, very beautiful music and it did not matter if they couldn't see the choir.

It was a short service and soon the last notes of heavenly music died away, but still there was the spectacle of the priests—Episcopal, of course, Ruth adds—in their long, flowing vestments passing by. Then it was over. On their way out they gave a long, lingering look at the beautiful window facing the altar. Both left the church feeling they had had an experience, the memory of which would always be special to them. They spent the evening writing cards and went to bed early.

Monday, July 24, dawned, and they left early for London by way of Windsor Palace, Hampton Court, and a place called Stoke Poges. A busy day loomed, but it was only one of many that now trailed behind them. They reached Windsor Castle shortly before noon and had time before lunch to visit part of the castle; the rest they would see after they ate. But first they were "waylaid" by a man who wanted to take their pictures for only a couple of shillings, telling them that the pictures would be ready immediately. Ruth says they didn't know any better and fell for it. He delivered, all right, but apparently the pictures weren't fixed, for they quickly began to disappear and by evening were entirely faded out, in spite of their efforts to protect them from the light and air. The pictures weren't bad, she states, and other people in the tour group had the same experience of watching their pictures vanish right before their eyes.

They entered the grounds of the castle by way of Henry's Gateway. Henry VIII's crown, with its royal symbols, rose [in replica] over the entrance. The first building they came to was St. George's Chapel, which stands over 13 acres of ground; it is also known as the Chapel of the Knights of the Order of the Garter. The chapel was begun under Edward IV in 1478 and finished under Henry VIII; Edward VII was married and buried there.

Three kings were imprisoned at Windsor Castle, one Scotch, one English, and one French. Charles was made prisoner in his own castle by Oliver Cromwell and later taken to Whitehall and beheaded. King John of France was a prisoner there, too. He was released to get his ransom, was unsuccessful, and returned—an honest man, Ruth interjects. And I guess the other was Henry, though she does not mention the third.

From the top of Round Tower she could see ten counties. Here the most prestigious and highest order of English nobility was founded. It happened when the Countess of Salisbury was unfortunate enough one day to drop her garter. Edward III rushed forward and picked it up and in that natural way the order was established. Its motto is, "Honi soit qui mal y pense"—which translates, "Evil to him who thinks evil."

They visited the long, low, red building where The Merry Wives of Windsor was first shown. Nearby Curfew Tower dated from the time of Edward III and was where Anne Boleyn was held prisoner by Henry VIII, they were told.

Ruth again reprimands herself for not telling first this bit of history: the castle stands on a site presented by Edward the Confessor to the monks of Westminster Abbey in the Twelfth Century. The site was later purchased by William the Conqueror for the purpose of erecting a castle on the isolated hill at its center. Henry I and Henry II extended the building. Edward II caused the old castle to be taken down and a new one erected by the Bishop of Winchester.

From the grounds of the chapel they could see the Curfew Tower and had a glimpse of the Thames. The name Windsor means "Winding Shore," she relates.

They were next taken to view the exterior of the Royal Apartments. The buildings were used by various members of the Royal Family when they were in residence. There are three towers. The base of the Victoria Tower dates back to 1260. It is where the present Queen lives, when she is there. There is a beautiful three-mile drive leading up to it. Fragmoore—where Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, are buried—is open only on May 24th, so they did not get to see it. And the third important building they saw was the Alfred Memorial Chapel. It dates back to Henry III, and Henry IV had it heightened. It was eventually made into a royal tomb by George III and his tomb was the first one in it. Now forty kings, queens, and princes are buried there. The building was further restored by Queen Victoria in honor of her deceased husband. There is a large, beautiful memorial to him and around the walls are busts of their many children.

Just before lunch they were shown the Windsor Town Hall and told an interesting story about it. It was built by the famous architect, Sir Christopher Wren. After it was finished, the Town Council of Windsor objected to the way it was built, saying that the expanse of ceiling without any visible support was dangerous. They demanded that Wren add pillars to bear up the ceiling's weight. Wren refused. The Town Council appealed to the King. The King must have intervened, for Wren built four pillars, but none come within inches of touching the ceiling and provide, of course, no support, for none is needed.

They had a good lunch. Afterwards, they got to see the State Apartments. The place was jammed with sightseers. They had a long, tiresome wait; they were conducted up the Grand Staircase. On the landing they encountered a robust fellow in armor on a horse. It was Henry VIII. In more armor, they came across Charles I. And then they saw the sedan chair in which the wife of George III used to ride. The first of the luxurious State Apartments they entered was the Charles II Dining Room. The ceiling was painted with flowers and fruit, representing a banquet of the gods. On the wall were portraits of Charles II's wife, Charles I at age 21, and his sister, Queen Elizabeth . . . of Bohemia. The next room was the Rubens Room. Some of the famous artist's works adorned the walls, including a portrait of the Holy Family, one of himself, and one of his first wife. There was an old French clock in the room that needed winding only once a year.

Without noting anything in particularly, the group passed through the following states chambers quickly: the bedroom, the King's bed closet, the Queen's bed closet. Then they came to the Picture Gallery. They saw four painting by Holbein, two of Lorranine's landscapes, a painting by Titian, and one by Andrea del Sarto.

The next room was styled the Van Dyce Room, where were hung portraits of Charles I, one of his children, two of Queen Henriette, and one of the Duchess of Lorraine. In the room were some beautiful silver tables with mirrors whose design matched them. In the Queen's Audience Chamber there was a painted ceiling, which was 250 years old and a beautiful handwoven tapestry by a French artist representing the story of Esther. They saw yet another portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, and she was holding an insert picture in her right hand of her beheading.

In the Queen's Presence Chamber there is a painted ceiling in which there are 100 figures. The central figure—as in the portrait in the Queen's Audience Chamber—is the Queen herself. And the tapestry of the story of Esther is continued in this other room. [Italics Ruth's.] Chairs in the room date from the Seventeenth Century and were made in Venice.

In St. George's Hall, which is the banquet hall, 874 Knights of the Order of the Garter have received their decoration during the last 600 years. The coats of arms of all the knights of the order adorn the ceiling. And in the drawing room is a tapestry representing the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, with a beautiful huge vase that was a gift from the Emperor of Russia to Queen Victoria.

Chairs in the next room have beautiful royal blue velvet seats. The Prince of Wales was made a knight of the order here [recently]. They then paraded through the Ante Room to the Waterloo Room, in which there were portraits of statesmen of Waterloo and its long table with rose-seated chairs. But the most remarkable thing about the room was its huge carpet; it was 80 feet long and half as wide. Handmade, it was produced in one piece by prisoners in India, they were told. It weighed two tons. There was not time to visit the Dolls House and their hasty tour of the State Apartments ended here. They clambered into their tour bus and were off for the Stokes Poges.

Their guide was very competent but rather condescending, and explained to them the highlights of the various towns they passed through on their way to London, the first one of which was Old Windsor, where the palaces of the Anglo-Saxons used to be.

* * *

Notes in the back of the diary amplify this portion of their travels but only a little. She writes something about the Bills of Onzley and I. Walton. She records the word "Runnymead" and notes that King John "sealed" the Magna Carta there. She mentions M.C. Island and a crabbed note says it was the home of many [Eighteenth Century?] English authors. Staines [?] was one of the oldest towns in England and dated back to before the Roman invasion. Hampton was the home of Garrick, the famous actor, where he had two residences, a house and a villa. At Hampton Court Palace there was a hospital that went back to 1512 and belonged to the Knights of Jerusalem [Sp] and was bought by [Cardinal] Wolsey to built "the finest residence of man." It was started in 1575. Then Wolsey had a quarrel with Henry VIII and later presented the residence to him. He lived there with Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth was born there. Since the time of George III the palace had fallen into disuse.

In the reign of Charles I, Cromwell thought that Charles lived in too much luxury there, but after Charles's execution Cromwell moved into the palace and lived there himself until his death. Christopher Wren added 400 rooms to it, making 1000. At Clock Court, the clock there has kept time for over 300 years. It shows also the day, week, and month. It is said that when the clock stops, somebody dies. (But then somebody dies when the clock is running, it only holds to reason.) Some of Queen Victoria's only pensioners and retainers lived there. At Fountain Court the walls of stone were painted on by French and Italian artists, but receive no protection from the elements. The public gardens there were laid out under William and Mary and receive from 18-25,000 visitors each weekend. Wilderness Maze has privet hedges and winding paths leading into the maze.

They saw Kingston Bridge on the Thames. Kingston was where the Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned up to the time of Edward the Confessor. The chapel there dates from 1143 and was where the Canterbury pilgrims used to meet. Putney Heath was a famous dueling ground. Richmond Park was Robin Hood's happy hunting ground. The Duke of York's home was White Lodge, in the center of the park.

London had seven and one-half million people then, while Westminster had 760,000; between the two cities there numbered 27 metropolitan burgs.

* * *

Throughout her diary Ruth stuck to the format established by it, as though obeying some obscure and remote command from her friend, Muzzie. These pages were headed, "Places Visited." There are four more, blank. The next section is headed "Memoranda," and starts with the note quoted earlier about leaving Chicago on the first leg of their journey. On the same pages is listed the names of American dentists they might meet along the way—one in London, one in Paris, another in Florence. Such information is important to a traveler, and anybody who has had an abscessed tooth far from home (as I have) will appreciate its value. A bad seasickness joke follows. It was appropriate and has to do with a Frenchman not having had his dinner—"quite the contrary."

There is a gap in the pages of the diary and then Ruth lists what I presume to be items purchased along the way. It represents a huge leap in time and distance, for the first item is carved ivory flowers (pins) in Switzerland, along with napkin rings, alpenstock with steel point, salad set, carved wooden shoes from the Isle of Marken. The handwriting is hard to read.

In Rome and Venice they bought mosaic pins for twenty cents. In Paris, fine woolen shawls from a store near the Louvre for $1.25, with "The Louvre" written across the top of the boxes. Also from Rome or Venice came a Roman silk scarf and amber beads, lace, and long strings of beads, or perhaps they came from Lyons. The Spanish shawl definitely came from Italy. The tooled book covers were from Florence, as were a $3.50 silk-lined purse and some bags. The Dunhill pipe was from London, but who it was for isn't stated. Perhaps the Captain French, back in the States?

They bought books with pictures of views they had enjoyed, possibly in Paris, but more likely in London. They spent a dollar for compacts in Paris, and since twenty-five cents is listed, they appear to have purchased four of them. Also from Paris came "Perfumeries." Oh, yes. And from Italy finally is listed linen, cutwork.

Other notes appear in an unfamiliar, scrawled handwriting that runs all over its pages and doesn't make frugal use of the paper, as on the earlier pages. This leads me to think Ruth used the memoranda pages to jot down notes while the tour bus was in motion. Often these ragged notes contain observations quoted earlier in the diary, even though they come afterwards. It is how Ruth reminded herself of what they saw at the time they saw it, when so much was to be compressed into a day that, afterwards, she would have great trouble sorting it all out and in remembering its order, as Wordsworth of the Lake Country said of poetry: It is emotion recalled in tranquility. Makes good sense, and I remember Ruth most of all as being highly sensible.

* * *

The next section is entitled "Hotels Stopped At." They stopped at many. The list of hotels and annotations continue her journey after she stopped recording daily events and is therefore useful. The notes also append what the diary said and amplify it. Thus, the Queen's Hotel in Montreal cost $7 a day for the two of them. They took two meals there. The room was lovely, the bath private. I would presume from this that not all of the baths that followed were.

At St. Enochs the room was so huge and luxurious they could not hope to find another to exceed it. And didn't. This was the one with the three mirrors for just the two of them, remember. The private hotel at Edinburgh gave them a tiny room, but the great view made up for the crowding and the walled-in garden in back was special. At Kenswick, their first English hotel, it was nice enough, but at Rigg's Crown Hotel at Windemere the hotel and grounds were even more beautiful, but their room was not so nice and they did not have running hot and cold water. One wonders what they did have in the way of water, if any. Perhaps a basin of tepid. But the food was even better.

Their room at Westminster Hotel in Chester was a mix, large and with a tiled fireplace and full-length mirror, good food, but the pleated napkins stuck into her drinking glass bothered her. And I recall from a regular diary entry, the glasses were none too clean, either. The Lord Leycester Hotel at Warwick was old-fashioned but pleasing, their room with a great view of the back gardens and some church or cathedral rising in the obscure distance; the bonus was both hot and cold running water. The food was nicely served.

The Wilberforce Hotel at Oxford was small and on a noisy street. Drily she notes that the usual fireplace and wardrobe were in attendance. On the dresser was the dreaded washbowl and pitcher of water. This is what they got when there wasn't any running hot and cold.

The material that comes next under "Hotels" is new and not recorded elsewhere. It gives us a few clues to what happened next, when the diary abruptly stopped. So it is both useful and instructive. In London they stayed at the Pembridge Carlton. It was a small hotel or boarding house, facing the gardens of Pembridge Square. Their room was on the top floor, which may have been the fifth; anyway, it was a long climb up to a room which she deemed very nice, with a double bed and—lo—hot and cold.

They left London for Amsterdam, but there are no particulars, nor are there any remarks about their visit—long or short—in London. No dates, either. Hotel Krasnapoksky [?] gave them one of the nicest rooms of their whole trip, very large, with two beds, and those not singles but doubles, or beds closely resembling doubles. In fact they had more than one room. You entered a small anteroom that had two wash bowls with running hot and cold, a large mirror, and what was their first such experience a foot bath. (How thoughtful, what with footsore world travelers.) There was a wide window seat in the bedroom. Downstairs (five flights of them) was the main dining room, a winter garden with tall palms (enclosed?), and a dancing room with a good orchestra, all very beautiful.

What they saw in Holland is, alas, not recorded.

They stayed at the Hotel Cecil at Brussels. It was nice, nice, nice. (One senses Ruth tiring of making entries and her vocabulary stressed from describing the satisfactoriness of their accommodations. Perhaps it is why she stopped the diary, aside from running out of pages.) The dining room was bright, aside from being nice. Their room was on the third floor and faced the street. A double bed was pointed toward the door, its back to the window. It was small, the room was, and it contained a small wardrobe. But there was hot and cold running water, thank goodness.

They moved on to Cobtenz. I have no idea of where it is. Their hotel was Fuerstenhof. Perhaps Germany or Austria. It too was nice, but offered them the usual bowl and pitcher. Yes, Germany it was, for the entry continues many pages ahead under a heading called "Incidents," and we learn that they had their first experience eating "out," having both dinner breakfast on one of the long verandas overlooking the Rhine. Across the river they could see the fortifications with the French flag flying over them, where American boys had been stationed during the "last" war, Ruth recalls.

The tour group moved on to Wiesbaden and they stayed at the Hotel Kaiserhof. Rumor had it, and so did fact, that the ex-Kaiser had a home there. The walls and ceiling of the rooms downstairs were beautifully ornamented and decorated, but she doesn't say how. A magnificent gray marble stairway, very wide, led upstairs. In the dancing room, a pianist and violist "obligingly played" all evening, though only one or two couples danced and sometimes none. Returning to their room shortly after dinner and having left it a mess, they were delighted to find everything all tidied up, the bedcovers turned back, and the little bed lamp turned on.

The Hotel Hofer at Bale was not so nice, with no lounge that she could discover, two small dining rooms, and food that was mediocre. Their room was narrow and faced the street. It was very ordinary. They had no wardrobe or running water, and the twin beds were peculiarly arranged, with their feet touching. They moved on to Lucerne and the Hotel Central. It was small, and so was their room, but all was very nice, though "ordinary." The food was unusually good and the servings generous, with seconds on everything offered. As at Brussels, the dining room was on the second floor. In Switzerland, the hotel had a very attractive writing room on the first floor, and I can only wish that Ruth used it more. Their room was much like the one in Brussels and was on the third floor, requiring a climb again, and differed mostly in that the bed faced the window.

At Interlaken they stayed at the Hotel Bristol, which was a fairly good one to this experienced traveler, with a large and a small dining room, two nice lounges, one with books written in English for the traveler to relax and read. Their room was rather large and on the second floor this time, with twin beds (their feet touching) and the traditional bowl and pitcher placed on a table with a red-checked tablecloth.

The Hotel National at Montreux was lovely and also their room, with twin beds, running water, and a boudoir lamp with a yellow shade between the beds and a yellow-shaded ceiling light. There was a chaise longue on which Ruth basked all afternoon. And there was a writing desk, with pen and inkwell; however there was no ink in the well. She did not ring for room service or call the management about this oversight. The lounge had pretty rose upholstered furniture and from the porch they had a marvelous view of the lake and mountains and again from the terrace at the rear.

At Furka they stayed in an annex to the Hotel Glacier du Rhone—mountain cabins and rooms with bare-board floors covered with "a small rug or two." Again the bowls and pitcher, with icy water. Their small window overlooked the rushing, tumbling Rhone, the sound of which was in their ears all night, along with that of trains from the railroad tracks next door. But the food was very good.

At Lugano [Italy?] they had a very nice room, with a white double bed, white woodwork, white built-in wardrobe, and two white straight-backed chairs. There was the blessing of running water. Outside their window was a wonderful view of the city and mountains.

The diary as such ends here. It is almost as though you reach Venice and die. But we know that didn't happen here. Life went on and so did they.

* * *

The diary contains additional notes, some repetitive, some early versions written from the tour bus of what they saw, in jiggly handwriting, and later incorporated in the narrative itself, and a few illuminating, for they inform us of what came next, after "My Trip Abroad" abruptly ends. For instance, at the Louvre there is a list of famous paintings she and Mother saw. In Holland, where the trip began in Europe, and in Germany, the people were fair and kept old customs. People on the Isle of Marken never went outside and couldn't be observed, accordingly.

Germans were "slow and deliberate," she notes, and in Italy the Catholics (abbreviated, "Cath.") do not take their religious as seriously as Americans and Irish Cath. In Venice, the heart of the city is the square, the canals being the city's arteries, and St. Marks its soul. In Rome they had an audience with the Pope (though Ruth and her mother were Presbyterians, I recall; still, it was the same God they all worshipped, was it not?) For this they borrowed mantillas, all white or all black, from the portieres at the hotel. She notes that Swiss guards were in costumes (not uniforms?) designed by Michelangelo. Okay; Ruth's is probably the better word for what she saw. Costumes it is.

She quotes from Francois Villon that good talkers are found only in France and goes on to characterize the people as "vivacious, demonstrative, moody—up and down, clean, industrious, thrifty." Every street in Paris is washed every night, she notes, and the garbage and ashes are also removed. French peasants are "philosophical."

In the French theater you are not issued a program but must buy one. You must deposit garments with vestiere. Usher and vestiere must be tipped. She noted a miniature theater at side of guichet. [?] At church there were two collections, the first for the choir. A sou or two would do; these equated to 1/4 a penny. "Bon pour one or two francs." [?] The second collection was for the poor of the parish. They visited Medeline, which was the richest church in Paris, where there was an additional collection by women for charities. I suppose Ruth and her mother gave unstintingly at every opportunity.

She noted that at funeral processions the hearse was decorated. People pay their respects to a passing hearse by the men doffing their hats and the women bowing their heads. She cautions herself to "stick to 10 percent tip," and computes that for a 20 franc meal two francs in enough.

Buses have both first- and second-class accommodations and so do subways. You enter by number. "On the continent" most apartment houses have a concierge, who put the lights out at 10 P.M. The cafe in France and the bier garden in German are national institutions. Order citron presse if you want lemonade. With the exception of Holland, you are expected to have breakfast in your room. It is usually a petit pain, which is a little roll. I presume there is coffee, as well.

Lunch is the most important meal of the day. In Germany the meal comes with spices and vinegar. In Italy, with olive oil. In France, sweet butter. Europeans don't know about canned vegetables. She observed that "market wagons are so artistic."

* * *

At the end of a short section entitled, "People Met," Ruth states that the Students' Travel Club consisted of 108 members and are too numerous for her to attempt to mention all of them, though my inference is that she got to know most or all of them by name or to nod to and smile at. She was outgoing and invariably cheerful, and had a way of addressing herself to people with a little birdlike tip of her head, looking intently into their eyes, perhaps slightly puzzled and intense. With men this might be disarming and misleading; with women, though, it seemed only friendly. She found most of everything around her interesting, though it is hard to know precisely what she meant by this, since the word was used to cover a range of subjects and most people.

She starts the section on the train from Chicago and mentions first a Mr. L. A. Matthews who got on at Windsor, just a short distance from Detroit. He was very friendly and interesting, a native Canadian from Penbroke, Ontario. He told her that he has never wanted to settle down before but did now and wanted her address to write to her—and maybe come to see her in Chicago. [Underlining hers.] Today we'd say he was hitting on her and her mother did not seem to get in the way.

Also on the train was a Mrs. Zellers from Kansas City, Missouri, who was hostess to Tour 91 of the Students' Travel Club. They found her a very charming woman and one who should make a delightful hostess. They learned that only two people were taking their same combination of tours, 86 and 108, the one a Mrs. Sutter and her son, George, of Kansas City. He was an architect. Both seemed to be very nice. The mother was pretty, young-looking, and attractive. Mr. Sutter was dark—"rather unusual and interesting looking and really looks too old to be her son." Oh-ho? But he will probably be very useful in learning about the architecture of the cathedrals and other buildings, once they are in Europe. Ruth does not name any of the additional ways in which he might be useful to Mrs. Sutter, there or along the way.

Mrs. Billingsly was an elderly woman whom her friend Lee met when he was arranging their deck chairs. [Remember? It was before the all-ashore call.] "She fell for him flat," Ruth tells us. They discovered that they were in some way related, the ancestors of both having come from Wales and having the same family name. [Incredible.] Both were from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Their table companions were Irene Gilkerson and Dorothy Lakeman, friends traveling together. Both were lovely girls. Irene was a teacher from New Jersey, while Dorothy was a stenographer, a native of Quebec.

Mr. and Mrs. Saunders were from Burnside, a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, and "are by far the most interesting people who we have met." They are both charming and have exceptional, well-informed minds. He is an art dealer. He told her how etchings are made. They have four daughters, who Ruth was sure were perfectly lovely girls. Mother enjoyed Mrs. Saunders so much and they have discussed everything—politics, literature, history, juvenile court work, etc. Mr. Saunders offered to be "Ruth's daddy," since he felt lost without his daughters. [I'll bet.]

Molly Kennedy was her friend from the boat trip, the one she stood by the rail with at the stern, seeing for the first time how fast the ship was moving. We learn now that Molly was from Saskatchewan, a very interesting and intelligent person. She was not part of the students' tour but traveling "independently" with her mother. This gave Ruth and her mother something in common. On the first full day at sea, they played deck tennis. Games and competitions were an important part of life at sea and helped pass the time that must have dragged between meals. The next day, a Monday, they fully explored the ship, an exercise that must have taken them hours. No more mention of Molly Kennedy is made after they docked in Glasgow, so they must have gone different directions.

Then there was Ella Martin, a sweet-looking girl taking a tour with her mother, one sponsored by the University of Toronto. Miss Mary Riley, like Ruth, was a teacher of French and part of the Students' Travel Club. She also taught music appreciation. She instructed at City College of New York and was hostess of Tour No. 95. She was "exceedingly" interesting and well-informed; also a good speaker. She gave the tour group a series of talks, the first of which being "Literary Landmarks of Europe," the one during which Mother got seasick. No more lectures were mentioned as having been attended, but then there is no diary for any of Europe, only odd notes. The talks, Ruth says, were mostly about legends connected with places they were to visit. Miss Riley had been to Europe before and had studied for a summer at the Sorbonne; she promised to give Ruth the name of a man to write for information about the summer session.

Remember the two Misses Richardsons and Mrs. Richardson? I do. One is listed simply as Miss Richardson, the other as Miss Sally Richardson, and the Mrs. is their sister-in-law, not their mother, as I had presumed. They were from Boston and all so devoted to each other. Ruth liked them all so much, especially the one called Miss Richardson. The sisters were "maiden ladies" and on the Students' Travel Club Tour 86, as were Ruth and her mother, so they saw a lot of each other.

Also on Tour 86 was Miss Green, an English teacher from somewhere in California; Miss Demarest, who taught art at a school in New Jersey; Miss Searson [?], who taught at a junior high school in Boston; Miss Page, from Boston; Margaret Urran, a child-welfare worker from New Haven, Mrs. McCauley and Myrtle McCauley from California. And finally there was Miss Harris, a secretary from New Haven. Both Myrtle and Margaret were around Ruth's age, which was the mid-twenties.

Mr. Ball was an instructor at Cambridge, and Mr. Dumont was a Frenchman, formerly a manager of an export company; they were their two tour conductors. Mr. and Mrs. Howell of Dayton, Ohio, were a lovely elderly couple, all wrapped up in their only son, Fred. Miss Ethel Leffler was the chaperon and was a lovely girl, as was her sister, Dottie, who traveled with her. Ethel was the beauty editor of the People's Home Journal, writing under the name of Katherine Lee. Jane Keane was a tall girl, even taller than Ruth (remember that Ruth and her mother were tall almost to the point of continual embarrassment), and was 21. She was from Cincinnati, a former student at the Conservatory of Music there.

Mr. Healy was the life of the party, a traveling salesman type, though professing to be a doctor. Mr. Smith was traveling with his two sons, Coventry and Philip; they were from a town near Pittsburgh. Coventry was a sophomore at Princeton, where Philip was to enter in the fall as a freshman. Philip was the thoughtful one and often carried Mrs. Bennett's bag for her. Ed Smith was a Southern boy who went to school in Florida; he had never seen snow before. And there was Congressman Cochran from Pennsylvania, who headed an entourage consisting of his wife, two daughters, and three sons. (Perhaps a taxpayer-paid junket?)

And there the section, "People Met" ends, the writing crammed into a final half-page saved for it. One has the feeling Ruth could have gone on and on. The section that follows is "Autographs," and in the manner of the day she collected a lot. We learn from them only a little we didn't know before: Molly Kennedy's home was in Indian Head. There is a Lois U. Moon, from Baltimore, who had a long flowing hand, her Ms appearing to be three Is joined in a kind of foothills range. Mr. and Mrs. Chas. L. Fitch were from Houston. Jane Keane's middle name is Craig. Dorothy C. Lakeman liked to be known as Dot; her traveling companion, Irene Gilkerson had a nickname, too. It was Dash. Mrs. Grounds's first name was Hilda. There was an Olive G. Rose on the trip, whose fountain pen was capable of extraordinary thicks and thins. Irene Moffitt was from Battle Creek, Michigan. Rosamond G. Wriglet was from Germantown, Philadelphia, and Irene Beymann was also from that city. The McCauleys were from Long Beach. Emma R. Summerill was from Penns Grove, New Jersey.

There is a list of cash on hand and a huge number of travelers' checks by numbers but not amounts. Probably they wrote small ones and did not want to get robbed with their purses full of money. A drawing of a column is labeled A, B, C, D, with the letters corresponding to cornice, frieze, architrave, and capital and column. A brief note is headed Lecture V, and we assume it was from Miss Mary Riley. It has to do with Manners and Customs, and what follows indicates they are either in London or about to arrive in the city. There is also a key to what they might see at the National Gallery in London, and includes Gainsborough and Turner; what hangs from the wall at Windsor Castle; what is to be expected at The Hague (Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy"), in Ricksmuseum at Amsterdam, in Florence, In Venice, at the Vatican, at Rome, at the Parthenon (Frescoes of Chanveaaus), in Switzerland, and at the Rodin Museum in Paris and a long list of what to see at the Louvre.

Three books are on Ruth's list to read. Two are conventional travel books. The third is Group Psychology by MacDougal. It should have come in handy, if she was able to find a copy, for after this length of time—approaching two months—the tour group of students, teachers, and others who managed to sign up were probably beginning to get on each other's nerves and even Ruth, who found nearly everything including I suppose the rain interesting, probably could use some help in understanding the complex interactions of the people she could not avoid encountering, day after day.

As with the Arnolds in the Nineteenth Century, most were farmers, and their broods were large, in order to provide hands to work the farms. There was a scattering of blacksmiths, shop owners, teachers (the women, mostly), and ministers. There was even one bishop, though he was a Methodist, a Simpson. Each marriage of a Connelly dragged another name into the family tree and provided another branch in the root system. Back before Leigh was born, Edmund Riley Connelly married a McConnell, her mother. Surely, on the auld sod, Connellys and McConnells were related. I would so like to detect a trace of incest, but have it far, far back in the family. Alas, no.

Somewhere I heard that the clan wars in both Scotland and Ireland accounted for much attrition across the borders, with attendant name sifts. Hence many branches derived from the MacDonald clan, which was widely spelled many different ways. So there are McDonnells and O'Connells, (I have a fishing friend with the latter name, and once thought if I were to make a video of my book Steelhead Water, which stars largely me, I'd choose Scott to play the part of myself, when I was in my twenties; then I put the whole dumb idea aside as vain. But it is odd and in keeping that I thought of Scott, though we are in no way alike except in loving to flyfish and having parallel routes our common ancestors must have traveled, long ago.)

Are we Scotch or Irish? Yes, I'd have to say.

I am indebted to Anita Margie [Bailey] Wallace, Genealogist and Author, as she identifies herself in her book, Connelly History, privately published in 1973, a copy of which drifted into my hands on the death of my father and a second one, with the death of my aunt, Ruth, for much of which follows, for the pictures and quaint narrative sketches of so broad a family have sparked me. All the while I know I must be very careful, for while the personages and quirky characters, say, Wirt, Doc, and Ort Connelly cry out for embellishment, I think there are enough clues to their lives and personal relationships that little from me is needed to be added and the truth will speak for itself, given an opportunity.

Anita was a Bailey, true, but her mother was a Connelly, which is all the credential she needs, or does any of us. In her book she lists six "branches" of the family: Platte, McConnell, Pennington, Evans, Simpson, and Gallagher. Why is it the maternal line of so many families proves the stronger? I have no answer, only state it as an unraveling fact of life, at least in the family from which I have sprung, not so much as from a broken bedspring as what Gerald Manley Hopkins was after, when he broke apart the prosody of his day and turned its rhythm sprung in the oldest of Anglo-Saxon traditions.

I mean it like that.

The same year that Ruth Arnold and her mother, Saraleigh, traveled to Britain and Europe, the children of Emery Platte and Jennie Connelly were gathered round to help them celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. There is a group picture of them, out under the elms. It is a mild day in March. The year is 1928. They don't look like they are having any fun. Perhaps a chill wind came up, or else the twelfth of the month is winter still. I'd have to guess from everybody's expression that they hadn't eaten yet. They don't look exactly hungry, just unsettled.

They are all adults. No children. But then this is a portrait of the parents and their grown children. There are thirteen of them. They are numbered for identification purposes. I have to presume that none of them would submit to wearing a little round number in the vicinity of his respective collarbone, so this was added in every case by some skilled person with a stick-on dot and typeset number. To that person I am grateful, otherwise the cutlines below the picture would be confusing and meaningless. Instead, they make for a kind of difficult odd sense.

Personages include: back in the furthermost corner and seemingly leaning up against the elm, then moving left to right and back to left again, with their honored parents seated wanly in the lower middle and slumped on perhaps a bench: Homer Theodore, Clarence Wirt ("Wirt"), Ernest Dwight ("Doc"), Arthur Evans ("Ort"), Inez Zephyr Cullison, Emery Clyde ("Clyde"), Nina Grace McIlvoy, Mable Fay Bailey [the Genealogist/Author's mother], Ira Otto, Jeannie Blanche Saucier, Oscar Kenneth ("Ken"), Olive May Fahrner, Ralph Leo. And then there is the anniversary couple, Emery Plate Connelly and his wife, Jennie Elizabeth (Evans) Connelly. They look small and sad, as if defeated by the years.

On the following page is a picture taken the same day of the entire assemblage. Fifty-three of them. Kids and spouses abound. They are posed in front of the old farmhouse in Wellston, Oklahoma. What is a family without kids? Again all wear numbered discs in the center of their abdomens and from the key on the next page we learn that Sons Ken and Wirt and Homer and Clyde and Ira and Oscar have married; but Doc and Ort have not. (They shall not.) Author/Genealogist Anita Bailey is present, along with her sisters, Mildred and Gladys. The Connelly daughters have mated and borne children, except for Jennie Blanche, who is listed with the adults as a Connelly still, but on the following page as a Saucier. If there is a Mr. Saucier, he did not attend, or did not come forth to be pictured with the married-into-the-family husbands and wives. There are no Saucier children present or accounted for.

Also pictured are two friends of the children and two friends of the family, a couple named de Bogart. And the captions do not precisely correspond with the people bearing numbers in the picture, for number 53 is a thoughtful little boy in bibbed coveralls, but he has no name listed. He may be a son of Wirt, since he is seated with three of Wirt's sons, right next to the three sons of brother Ira. Is this a breeding contest, or what? Families have them, I know from experience. Oh, yes: a meal has probably been served, since everybody looks relaxed and as contented as anybody can be at such a gathering.

Let's see. Ralph Connelly married Marie Calburn, whose mother, Addie, attended. Inez Zephyr Connelly married Lloyd Cullison, and he is holding their baby, George, who looks to be about a year old. Inez has straight brown hair parted on the left and combed low across her brow to the right, cut short (for this is 1928), and fixed in place with a clip. She is wearing a knitted pleated skirt that extends well below her knees and over a brocaded blouse is loosely buttoned a cardigan with a shawl collar. On the page where she is reunited with her husband and son, she looks more relaxed, more cheerful, fed; Lloyd is a cleancut young man, rather handsome in an austere way, in a business suit and four-in-hand tie—others have either open collars or bow ties. Little George is nice looking, like his parents.

Nina Grace Connelly McIlvoy is neither young nor young-looking; in fact, from both pictures it is impossible to imagine her younger than she is, and one imagines her issuing forth from Jennie Elizabeth Evans Connelly's womb just about like this, only of course much smaller. Nina's husband, Charles, stands on the porch, mixed in with the other men and not differing from them greatly. He is middle-aged and looks as though he does something other than farming. The book says he had a shoe-repair shop after he gave up farming. He has a certain boozy look about him. He died in 1955.

Nina holds a baby—whose? She looks too old to be still bearing children, but the record indicates she is only 40. It must be little Leslie, hers. He is less than a year old. There is also a Charles Russell, called Russell. He is about ten. The other McIlvoy children, Jenny and Pearl, are knockouts, especially Pearl, with her dark eyes and slenderness, her hair fashionable like Inez's and her dress cut low in front. She is seventeen. She stands out, a single rose in this field of daisies. If you were going to a party, you might ask her to ride in your car. She might snuggle up. Yeah.

Pretty Pearl was still living in 1973, when the family book came out. She had not married, bore no children. There is probably a sad story here, but nobody to tell it. Jennie Rose found herself a physician and bore them three sons, one daughter. And Leslie, a boy, had two sons and a daughter. No wonder Nina looks so old and worn. Her baby is sixteen years younger than her first born, nine years after her next to last. She probably had thought she was all done with this child-bearing business, and now she must start raising one again.

Jennie Blanche did not marry her Earl Saucier until 1933. They had one child, Bernard, who was born during the Second World War. He had three children. One was a son. The others were twin girls. Annie lived. Little Jennie died three days after birth.

Ralph married Marie Blackburn, but they divorced about 1945. They had one child, Lorena. She had eleven of her own. So it goes.

Clyde and Bertha had three. Olive May and Walter Fahrner had two, one still-born in 1918 and Robert, who lived to be almost 50. They too divorced. Mabel Fay and James Robert Bailey had four children, including our author, one of which was still-born in 1914. Oscar Kenneth, called Ken, married Ruth McIlvoy, who was the niece of Charles, Nina's husband. She bore six children. Wirt did not marry until he was 41 and long thought to be a dedicated bachelor, like his two favorite brothers. She was Nora Abigail Grover, and she was 23 years his junior. They had four children. Ira Otto married Jewell Alexander and she bore seven children. Homer married Minnie May Kephart and they had four children, but later divorced.

There were two photos taken to celebrate Emery and Jennie's fiftieth anniversary, one of them with their immediate family, their 13 children, and another with the broad family, including grandchildren, friends of the family, friends of the friends, friends of the grandchildren, and a few relatives of those who married into the family and just enjoyed a good meal, with a lot of people gathered round. One such person was Addie Calburn, whose daughter had married Ralph, remember?

An earlier family photo fascinates me. It is of the same people as in the first picture, but was taken 19 years earlier. Homer was a little kid. Inez and Jennie Blanche were ten or eleven. Ralph looks to be about 13, The rest are grown but young. Nina has not yet put on weight and begun to bear. Olive May and Mabel Fay are young women—not particularly attractive but slender and available-looking. Ah, but the men. What a scurvy lot. They are in bibbed overalls or dark work trousers held up by suspenders. All wear hats. None knows what to do with his considerable hands, except Grandpa Emery Platte Connelly, who jams them in his pockets. This looks good to Wirt, who does likewise. Wirt and Ort always seem to be standing beside each other. Next to Ort is Ira Otto. Then comes Oscar, called Ken. Doc is next, the other lifetime bachelor. Ort lets his hands dangle in front of him, but Ira has let his swing in behind his back, as if standing at-ease, which in every other way he does not seem to be. Next to him, Doc's hands dangle just like Ort's. Perhaps it is a bachelor trait.

Emery Clyde, called Clyde, is the last of the male children and now the women-folks begin. Them being all together and in a line does not necessarily indicate that sex discrimination is practiced in the family but only that boys like boy-things and girls are happiest in each other's company. At the right side of the portrait is a little chair and in it something that looks like an abandoned baby, very small and crushed, but on closer scrutiny is just a blanket used as a chair pad. Perhaps a tired Grandma Jennie has risen from it for the group picture to be taken. She had a bad back, I recall.

* * *

So what happened to them all? The Genealogist and Author Anita tells us, as it was related to her.

Wirt was the eldest son. He never got more than half a mile away from his parents's home, in Wellston, Oklahoma. He bought a claim to a farm down the road and worked it, all his life. He married "gentle" Nora when he was 41 and they raised three children, living on the farm so late as 1973, when Anita published her book.

I always liked Arthur, or Ort, because he was odd, solitary, and every family ought to have one, or else go out and rent one, on a long-term basis. In the early picture, when they were all young, he wears a broad-brimmed hat and sports a full, black beard; in the second picture, 1928, the beard is very gray now and sticks out from his chin just as his hair sticks up on his head. No wonder he wore a hat most of the time. His hair was pulling back from his forehead, which was broad, and his mustaches hung low, wavy and untrimmed. His hair came down to his shoulders. His whole appearance was slovenly. His workshirt was blue denim and his bibbed, blue-stripped overalls came up high on his chest and flared out at the bottom over his field boots. On Sunday he put on clean, and it lasted him through the week. He bathed whenever he felt like it and not every Saturday night, as a married man was be obliged to do. Not so frequently as that.

Ort lived at home, all his life. He was known as being contrary. The reputation probably made him smile to himself and do everything he could to advance it. Mother and Father gave him a wide berth, but were particularly fond of him, as parents are apt to be of children who do not turn out well and produce problems. When Father Emery died, it was Ort who was named executor of the estate and the extensive farmlands. He saw his opportunity to exercise his prerogative and did not divide up the property in 20-acre lots as the will dictated but kept it together for a decade more while he lived in the family house, during which time the farm deteriorated and became "an eyesore." Of course the Great Depression was on and the economy had plummeted. Ort and Doc remained on the property after Olive left home. They continued to live there, the land undivided. Relations among the children became rancorous and never healed, not even after each had gotten his share of the estate. This was long afterwards.

Doc was a veteran of World War I, though he did not go overseas. He was as unkempt and as dirty as Brother Ort. They were a pair to draw to. Soon after his parents moved to Oklahoma, he came down with brain fever and almost died. After he recovered he was considered strange by their neighbors, who stayed away. Late in life he developed high blood pressure. Finally he had to leave the farm and was taken into the Veterans' Home in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where he died in 1956.

Ort was distraught. He continued living on the farm and his 20-acre inheritance in the center of it until he became ill and needed more care. He let himself be taken to a nursing home in Oklahoma City, where he died in November 1960.

Ira was a farmer, all of his life. He lived on the Old Robinson Place. When he died in 1954, his wife Jewel moved to Oklahoma City. Ken worked as a lineman for the Oklahoma Gas Company. He was the first of the thirteen children to die. This was in 1945. His wife Ruth died of cancer in 1963. Mabel Fay (Anita's mother) married James R. Bailey and they farmed their entire life.

Nina—who always looked so old and sad, but not so her daughters—loved to sew and make clothes for others. She was a quiet one, whose thoughts ran deep. When Anita asked her why she didn't write a book about their early days in Oklahoma, she protested that she couldn't because she knew too much about the living members of the family. As a girl she sewed most of the clothes for her family. She said she learned to fight for what was hers and not give in to the others, especially the boys, who were known to be rowdy. And even though some of the kids at school made fun of her clothing—especially the shoes she wore—she was feisty and determined not to be forced out of school. And wasn't.

She told Anita that she and her sister, Mabel, liked going to parties and dances in the neighborhood. Mabel became interested in a neighboring young man, but her father broke up the relationship and it went no farther. While Nina excelled at sewing, Mabel knew she could not compete and went into the kitchen. She cooked. As younger children continued to arrive, she was expected to look after them, as the eldest daughter. In turn, she had three daughters of her own.

Olive was a telephone operator in Oklahoma City. She had a sad life. She and her husband, Walter Fahrler, had a son, who had a speech impediment. Walter deserted her. She continued working to support herself and her son, Robert. For a period she moved home to keep house for her aging father. Then she and her son moved to California, where she died in 1956.

Emery Clyde, called Clyde because his father was Emery, too, was widely believed to be a good man, not like those rowdy bachelors who had colonized the house. He married Bertha Melrose and worked all his life for the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company. Besides rearing their own son and two daughters, he helped take care of Bertha's younger brothers and sisters, plus a nephew. When she inherited her share of the farm, they moved there and began to repair it, but Clyde died in 1961. Bertha became an invalid in old age. Her brother, Junior Melrose, bought the farm and lived there.

Ralph's life was none too pleasant, either. He stayed at home and farmed. Married late, he had one child, a son, but when he and the former Marie Blackburn broke up, after about 30 years of farming for himself, he went to work for others, farming and raising stock on various ranches. He resided in a boarding house in Tulsa up until shortly before his death. No year is given.

Blanche was a teacher and earned a Master's Degree. She taught at a number of different schools and finally at the college in Edmonton. She married Dr. Earl Saucier, who was also a teacher. They moved to Mississippi, where both taught. No children of their own, they adopted one. Earl developed emphysema and died from it. In 1973 Blanche was still alive and active.

Her sister Inez also taught, having herself a Master's Degree in Education. They were an exceptional pair of achievers, for this family of farmers and farm wives, and I wonder what motivated them? Her husband, Lloyd, had a garage and repair shop in Walton. She taught primarily young children. At the time of the book's publication, she and her husband reported that they were "happily retired."

Homer, the youngest, visited Anita on their farm when she was a child, and she remembers him well from then. He worked at many different jobs. He married Minnie May Kephart and they had four children, but later divorced. How sad. During World War II they all lived in Modesto, California. He developed a heart condition and died "during or after" surgery in 1971.

And there you have the thirteen children of Emery Platte Connelly and Jennie Evans. R.I.P.

* * *

To know more requires a comprehensive unraveling the thin threads of the past. Fortunately on this side of my family there are copious written records. It is instructive to try to piece together where everybody came from, so that perhaps some clue may be found as to where we are all—as a remnant family—headed. I have come to believe, now that I am past sixty, that family matters. Probably I should capitalize the two words and use them for a title. "Family Matters."

I have found a chart whose creation is not acknowledged anywhere, but since it stops at the bottom of the page with Mabel Fay Connelly, I presume it was done for or by Anita. Thanks, Anita. I am getting to feel as if I know you.

The chart traces the Connellys back to a common ancestor, one Trig Miles. I love the name. No dates are given for his term on earth. Nor for his daughter, Mary McFarland, who married a Thomas Simpson. Thomas had a son, John, who married a Margaret McIlroy. [The name repeats in our family, six or seven generations later.] Their daughter, Elizabeth, married a James Evans, and here the birth-and-death records begin, along with the dates of the marriages. James lived from 1793-1853, just missing the Civil War. Elizabeth was born in 1800 and lived to be ninety. She not only got to experience the bloody war but its terrible aftermath.

A grand succession of Simpsons, Gallaghers, Longs, Gibsons, and Evans follows. On the other side of the family, Anita's, are the Connellys, but do not begin for them until 1744 with John, who lived until 1798 and married Sara Wilson (1746-1824). The names on this, the left side of the chart, are also numerous. They include Pennington, Swartzlander, Platte, Logan, and many more Connellys—John, Joel, Edmund Riley, and Emery Platte, whose children we have just met (though admittedly from afar).

Anita traces her family back to Joel Connelly, who married Effie Pennington. Their children include Edmund Riley Connelly, whose sum from his first wife, Rebecca Platte, numbered 12. When she died young—"plumb wore out," it was said—he married Susan Rebecca McConnell. The given names have a sonorous echo. One Rebecca dies, Edmund R. soon finds another. He is a Connelly, she a McConnell. Hmmm.

The second Rebecca is my great-grandmother. She modestly had one daughter. It is Saraleigh, or Leigh. (She called herself both, all through her lifetime; Saraleigh seems reserved for formal or literary occasions, such as writing in her diary.) This means my grandmother came from a large family, but most of them are half-brothers and half-sisters. This gives my father, Edmund, and my aunt, Ruth, a host of cousins, or half-cousins. (I have none.)

Is there any such thing as a half-cousin? Or a semi-uncle? Beats me. I am unexperienced here.

It was important for Susan Rebecca to have a child, a daughter, for it was she, Leigh, who took care of her up until her death in 1926, which you will remember left Leigh free and unencumbered to travel with her daughter on the Grand Tour. It is also important because everyone should have somebody to take care of them in their old age and, today, not many do. Ruth followed suit, as we bridge players are wont to say, and religiously visited her comatose, unresponsive old mother, after she had had a series of stroke and was slipping not fast enough away into oblivion. It took her ten years to do it.

On the wall of my study is a picture of Edmund Riley Connelly—Anita's and my common ancestor. He is holding in his lap an alert nicely groomed infant of about one year, who is my father. The child looks levelly out upon the world, accepting it and not judging it. His age places the picture rather precisely in time. It is 1905.

Though a Connelly, I consider Edmund R. an Arnold. The same blood has mixed and courses through my veins. We even look alike. He is bearded as I am. We are in our Raging Sixties. He permits his beard to grow much longer than mine. I envy that and am tempted to try to approximate such wild length; why, it reaches below his Adam's apple. I might do it now, for this is winter.

Edmund R. parts his hair on the left. I do, too. (My father lifelong parted his in the middle, as does my son.) Great-Grampa's is white. Alas, so is mine, or rapidly going so. He wears spectacles, above which jut dark brows. Mine. If I had a grandson, I'd hold him just the same way in my lap, seated on my right thigh, trusting him not to pee on me, and he wouldn't. Both hands—farmer's hands—encircle the little boy, and there is more chance of the moon thudding into the carrot patch than of him letting his grandson fall.

Did he in turn hold all 13 children thus? They were clearly in good hands.

My father is so self-possessed. I remember him that way, too. Was he born so? It is maddening to contemplate. His eyes gaze out at a world that has no cause for fear, no source of trembling. They are measuring, confident, sure of how they will handle whatever comes up. My God, less than a year old and so sure of himself? What does he know that I, in my so many years, am still searching for?

The picture on the wall of my study is the same as in Anita's book. I inherited it. It is a prize. It makes me want to know more about him. To do so, I must turn again to Anita's book. She tells me that Joel Connelly married Effie Pennington, the daughter of Charles, one of the first Baptist minister in Cole County, Illinois, and a soldier in the Revolutionary War. They lived in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana, before settling in Illinois. During this period of time the boundaries of the states were not firmly fixed and wandered some. One sate quickly turned into another. Originally he was from North Carolina, the home of his father, John.

Effie's parents moved around with them. All were religious to a fault. Joel was a Justice of the Peace. As I recall, such were paid through the fines they charged. And he farmed. When he died in 1853, he left an estate of 1500 acres. Son Edmond, or Edmund's, share was 360 acres. This parcel contained the family home.

Joel's dying testimony to his children is moving. There is no doubting his faith. He tells them he has but a small estate to divide and, please, not to quarrel over their shares, for they are brothers and sisters. All they had in this world was each other. He hoped to meet them again in the next world. He believed it to be a real and tangible place. He asked them to reflect on the nature of eternity and to consider what such a length of time would be like spent in "the company of devils." It was a good reason to live Christian lives and to be kind to each other, even if they might have opposite impulses.

Effie continued to live with them up until her death at 88; she outlived her daughter, Rebecca, by two weeks. (How's that for guts?) She was a character, a tiny woman who reportedly weighed no more than 80 pounds. Nonetheless, she bore 11 children. She smoked a corncob pipe, which was usually lit by an ember from the fireplace, and the grandchildren vied to bring the torch.

The Civil War conscripted the sons and grandsons of Joel Connelly and they fought on both sides. Effie became seriously ill and thought she was going to die. She wanted to see her children again. Each managed to make it home briefly from the war, "sometimes through enemy lines," according to Anita. This satisfied her so much that she lived on more than another decade. Two of her family did not make it back from the war and were presumed dead.

Their children were Polly (b. 1807), Rebecca (b. 1809), John Charles (b. 1812), William Harrison (b. 1815?), Elijah Pennington, called Lige (b. 1838), Sarah, called Sallie (b. 1823), Joshiah Washington, called Wash (b. 1848), Edmund Riley (b. 1829), his twin sister, Effie, who died the same year as he did and only a month later, in 1907, and Cynthia, called perhaps Sinthy, (b. 1832), and who lived less than five years.

We know not much more about these ancestors, just bits and pieces. Rebecca married a David Weaver, who was older than she, and they had several children, perhaps some of which died during infancy. But a son, Joel Weaver, served with the Union Army in Company K, of the 123rd Illinois Infantry. He was mustered out a corporal in Nashville, Tennessee. John Charles was named after his two grandfathers. He married and had numerous children; when Pa Joel died, and his estate was divvied up by Executor Edmund R., each of the surviving children received a share: $22.09. A receipt was found for $66.27 more, which was to be divided among the minor children.

William Harrison signed a note with Brother Edmund R. for $100 for 56 acres of land on which to live and farm. He and his wife, Emily Jane, had taken their children to Catholic Mission, Kansas, where they had "a terrific struggle for food and against sickness." The rumor was that they fled to California, where he died, but this is probably erroneous, for he was reported living with Brother Edmund R. on his farm in 1892. He was "short set, a little heavy, with a beard." The man buried near Joel Connelly at Otterbein is probably Uncle Billy, as they called him.

Joel Jackson carried on the tradition of naming a son after the father. He was called Jack or Jackson. He married, but his wife's name is not recorded. They had children, one a son they named Joel, who died at age 25, which broke his father's heart (as we shall see), and there were some daughters. Young Joel left a son, though—Ulysses. Another son called Tip, probably named Harrison, died when he was but 22. The family moved to Wise Country, Texas, somewhat before 1870, and Jackson died there.

Elijah, called Lige, married twice. His first wife, Rebecca Margaret Stewart, died when she was 25; Caroline C. Koontz was his second wife. They had at least one child, Henry, for Edmund R. visited him in Sebaville, Indiana. Sarah, or Sallie, died at the age of 21, probably after a long illness.

Joshiah Washington, or Wash, was well-remembered by his nephew, Wirt. Wirt was Emery Platte's son, you'll recall (without looking at the program). Wash married Emily Stewart—she has the same last name as Lige's wife; a coincidence, or was she her sister?—and they had a slew of children, including Sarah Rebecca, Lucinda, Isabella, Riley, Franklin or J.F., Carrie, Emeline, George Washington, Jackson, John, and James Robert, the last named of which was made famous for dropping the final l out of Connelly and making it, thus, seem like an adverb.

Sarah Rebecca married a Joseph Goble and lived her life in Cole County; Isabelle married Irvin Goble; George Washington (probably again called Wash) married Laura Goble. My wife informs me that it was fairly common for sisters to marry brothers. If so, then to have a brother marry a sister of the married-into's brother(s) would not be odd, either. It is not an incestuous relationship, not in any way, for no family blood is mixed. Yet to us today it seems a bit odd and perhaps even exciting: to marry your sister's brother? In reality, though, in small, closed communities, with everybody farming, it is more a matter of practical necessity than of any thrilling, illicit romance. Girls came of marriageable age and boys sought out juicy young women to bear sons to help work the land. You drew from the lot that was at hand. The alternative was to turn out like Ort and Doc.

My notes indicate that Emily was the daughter of William Stewart and his wife, whose first name was not given. Her last name was Dicy and she was said to be part Cherokee Indian, but "the family was not proud of this." In old age she lived with her youngest son, Jim, and his family. She is buried in a town called Munice, which no longer exists. It is near Selling, Oklahoma.

No, I haven't heard of it either.

* * *

When the second Joel Connelly's namesake son died so early, he wrote to his brother, Edmund Riley, who seems to have been titular head of the family and its overseer. Anita

includes the letter in her family volume, adding, "I feel it has a message to parents, even, or more so, today. It is written

just as he wrote it.

I agree with her about its poignancy and importance. And so I reproduce it on as she did, without adding so much as a comma or missing initial cap. And the spelling is something else:

* * *

What is left to say, after such a poignant cry from the heart? Nothing, really. Perhaps . . . amen?

The letter is important—nay, critical—to understanding the time and the people. Had I—a man of small faith, admittedly—suffered the gross inequities of Jackson, I would curse God, not continue to praise him.

This letter then indicates the strength of faith of most people at a time when world wars, mass holocaust, nuclear destruction, Darwin, Freud, Marx, etc., had not yet driven belief into the soil and left in its place the great moral, religious, and spiritual drought. I read Uncle Jackson's words with fear and trembling. Its name is dread. The earth is a wonderful, terrible place, and he knows it better than I. How then can his faith . . . persist? Perhaps a true faith lasts, no matter what, when a false one crumbles at the roadside, at the first hint of stress.

I admire Jackson but do not envy him, nor his lot in life. His plight is Job's (or is it Abraham's)? God has taken his sons from him. His father Joel dead, he writes to the significant brother, Edmund Riley, titular head of the clan, for is it not a clan when there are so many children by each of the father's children and all acknowledge the bond of blood, their physical closeness, and the tie of geography? I envy him the pride and strength of blood, when my own times have seen the family disintegrate widely and all cohesion be lost.

I love them all, for these are my people. What an easy time we have of it today, every one of us, with our amassed creature comforts. I am proud of them—their courage—yet am enough one of them to say carelessly, in response to the question I so easily pose, "How did you find the strength to go on?" the answer, "I wasn't aware there was a choice."

Edmund Riley was Jackson's brother. I was astonished to learn that he had a twin sister, too. Effie married Joseph Outler and had two sons. A death of a Joseph is recorded in a letter dated 1863, at the end of the Civil War, but Anita does not know if he was Effie's husband, son, father-in-law, or some other. She followed her brother to Oklahoma and died there, as I said, in the same year, but a month apart.

Twins sometimes do this, as if yoked still by the umbilical cord still.

Were they close? I expect so. Aren't all twins, even if they deny it, even if they live hundreds of miles apart? And aren't they linked, even when separated by time and distance? I suppose it is needless to point out that Effie was named for her mother. Or that all the nephews called her Aunt Sis.

We now come to the children of Edmund Riley, and I shall approach them serially, as I did his son's, Emery Platte, and remark that these have more immediacy for me, since I am descended from the solitary issue of his second wife, Sarah Rebecca. That is Saraleigh, my maternal grandmother. And again I give thanks to Cousin Anita, to whom I am related in so tenuous but so firm a manner that I cannot trace out its course. Great-Aunt? Second, third, or fourth cousin? How many times removed? Whatever, I am grateful to her and our book.

Each in turn, I might add, though it is redundant.

Here are his children by his first wife, Rebecca Platte. Adeline, or Addie (b. 1852). She had five children by O. Wesley Pentzer. He taught at Westfield College and they were married in its chapel. One child, a son, died as an infant; a only daughter was a semi-invalid and died of a heart condition.

Mary Maria (b. 1854) died at the age of 6.

Emery Platte (b. 1856), whom we've already met (along with his brood), was the eldest son. He lived on a rented farm, after he first got married, but soon moved his growing family to Kansas, then Missouri, and finally to Lincoln County, Oklahoma. He was a stockman, and all those sons were . . . cowboys, not farmers! Malden Trumble (b. 1858) married Martha Green, known as Lou. With his two eldest daughters and his brother, Willis, migrated to Kansas. The eldest, Clara Mary, was bit by a rattler and almost died. The drought and cholera defeated them and they returned to Illinois. Later, he homesteaded in North Dakota and moved to Washington State. He is buried about 30 miles from where I live, which only proves I guess that people do escape the clutches of the Mid-West and generally head West. When Lou died of cancer, he remarried. The snake-bit daughter had six children and died of cancer herself. All are widely scattered, some living in Montana.

There is Oscar Vernon, called Uncle Doc (b. 1862). He married Lizzy Belle Ashmore and they had three children. With a name like that, I dug into Anita's book, but could find no picture of her or of Doc. Everybody should have a Lizzy Belle somewhere in the family annals. They lived on a farm near the old family home. A fire destroyed almost everything they owned. He died early of a kidney ailment.

Olive May (b. 1864) married Will Lambert. No children are listed. They lived in Rockville, Indiana, not very far away. They farmed. From letters that Anita read, they were an industrious, hard-working type. But then farming is like that. You work your way to the grave. He died before her. It is the usual way.

Ellis John (b. 1866) married Millie Jenkins and they had five children. They lived on several farms in the area, including the old Connelly farm. Later, they moved to Alberta, Canada, where they lived near his brother, Edmund. They are buried in Otterbein Cemetery, but their children are widely migrated to the West, mainly Arizona, with two of them remaining in Canada.

Willis Joel was Ellis John's twin, sometimes called the Major. Not much is known about him, including where he got the military title. A life-long bachelor, it was said he was a good companion and had a pleasing personality. He too lived for a while on the old home place and later shared a house with his brother nearby. But one of the Oklahoma relatives visiting in Illinois said their house was run-down and had an unkempt look. Both men died in a nursing home there.

Ione married a McConnell, when she was past thirty. He was a nephew of her step-mother. They lived in Cadiz, Ohio, where he was a blacksmith and town treasure. They had four sons, but only two lived to maturity and even one of those died young. Ione and her sister Olive were close and lived together in Westfield. (More later; in fact, in the next section.) Ione died at the home of her (sole surviving) son, Brice. She and my grandmother were close, too, and I recall Aunt Ione's name coming up in conversation and correspondence. Of course she was my father's aunt, not mine. But in terms of tracing out relatives and finding my own starting point I feel—with the reverberation of her name in my skull—that we are getting closer. Closer to what? Closer to something significant. Perhaps the start of Modern Times.

Ione's husband was Charles Brice McConnell, son of Samuel McConnell; my Grandmother Leigh's, mother, Sara Rebecca, was also a McConnell, as noted earlier. Thus, Ione Connelly became a McConnell, just as Saraleigh McConnell became a Connelly. (I hope I've got it straight.) They had a unique relationship. Besides being half-sisters, they were a little more. They had a common ancestor, not far back. Only Ione and Leigh understood the bond and its ties. Try as I might, I cannot track it down. Nor is there any need to, except out of mild curiosity. I think Leigh, Ione (sometimes called Iona), and Olive all made hats and had a shop, or shoppe, together.

Edmund (see how the names perpetuate?) Allen married Kate Laws. He was called Ed and was born in 1872. They had three children. They lived in Rimbey, Alberta. He was an auctioneer. One son wrote poetry as a hobby.

Rebecca (yet another one?) was born in 1875 and was known as Beppa. I remember her being listed as among my father's aunts in some dim, distant communication. She married Dick Clark, but the family didn't like him. (Both these names appear on the distaff side of my family, oddly.) They had one child, a daughter, who died of scarlet fever at the age of eleven months. Beppa died shortly afterwards of consumption. (Anita puts quotes around the word, as if she doesn't quite believe it.) She describes Beppa's life as short and sad.

Edmund R. had a second wife, Rebecca. Counting Beppa, this made three Rebeccas all living near the same time, but nobody seems to have gotten them mixed up, for one was dead, one but a child, and the third was the wife of the family. She was well past 35 at the time of her marriage and probably knew him from before. A granddaughter, a Mary Connelly Beasley, who lived all her life in the area, says that no doubt relatives brought them together. He had all these kids to raise and no longer a wife to do it for him. He was a busy farmer. And she, at her age, had no other prospects except making more hats with her sister in their shop, or shoppe, in Cadiz. It turned out that she was good at managing a household. Most of the work, however, was done by the unmarried daughters living at home still. It was the custom.

And, lastly, we come to Grandma, Saraleigh (b. 1878), sole child of this Rebecca and the 13th of Edmund R. You have already met her, either in the nursing home in Villa Park, Illinois, comatose a decade, or as we'd prefer to remember her at fifty, tall, robust, but putting on weight, listening with her daughter, Ruth, to the lecture on "Literary Landmarks in Europe" put on by Miss Riley, in the lounge of the ship Andania, on the Cunard Line, in July, 1928, the sea getting rougher, the dinner eaten a few hours earlier beginning to churn at midships. But life soon got better, the ship to dock in Glasgow in a few days and the two-month adventure to get underway.

Or remember from earlier a girl with a diary she didn't really want to keep and did not know what to say in it, either God's truth or the things she didn't [dare to] tell Mother, either or both of which were benign matters, and charming to boot. I shall never forget how Leigh dedicated the diary to herself (of course!) and wished that—instead of having to write in it on another Sunday—company would come to call and it could be put off again.

Her life was based on "love, forgetfulness of self, and service to others. She was brave, patient, and sweet during her many years of helpless invalidism. Never once did she lose her faith or her will to live. Her wonderful courageous spirit never failed. For many years she was paralyzed, unable to move or to speak. But her love and courage shone in her eyes. Those who attended her often said, 'She talks with her eyes.' They were truly the 'windows of her soul.'"

Who says all this?

Daughter Ruth does, and I will accept these words as The World According to Ruth, though my own memory is not so up-beat. I saw Gramma, too, remember, in vague 1950.

"Look, Bob," she recognizes you, Ruth or my father told me, as I hung over the white bed and stared at this ghost of a woman who now had the life-long weight of Effie and whom I remembered as being tall and being of at least 160 pounds. She was half this weight now, unmoving, her body and face frozen into position.

"How do you know she does?" I asked cruelly, which was my manner, then.

"From the way she blinks her eyes," Ruth said evenly.

Yes, I guess so. I will not deny that version at this late date. I looked deep into those watery eyes as she strove to force away the tears with those transparent lids. The tears, I knew, were a product of the illness and a constant in her life. But weren't they also "the windows of her soul," Ruth? Your words.

Yes.

Right, Anita?

(Right, Bob.)

My own memories of her are different and interspersed throughout this narrative.

* * *

Coz Anita was smart enough to collect memories of Edmund Riley (who now looks down at me from my study wall, holding the infant namesake, my father, already 15 years dead, and maybe smirking at my effort to get all this down on paper) from those who knew him best, namely his grandchildren and neighbors.

A staunch Republican, he wasn't converted to religion until he was thirty. It was the United Brethren Church, there in Westfield, Illinois. One of his neighbors wrote that an early memory was of seeing Edmund and his wife and daughters headed to church on Sunday morning in their spring wagon. But Son Willis appended this. When he got away from home, he sure wouldn't go to church all the time."

And where were the sons?

I'd guess they got to stay at home. Well, you needn't go to church to be religious, as Pa Joel has told us, in his deepest torment (and I believe him), but it helps as far as the neighbors are concerned. If you care about their good opinion. Most men don't. Belief was strong, there being nothing but apathy to challenge it. (Can you picture Uncle Ort or Doc going to church, or Ken or Wirt, every Sunday, even after the latter pair were married? Nor can I.)

Joel had donated the land on which Westfield College stood. Edmund R.—each in his own time—was a charter member of it, which I take corresponds to being a member of the college's board of regents or founders. He continued to give money to it for its operation and expected his many children to go there and get an education. They did. He was a strong patriarch, harsh and kind. It's the way a man was supposed to be.

During the Civil War, Edmund reportedly paid a man $100 to serve for him, believing that he should stay home and attend to his growing family. This was commonly done by those who could afford to do it. At that time he was supposedly taking care of several other families. Families not his own.

Effie, Edmund's tiny mother with the corncob pipe, lived with them after Joel's death. It is how things were. His first wife, Rebecca, came from Tuscarawas County, Ohio, and was the daughter of John Platte and Belinda (Logan) Platte Porter. Her father was a school teacher, who died of consumption at the age 42. Belinda married again. They are all buried in Shiloh Cemetery a short distance away from the graves of Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother.

Rebecca, like her father, died at age 42, after bearing 12 children. She was one of four daughters. Less than a year later, Edmund R. married again. She was Susan Rebecca McConnell. Her mother was a Gallagher, Susan, and she had married Michael McConnell. Susan was born in County Donegal, Ireland, in 1795. Michael was a chairmaker and house painter, later going into the grocery business. They had ten children. It was one of them, Samuel Brice McConnell, who married Ione, who Anita's book explains was a stepdaughter of Susan Rebecca.

What is the relationship of a brother to a step-daughter? Step-uncle? Again, no family blood doth flow through those veins. And did Edmund, whose first wife was Rebecca, call his second wife Rebecca, too, which of course was her name? If so, who did he mean, and whom was he thinking of? Maybe it was easiest to marry a woman with the same name as the first. That way, in your mind, the name Rebecca simply meant, "Woman," or "Woman, come here." And this was easy, at bed- time, on a farm where there was never enough hands to help.

We come back again (at least I do, for I've solved nothing yet) to the challenging figure of Edmund R. I don't think he is an enigmatic figure, only a distant patriarchal one, as hard today to pin down as he was back then. When his first wife died, his mother, Effie, lived only two months longer. After all, this had been her home with Joel. Why go on? The first Rebecca's mother came to stay with them for a short while after her daughter's death and helped care for Beppa. This was Belinda Platte Porter. She may have lived there for the next couple of years, after which she died herself. After all, there was a new wife, and nothing left for her to do in life, her children either all grown and moved away or . . . themselves dead. People literally believed that you would be united with your family and friends in heaven. So why not . . . hasten to join them?

Anita reports there might have been "some friction" with the step-children and the matter of dividing up the property, after her husband died. He was affluent and had both a town house and the farmhouse, with its extensive lands. He wrote his will in such a way that she would have the use of both places while she lived. And she lived for another 20 years.

It would have been natural, the step-children hating the one who replaced their mother and whom they were expected to house and feed, honor and obey. Some of the sons wanted to break the will, so that the children would receive what they thought was their legal due. This conflict was preserved in letters from some of the brothers to Emery. But letters from Rebecca indicate she had a deep concern for them all.

Some believed that Edmund's will reflected accurately how he felt about matters and represented his wishes; therefore it should be respected and obeyed. The farmhouse was originally Joel's and had been added on to during Edmund's time. It was named Hickory Villa—at least that is what my Grandmother called it.

The farm lies a couple of miles outside the town of Westfield, off in a northwesterly direction. There was also a decent townhouse he left them. It was near the Otterbein Cemetery and that is where most of them are buried. (The McConnells are buried in Cadiz, Ohio.) When the Connelly daughters married, each came down the staircase on the left side of the house and the ceremony was performed in the parlor.

It is the farmhouse that is most important to the family, for it was the homestead of Grandpa Joel. It faced to the south and sat in the midst of blue grass pasture, with oak and hickory trees standing between it and the road. To Clifford (the son of Edmund A. Connelly) it was a warm and homey place. It was built entirely of hardwood, oak and hickory, hauled there by ox teams from Chicago.

The Connelly School was across the road and to the east, about half a mile away. It was built of brick. In 1860, the first Rebecca's sister, Amanda Platte, lived with the family there and taught school.

Clifford remembers his teacher as Miss Roxy Goble and that she was pretty and kind.

Goble? That rings a bell. I looked up some earlier marriages. Sara Rebecca married Joseph Goble, didn't she? Sister Isabella married Irvin Goble. And George Washington Connelly married Laura Goble. These were the children of Emery Platte and grandchildren of Edmund Riley. Thus, the school teacher who taught Clifford and his brother, Warren, was a relative, or soon to become one. Probably a sister. She was a relative many times over. Two sisters and a brother had married Connellys. No wonder the first-grader found her attractive. I suppose there was too much time standing between them for her to wait for him to grow up and marry her. But did she ever think of the prospect?

* * *

The old farmhouse was imposing. I have seen it only in pictures and it is no more. It was two-storied, with six matching framed windows across the front, upstairs, and a porch supported by four slender columns running below the windows, with a built-in off to the right as you face it and some obscure other building almost balancing it to the left. It was impressive, almost baronial, and I can see why Clifford was attached enough to it and its homey elegance to return to it in 1928 and visit it. Uncle Ellis and his family were living in it then, and before him Willis, the unmarried twin, who shared it with a tenant. Later it was rented out. It fell into quick disrepair. Clifford was distressed to see it in such bad shape. He retained a few items that held memories for him—the old hall tree for hanging caps and umbrellas on, some odd pieces of furniture, an old wooden bedstead that was already 200 years old, and a dinner bell that had been hung high on a post in the backyard and was used by the cook to summons the workers in from the field for meals.

Clifford returned to the homestead again in 1970 and found the house falling down. Nobody had lived in it for a good while. The roof had settled down over the porch. It was "a sad, abandoned wreck," he reported. The windows were gone. However, a good barn was still standing. He speculated that it was the same one built by the second Rebecca after the death of her husband in 1914. The old house was surrounded by overgrown bushes and trees.

During the later years of his life, Edmund Riley moved out of the homestead and lived for two years in Charleston while the town house was being built. This is a handsome building, but does not have the stateliness or dignity of the farm house. It stands on the corner of Mulberry and Madison in Westfield and, in 1970, was deemed habitable.

Edmund Riley lived there for only a year before he sickened and died on March 15, 1907. It was a Friday night. Funeral services were held in the chapel of the college that he had help found by Dr. R. Seneff, who was assisted by the college president and a Reverend Flowers. (Flowers was sent for and flowers were sent for.)

According to his obituary notice, he simply laid himself down "without ache or pain," told his family not to say goodbye, "but in some good clime bid him good morning." I think there is more than a little ministerial poetic license displayed here. But then I live in different times, one in which true faith has been lost by many decades ago, and I may be lacking in insight into the genuine nature of those more reverential sentiments.

Oh yes, one last item on the house. When the homestead was sold soon after his death, following years of neglect, it was bought by—are you ready for this?—Orren Goble.

There seems to have been a slew of Gobels. I think immediately of the Snopes family of William Faulkner, but I'm sure they are nothing like Flem and I.O. and the gang, for we married so many of them. How could we repeatedly be so wrong?

The relationship of the Gobles to the Connellys, according to Anita's Aunt Jennie Saucier, is that of cousins. Oh? The disposition of the children's shares in the estate went something like this, according to the aunt: Uncle Willis sold his share for $600 first. Leigh, Belle, and Orin Pentzer bought it from him. Later, Ed[mund A.], Ione, and Ellis sold theirs for the same amounts. The others held out for $1000 each. And got it.

In the summer of 1931, Aunt Blanche and Husband Earl took a trip east. Naturally (at least naturally to us traveling Arnolds) they stopped to see relatives all along the way. Then they drove to California. On the way home, they stopped off in Westfield, spending Saturday night with Aunt Belle, Jennie, and Mary. They got rooms at the hotel there and had dinner together. They decided to go out to the old home place, since they were the only descendants of Edmund Riley who cared what had happened to their old home.

It was rented out, presumably by the new owner, Cousin-by-marriage Orren Goble. They wanted to take a last look at the house they had grown up in. It was in bad shape, judging by the outside. They knocked at the door, these three aging ladies, on a hot day.

The renter would not let them in.

* * *

I began the Connelly section with Emery Platte, but ranged widely and zigzagged through time in my search for ancestors, jumping back to his father, Edmund Riley and farther back to Edmund Riley's father, Joel. Then one of many discrepancies began to annoy me. I decided to take a second, then a third, look at what Anita reported about her grandfather, Emery Platte. What was it they all did on their farm? What did they raise? What was their crop, say?

I guess I'm a little dense. I think I am slow in coming to a realization about of facts and clues that must be obvious to others. For instance, Edmund Riley's son, Emery Platte, moved to Oklahoma and set up his own spread. I presumed he had received his inheritance. It turns out he borrowed the $700 to buy it from his father and was not able to repay it until his father was dead. He paid it to the second Rebecca in 1913. But repay it he did, please note.

I thought he was another farmer, in a family of farmers. I believed that he cleared the land, ploughed it, planted it, and with a little luck and in due course harvested crops. Well, it turns out the land was mostly cleared. So they planted it. They raised a variety of crops, including cotton, but that wasn't all. Here and there the word "ranch" is mentioned among people's activities, namely the sons. One went off and worked on somebody else's ranch for a while. I didn't give the word second thought. Later, I reflected on it. They don't call a farm a ranch, do they?

Oklahoma is largely range land. On it is raised "stock." Stock means cattle. Sure, Emery (Wirt always called him EP) grew crops, but what he really was after was grass. Stock eat range land. What is meant is horses and cattle. EP could be a brand, as well.

Everett Platte and his sons were ranchers. Primarily they raised cows. Thus they and their hired hands were cowboys.

My God, I am derived from cowboys. I mean, descended. My ancestors rode the range and herded cattle. Cows. This is how they handled the transition from Illinois to Oklahoma. They continued to grow crops, but they added to them horses and cows, and a few pigs.

Pictured in 1907 and again 1928 in front of the Connelly homestead in Oklahoma dressed in their Sunday best—boiled overalls and shirts and their daily soiled hats—the same family members look like farmers. Well, that's how they started out. Real cowboys don't wear spiked heels and fancy hats. They don't wear tasseled shirts and pants with piping down the sides. They wear ordinary work clothes, not costumes. Their audience is entirely bovine.

I, a city boy, who likes to visit the country only if it has a stream running through it and some fish, mistook them from their appearances. Cows are what you avoid when you must pass through a pasture on your way to a favorite fishing hole. When they have calves (and they can calf throughout the year), cows get testy and some get downright mean. I've met a few. I've yet to be gored.

Of course. Cows. A note from Anita in her book quotes Ione and has to do with her father, Wirt. He is 91. He has 34 cows and calves, and "gets out" each morning to feed them. I remember seeing a letterhead belonging to Emery Platte stating grandly that he was a breeder of "polled short horn cattle and Poland China hogs."

I have previously feared cows, though only a little. They aren't going to crush me under their great bodies or even step on my foot with their cloven one. But now that I know I am the heir of cowboys, however, I will pass through their ranks fearlessly. I may even bluff them out of my way with curious head-and-shoulder feints, for proud cowboy blood runs through my veins. Evermore I shall take a less circuitous route to the river and be, let us say, more at home on the range.

* * *

Emery Platte headed the Oklahoma Connellys. He was Edmund Riley and the first Rebecca's first-born son and grew up on the farm and went to Westfield College, but encountered his Jennie at the age of 22 and dropped out to get married, just as kids do today. They had probably known each other slightly all of their lives.

Jennie was an Evans. Her mother, Sarah M. [Gallagher] Evans died when she was five, and her life afterwards was chaotic. She stayed with Edmund Riley Connelly's family until her father married again. This puts her early into the Illinois household. Anita Bailey doesn't know why she stayed there and speculates that they had a mutual relative in the county or else their mothers knew each other in Ohio.

Her father married the woman who was her husband-to-be's aunt, Amanda Platte—if I've got it right. It seems like this sort of thing happened often. People married "close," but the blood lines did not cross. I mean, nobody married his sister or a even cousin, no matter how many times removed.

Jennie stayed with various relatives, bouncing around, and when she married the college student she was working at a boarding house in Westfield. This was on March 14, 1878. It was the same day of the same month they were to have the 50-year anniversary bash, the one that is pictured twice and that so many remembered afterwards, marking the only time some of the distant relatives ever saw each other in a lifetime.

I believe all of them are now dead. When I tried to contact Anita in Tulsa, there was no record of her or her husband. I presume they are departed.

Emery and Jennie rented a farm near the homestead outside Westfield and worked the land. It was near the cemetery. Nothing remains of the rented farm today. Here the first four of their 13 children were born: Wirt, Arthur Ira, and Ken. Often the little boys saw their uncles, the twins Ellis and Willis. Jennie didn't like their influence on the boys and thought they were being taught "too much meanness" by them. She urged Emery to move away.

Jennie didn't like Emery's "cronies," with whom he played cards and perhaps drank a little corn liquor. She wanted to get her husband away from their evil influence. (Similarly, her own bachelor children in due course would be said to have a bad influence on their siblings and their children, and separation was again recommended as the wise course. So it goes.)

Besides, they were "completely surrounded by relatives," an aunt reports. All of the available land was gone and to rent some was next to impossible. Further, there had been—all agreed—too much intermarriage. So they moved to McPherson County, Kansas, a place where other relatives had migrated. Perhaps they were only sick and tired of the local Connellys. With good cause.

In Kansas Mabel and Nina were born. Here they encountered plagues of grasshoppers, blizzards, and droughts. This was neither hospitable to farming or raising a family. So they moved to what was afterwards called Connelly Springs in Missouri. Today it is known as Fairhaven. Olive and Ernest were born here.

In December, 1892, they made their final move as a family. It was to Lincoln County; Oklahoma was a territory still. Emery's cousin, Frank, and Frank's wife, Mary, and their children, made the trip with them in covered wagons, no less. Anita's mother, Mabel, was seven at the time and remembered the journey vividly.

With eight young children in the family already, Mabel was expected to help with the cooking. They bought food along the way, including eggs. At one place they camped in a farmyard and used the farmer's stove to bake a large supply of bread for the trip. They came to the Arkansas River and had to cross it with the wagons and livestock.

Uncle Wirt recalled other things: His mother cooking, in one skillet, sweet potatoes and apples, which were a "fried delicacy." He and his brothers were so impressed with the "beautiful red birds" [cardinals?] they saw along the way that they got the idea of trapping them and selling them when they got to Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, but when they got there the same birds abounded and they had to turn theirs loose.

They arrived in February and camped overnight in a wagon yard. They stayed there before they found a place to be rented, the Keen Place, near Fallis, and about seven miles from Wellston. They lived in a tent for four years until they could build a barn out of logs.

Anita thinks they may have contracted malaria, for Jennie got sick and Ernest ran a high fever for days. They took quinine for it. Jennie took so much medicine that she attributed her later deafness to it. The family's diet was mostly cornbread and molasses.

Finally they found a farm to buy. It was only a mile from the town of Wellston. They paid a man named Lero $220 for his equity. Thereafter they made annual payments to the government until it was paid for.

There was a one-room cabin on the land. It measured 12 by 16 feet. But there was a well dug. Their kitchen was the old tent and they pitched it alongside. About fifty feet away they decided to build the main house. It looked like a barn and had a sleeping loft across one end. (In later years it became a chicken house and then a garage.) In 1905, with their family firmly established at 13 children, they built a large house, one with two storeys and six rooms for the 15 of them, not counting relatives and visitors. It must have seemed spacious and grand, after the cabin.

The land was fertile. Emery and his sons planted orchards, vineyards, and berries. Pecans did well. They raised horses, hogs, and of course cattle. He took prizes repeatedly at the fairs and livestock shows. It made them all proud.

Emery was now doing well. He, as had his father, Edmund Riley, in his time, became benefactor to his children, mainly his sons. But the married daughters returned to the family farm whenever there was occasion and sometimes when there wasn't any. Anita remembers spending every other summer on the farm. It had things they didn't have at home, on their farm, such as a windmill, a basement, and a porch swing. Roads were bad, she remembered, and they got there by way of a Ford touring car.

Two sons never left the farm. Ort said he "stayed home to take care of Ma," but the others doubted his reasons. Ernest, called Doc, had other excuses. It was not an unpleasant place to be. There was more money now and better food. A piano was bought—doubtless Jennie's idea. Inez and Blanche took lessons. Olive tried some, but the piano was not for her. The boys, of course, considered it "sissy stuff."

About the time of the First World War they purchased a touring car, a Dodge. The idea was, all could use it. It was for running errands in. Pa Emery wanted Clyde and Ralph to learn how to drive it and care for it.

Schools got better. Everybody was expected to get educated up to his or her limits. And everybody worked, for there was never a time when everything got done and stayed that way, especially for the women. The kids worked on the farm before and after school and during vacations. Of course some of them hated school. Especially the boys. I can guess which ones.

Anita, the writer, remembered her grandfather clearly. With his grandchildren, at least, he could be jolly and always kidded them, especially the girls. As for Grandma Jennie, Anita found her quiet. (Of course Jennie could not hear.) Anita never got close to her. Looking back, she attributes this to Jennie always being tired and sick.

The Fiftieth Anniversary Reunion was a major occasion in everybody's life and it is what inspired Anita, long afterwards, to write her family history. All the children and grandchildren came to Wellston for the reunion. Anita's father could not, or would not, attend, for he had his own farm to work. Aunt Blanche, who was teaching school, came by for Mabel and her three daughters. What a time they had! Anita thinks they arrived on Saturday and stayed until Monday. Grandma Jennie's half-sister, Aunt Grace Taylor, came all the way from New York; she was also Grandpa's cousin. Ira Evans came; he was Grandma Jennie's brother. And there was a whole host of cousins, aunts, and uncles she and her sisters had never so much as glimpsed.

Tables were set up outdoors and plenty of food spread out. The weather held good. After the big meal, they gathered round (the piano?) and sang, "Darling, I Am Growing Old" and "When You and I Were Young, Maggie."

Jennie was to die the next year. Never in good health and broken down by hard work and birthing 13 children, she was deaf, stooped, with a very hunched back, and had the previous July developed an ulcer on her leg that would not heal. Still she raised her vegetable garden, canned, and prepared meals for at least four men. She washed their clothes the old-fashioned way—on a washboard.

She shuffled around the house, working, mumbling, hearing little of what was spoken to her. Tired of always yelling, they (especially the men) stopped aiming their words in her direction. They took her for granted and with cause. Jennie was always there, there was food on the table, the clothes were clean and folded. On the night of November 14, 1929, she served the evening meal she had prepared alone. After the dishes were cleared away, stacked in the sink, and washed, she excused herself and went to the bedroom, where she laid herself down and died.

All the children and grandchildren came to her funeral. Anita remembered that Grannie hadn't wanted to be a burden to anyone. And wasn't. It was the first death-in-the-family any of them could remember and came as a shock—the fact that a life might end.

The funeral service was preached in the family home. Emery had come from a very religious family; they were all members of the United Brethren Church. Emery had given them money. But Jennie was baptized a Presbyterian as a small child. The two parents had not attended church regularly. Anita speculates that maybe it was because farmers are dead-tired by Sunday. (Sounds good to me.) Or else, she wonders, they had moved around so much during the early, hard years of their marriage that they had gotten out of the habit of regular church attendance. Anyway, it was a Methodist minister who preached the service.

We were always a devout, non-denominational, non-practicing family, I recall.

Two years later, Grandpa Emery and his cousin, Frank, decided to head out to Texas and see some distant cousins. They went to Palacious (wonderful word!), Texas, and were visiting Dr. W. W. Stone, who was descended from Joshua, a brother of Joel. There Emery caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia. Frank brought him home to Clyde's place, where he died on January 22.

All the children and grandchildren gathered at the homestead for the funeral. A while afterwards, the will was read. There followed the long dissention already mentioned. And then things fell apart and the home place was lost.

* * *

Sound familiar, the case histories of these two families, each a generation apart? It does to me, too, and I keep getting them and theirs mixed up, maybe because the children of each of the patriarchs numbered a baker's dozen. Or is it because the ownership of land often comes to the same sad end? Dispute and dissention and loss?

I tell it as Anita tells it, and I have grown quite fond of this woman who must be a cousin, an infinite number of times removed. Last night I tried to phone her in Tulsa, but she was not to be found in the directory under several family names. Tonight I shall try again.

She would be 78 and is possibly still not alive. Repeated calls to directory service in Sapulpa and Pawnee, Oklahoma, turn up no Wallaces, no Harneys, no Brummetts. I am at a loss. I'd like to say hello, if it isn't already past time to say goodbye. Anita seems real to me.

Her self-portrait will have to do in place of the real human contact I so desire. It comes—as does nearly everything else—from her book. She was the daughter of Mabel Fay Connelly, one of Edmund Riley's daughters. She had four daughters of her own, the second of which was still-born. She believes her parents— more farmers—wished for sons to work their land and daughters arrived as a disappointment. (Daughters generally believe this, whether true or not.) They grew up poor.

Her father, James Robert Bruce Bailey, was 50 when he married, his wife 25. Their daughter thinks both were set in their ways. Anita was the middle daughter. All three girls were freckled and wore long braided hair at a time when others wore bobbed. She says she disliked hard work and her older sister, Gladys, was the real worker. (Yes, but Anita was the writer, and research such as hers and the writing of genealogies is nothing if not hard work.) They wore hand-me-down clothes and saw very few people, for they lived on a remote farm. She characterizes her early life as one of loneliness. She calls herself a dreamer. But I think she was also a do-er. It is a good combination, and often produces a writer.

In her introduction she cautions us—as did Joel, whom she considers to be "the trunk of this family tree," especially in his dying words to his children—to remember to be kind to each other. She puts it better, though: "It is likely that each generation has had its quarrels, and that there may have been hard feelings among kith and kin. So it is bound to be true that the entire true stories of these people cannot be told, as I have heard them, especially where there are descendants still living. The thoughts and memories of each differ, even from the same parents. So I will write according to the best of my ability. . . ."

It's the most any of us can do, Anita. You did a fine job, by the way. And thanks.

I am trying to figure our the relationship of Patrick Gallagher to me. How many greats away is he, on the maternal side of my patriarchal family? Let's give him four and let it go at that. And what about John Galla[g]her, his father? He said the name was ugly enough with the one g. One more great ought to do it for him.

John Gallagher (let us restore the conventional spelling) was born in Ireland. He married Elizabeth Long. I am going to give them both an arbitrary date of birth. Say it is 1765. This would make John 30 years old when his sixth child, Susan, was born. Since she was born in County Donegal, I will presume that he and Elizabeth were from there. He may have been older, for he courted Elizabeth for eight years. Today many marriages do not last the length of their courtship.

He was Catholic, his wife-to-be Protestant. Therein probably lies one reason for the long courtship. Family, money, and work may comprise three other large barriers to their getting married. It was said that after they were wed, they would start out for church on a given Sunday morning, but would part after a distance and head for different churches. I would guess he was a blacksmith, for he had a son who was one, but that does not necessarily follow.

Elizabeth bore him six children, then died. They are Peter, John, James, Nancy, Patrick, and Susan. Susan is the one I am most interested in, for she married Michael McConnell. They were the parents of Susan Rebecca McConnell, my great-grandmother. She married Edmund Riley Connelly. There were Gallaghers in that branch of my family, as well. His son, Emery Platte, had married the daughter of Jennie Evans Connelly. (Sara Galla[g]her Evans was her mother.) The relationship of the two women is first cousins.

They may have been once or twice removed. I'm not sure what "removed" means, having no cousins myself. I think it refers to the fact that it marks an advance in time. It might be a step-brother or step-sister's side of the family that one is related to. Or else it is an aunt by one's father or mother's first wife, and you are descended from the second. Or vice versa. It is almost always the wife's side of my family because women simply wore out young and died, and the husband had a farm and a houseful of kids to provide for and couldn't handle them all by himself, so he found himself a new wife. I don't think romance much figured in it. There wasn't time. Too much work to be done. Get married, get to the tasks at hand.

This provided a wonderful opportunity for aging maidens who had missed out on the first go-round. And they might have less childbearing, as a consequence, live longer. That must have been their fervent hope. Many women—at least in my family—lived long. They existed up to age ninety. In fact so many did, that it almost seems a design element. My own mother, and her mother before her, fell only a couple of months short of the target decade. Neither were hard workers nor bore more than two children apiece. Maybe work only made you seem hardier.

John Gallagher, now a widower, decided to come to America. His son, Patrick, led the way. It is what was going round. If you didn't like your situation at home, you could quit your job in a huff and pack your bags—if you had enough money for passage. It is what Patrick did. He was sixteen, apprenticed to a blacksmith, a man he did not get along with and who treated him unkindly; he may have passed this behavior pattern on to his own sons, which were many. And they to theirs, for there was a grandchild who complained his father made him go naked under his leather trousers and sleep nude. Maybe they were too poor underpants and pajamas. Patrick was said to have sired twenty children. Not that many are listed in my records, however. I count a modest 14.

I am getting ahead of my story, however. So Patrick came to America and wrote home fetchingly enough that others wanted to join him here, namely, James, James's wife (who is unnamed), and the youngest, Susan. The crossing was horrendous. A storm kept them in the hold for five whole days, during which time they could not reach the ships's provisions or its fresh water. All were sick, especially Susan, so the little cornmeal that was near at hand was of not sustaining. She described the waves as "mountain high," she who had never seen a mountain higher than what Donegal County offered. She was afraid the ship would break apart and sink. She and her close shipboard friend, Prue Johnson, climbed upon a huge chest and clasped each other in their arms; if they were going to drown, it would be in each other's arms.

Eventually the storm petered out and the seas grew calm. Though their destination was Philadelphia or possibly Baltimore, the captain changed plans and took the ship to St. John, New Brunswick. There they booked passage on a schooner headed for Philadelphia. Horseback carried them to Cadiz, which is in Ohio.

Susan's plan was to keep house for Patrick, but after the long journey she discovered that he had a real wife. Big surprise. She had originally planned to return to Ireland after a few years of sisterly housekeeping in a strange land. Thoughts of the rough crossing must have been fresh in her head. She was in a quandary, with no job and no place to live. Cadiz looked good to her. It was rock-steady and surrounded by farming country, with plenty of fresh produce that was cheap. Instead of going home early, she stayed on. She found herself a husband shortly.

He was Michael McConnell, a man born in Baltimore on July 19, 1801. He moved with his parents to Stubenville. In 1820 he shifted his base to Cadiz and lived there for the next 52 years, at which time he died. He worked as a house painter and a chair maker, but soon went into the grocery business. What I know of him is from Harry Burns McConnell's privately printed McConnell Genealogy, which in many ways is the principal history of Cadiz up through 1940. Uncle Harry was a printer and town politician, a staunch Republican. He wrote most of what went into the Cadiz Republican, which he later bought and named appropriately.

Harry details the different street locations of Michael's itinerant grocery. I will condense here. One store was next to the bank; another where Tony Gatto's Pool Room now is; the final site was later occupied by Newlin's Confectionery.

Harry is more interested in his grandfather's civic duties than in his business deals. Also in his religious and moral character, which was exemplary (for those who count this sort of thing highly). He was first a Democrat, but soon saw the light and became a Republican, something which surely made Harry happy, for his newspaper proudly displayed its political affiliation proudly in its name.

Michael was a strong anti-slavery man and identified with the Free Soil Party. Uncle Harry says his grandfather was probably the first Cadiz voter to support at the polls a prohibition candidate. As he aged, this grocer became more and more reflective on the Bible and what it had to say about the use of "intoxicating liquor." He filled six large notebooks with biblical references to booze and its abuses. He kept these handy to quote or read aloud from. The idea of prohibition appealed to him greatly and he knew its time was coming. He called those opposed to it "fanatics," and Harry says drily that those who were "wet" no doubt applied the term to him.

He was also against tobacco, and those of us who have given up the evil weed are apt to see him as visionary. Lung cancer had not risen to the epidemic stage it was to do, a hundred years later. This put the grocer in a quandary. Some said he would not sell tobacco in his store. But others remembered how he kept some very fine cigars to pass out to special customers on occasions.

One day a drayman drove up to Grandfather McConnell's store and was about to unload a shipment, but the owner rushed out when he saw the barrel of whiskey that was headed for a local saloon. He told the driver not to off-load his goods but to drive on, returning only if and when his dray was free of "contaminating company."

Way to go, Gramps.

He continued his serious study of the Bible and worried the conclusions that could be drawn from its parables and examples. For instance, he wrote: "To drink wine is a sin, and you ask why. It made Noah drunk, and as it is true that any intoxicating liquor, wine or cider, is the source of drunkenness, and drunkenness is a sin, a form of self-murder, and powerful to stir up wrath, then is not such drink sinful?" Well, logically speaking, it does not necessarily follow, no, but then I am a man known to imbibe a couple of cans of beer a night, so I am not fit to judge.

And: ". . . if the drinking of intoxicating liquor is sinful, is not the sale of such liquors for drinking purposes also sinful? Therefore, we do wrong to license the sale of intoxicating liquor." The logic here is impeccable and I cannot disagree.

Cousin Harry tells us that Michael McConnell's house is presently (1940, that is) occupied by Smith Jones, which sounds like a company, but previously it was a showroom for the chairs that Michael made. It was on East Warren Street, for those familiar with Cadiz, or who would unlike myself like to go there and see it.

In 1874 a temperance crusade swept the country and Cadiz was a long way from dry. The leading citizens of the town, all those not in the liquor business, united to drive the intoxicating stuff if not into its grave at least underground. I am proud to state that the McConnells were at the head of this drive and united. Son John and Daughter Nancy spoke at public meetings, and she served as one of the "crusading women who stood picket duty in front of the saloons and also with other crusaders visited them in an effort to persuade the proprietors to close up and quit the business."

There were 75 women who participated in the drive, and when they went inside one of the saloons to voice their opposition it was Nancy who led them in prayer.

Way to go, Nance.

Of course this is a liberal speaking and one who is—to a certain way of thinking—the product of the moral degradation brought on by the intoxicating liquors they feared, and signifies a long departure from the Christian temperance practices they all advocated.

By the way, there are many old photos in Uncle Harry's book. My ancestors look remarkably alike. The men are white haired and bearded. Usually their beards are shaved back away from their features and they have no mustaches; it is a little as though they are peering out from a white oval picture frame. Their expressions too remarkably similar, a little lost-looking, a bit rueful, greatly resigned. Their fire has gone out, long ago. Michael tilts his head about the same number of degrees to starboard as is the deviation of magnetic North. They each wear a floppy bow tie, easy to tie, and it is of some soft fabric that looks to be velour. Not velvet, but some thinner, more manageable material. They are white-fronted, like a goose, but vested, like a banker, though we own up to not a single one in our ranks. Lapels are wide, Brooks Brothers-style, and jackets are left unbuttoned, for why else the vest? Pants match coats. Men are uniformly seated on dark, stiff-backed chairs, their hands loosely resting on the point of their trousers where the crease disappears along the thigh.

Stiff-backed as the chairs are the wives that are seated beside them, usually on the left. They too are all from the same mold. Men and women share a strong resemblance, or else time does this to married couples. Susan Gallagher wears a little lace cap, white, but underneath its forehead fringes her hair remains thinly dark. The cap is drawn up tight to her scalp as though to get it out of the way for the bulk of the day's activities. She may also be balding slightly and badly in need of skull cover, both from the elements and from ordinary daily scrutiny. She wears a collar that might without too great exaggeration be called Peter Pan, although in no other way is she like this sprightly embodiment of the imagination. The dress is full and long, and like the Model-T Ford which is a long way yet to arrive available in any color you like so long as it is black. Her hands are stacked in her lap, less like cordwood than two potholders in a drawer, say, left on top of right, and she wears no fingernail polish. She'd rather take a drink than paint her nails. Die before either, of course.

Little round wire glasses of small diameter are perched on her nose, which is short but tends to flare between bridge and base, and is ample to the task of supporting the small, thick lenses and frames. Her brows are dark; the eyes beneath stare resolutely ahead and betray no expression that could be called indicative. She is there to have her picture took and it is all a big waste of time, in her opinion. Her mouth (also without paint) reveals no evident teeth, no sensuous inward curve of lower lip (to make you want to kiss her), no upward tilt at the edges of her mouth to indicate that she finds even a modicum of humor in the occasion. Or in any other.

This one picture, I think, will stand for them all, all the Evans, Gallaghers, Simpsons, McConnells, Connellys, Arnolds, McIlroys, Burns, Conaways, Kennedys, etc. I used to think it was the long, hold-still pause for the camera and slow film that made them look alike, but now I think it is something else. If you read the Bible solely and are unduly concerned about other people's morality, behavior, and private doings, your face will take on a cast as though you are dead and a mask in being made for the edification of posterity. All that is missing is the straws up your nose.

The look is grim and disapproving. It is one of moral condemnation and innate superiority. But such an attitude is difficult to maintain over the decades of one's lifetime. Instead of hardening into cement it softens and becomes tired; it becomes a look of resignation. No, it becomes the look of defeat.

Not all of my relatives have it, but enough do so that it becomes standard procedure. It is as though the same artist of limited sculptural skill has decided to carve marble portraits of them all and has taken a shortcut. Or else cast them in a single plaster mold. It is more than a family resemblance passed down through some errant gene or genes; and it is more than a communal bone structure, though there is rarely any of them who borders on minimal overweight. It is something else, something less tangible.

If I ever in the course of this family biography am able to pin it down, rest assured I will shout it from the rooftop of these pages.

* * *

Michael died of paralysis, Susan of asthma. Paralysis is of course stroke, stroke resulting in the inability to move all or a major portion of one's limbs and body. It effects the brain and in most severe cases it clogs the lungs. People die of breathing failure. The lungs fill up with fluid, not air, and the person drowns in his or her own juices. I almost wrote, "so to speak," but this is wrong. They die literally in their own juices. It is not a pleasant way to go. But then the occupant of the body is nearly dead in every other way, so it may go if not unrecorded at least unnoticed.

Susan was a Methodist. She was converted to that church a short time after coming to Cadiz and considered the members of the Methodist Episcopal Church "some of the excellent of the earth." She participated regularly in Prayer Circle. John Graham and Zara Coston were the ministers who converted her. Six years later, in 1926, she married Michael and bore him ten children. She was "unremonstrative," it was said of her. A son described her as "courageous, hopeful, and sunny in her views." Her health was bad for the last ten years of her life and, after Michael died, worse the final three. She was about eighty when she died.

The last four weeks were awful. Her children gathered round and would delight and solace her by singing, "Jesus, lover of my soul,/ Let me to thy bosom fly." This she did, but not before uttering weakly, "I want to go home." It is not known whether she meant to Donegal County, Ireland (unlikely), or to the home in which she had been bedded for weeks and now was lodged (less unlikely), to a tangible Christian heaven, surrounded by angels, relatives, and practically everybody you ever said howdy to in your lifetime (more likely), or to some dark, unconscious island where your belabored lungs would mercifully cease working (my choice for her and us all) and there would be an eternity of nothingness.

* * *

The biographer of the McConnells and Cadiz, Ohio, is Harry Burns. His story is interesting and I will come to it in a moment. He, as did Anita and I in turn, became fascinated with our origins and sources, and in our search for roots may stretch a point, here and there. On the other hand, for somebody more knowledgeable than I about genealogy, he may not be making a new case but rather stating an old case that is already strong when he talks about the Highland Scots and the commonality of "all us Celts" coming from Scotland and Ireland.

First he tells us that there are many "Macs" living in or around Cadiz. Mac, says Harry, simply means son of. (I suppose you could call somebody "Macbitch," accordingly, and not be badly misunderstood.) Hence a McConnell is simply and originally a son of a Connell. You add a y to a Connell—easy enough to do in a lilting brogue that sprinkles its redundant syllables around like whiskey at a midnight pub—and you have a Connelly. So like the Galla[g]hers and the Gobles and maybe the Evans and the Simpsons, there is a certain amount of intermarriage, both in America and, most likely, back in Ireland. But—who's counting? It was commonly understood that first cousins could marry without genetic taint, but it was best to keep the marriages to family members who were related by marriage, not by blood. Or so it would seem from a crosseyed look into the past, but not from any word that anybody ever let slip.

Thus my Grandma Leigh's reference to an "Aunt" Ione, who is really a half-sister or hers and an aunt to my young father, Edmund. She too married a Connelly. They had a common father, but different mothers. So long as none of their children or children's children married each other, there would be no problem of the blood. And they didn't. Everybody knew each other's lineage well enough that the women, anyway, wouldn't let this happen.

Now the men, they probably wouldn't care. But then it is rarely they who make this kind of decision, thankfully.

McConnell, Uncle Harry tells us, is a corruption of the Scotch McDonald, sometimes spelled McDon'd, or McDonnell. The McDonalds were the largest and most powerful of the Highland clans. La-de-da. It's been a long time, and we are far away in space and time. Still, I find it vaguely interesting, so long as none of us tries to tie our coattails to some ancient, randy king. . . .

"The McDonalds are traced to the fourth son of a Pictish chieftain named Somhairio, meaning Samuel, who flourished in the twelfth century. Somhairio was a powerful Thane in Argyle, when he married Effrica, the daughter of Olave, the swarthy King of Man and the Isle. This gave him a lot more booty than he would have had otherwise. Somhairio, or Sam, contributed greatly to freeing Scotland from the Danes. In fact, he did more than any other man and was more powerful "than any Scottish subject has known since."

There he is, Harry. A king. And I warned you. I'll put your book down and never pick it up again.

A king, huh? Well I've always thought I was descended from kings, and my common parents—my father a retailer, my mother a housewife—were really surrogates who were in the employ of my true parents, perhaps Philip and Elizabeth, but I'll settle for—who are they?—King Sam of Man and the Isle, and his luscious bride, Queen Effrica. They will do.

McConnells were sprinkled through the sparse countryside of Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky, long before the Revolutionary War, as were the Welch Arnolds and the Connellys and Galla[g]hers, who had not yet stabilized the spelling of their name. Some participated in the revolution, but left no written record. And they were in the War of 1812. In the War Between the States, they fought on both sides, and while that war is 130 years away, it seems much more recent and accessible. Probably nobody had time to write anything down until about then. They were too busy clearing the land, farming, and raising their considerable broods.

Then there was pause. Life calmed down some and a living wasn't that hard to come by that it kept your working into the darkness. People accumulated land and money. Some left the farm and went into business. It was said that, in trade, a man could make a fortune by being prudent, thrifty, and willing to take risks. Some of the children remained at home and led lives practically indistinguishable from their parents; often they lived less than half a mile a way for a lifetime. This was true in Cadiz as it was in Westfield.

But others such as Emery Platte Connelly took off for the new frontier, Oklahoma. Their descendants are still there. Farmers became ranchers and raised stock instead of potatoes and wheat. And others went to town and opened businesses—they became cabinet makers, blacksmiths, grocers, and a surprising number of them started small-town newspapers. Uncle Harry did. But it is still not the time for his story. He comes later in the game, the game of life.

Cadiz. People poured into the funnel that was Ohio and lit in places like Cadiz, Steubenville, St. Clairsville, Cambridge, and Zanesville. Cadiz was 125 miles from Columbus. It was a post town and the seat of justice for Harrison County, according to The Ohio Gazetteer, printed in Columbus in 1821, exactly the same time that Susan and her father and brothers migrated to Cadiz. The town contained "a large brick courthouse, a printing office, an academy, eight stores, seven taverns, 120 houses, and 537 people," if you count children, and you should.

Harry says the town was nearly self-sufficient. Its artisans and home-manufacturing trades could supply whatever you needed while growing up or as an adult. There were hatters (some of them no doubt gone mad from the lead fumes), weavers of coverlets and carpets, foundrymen who made implements of iron and, especially, stoves, coopers who made tubs, flour-barrel manufacturers, tanners, windmill makers, wagon and buggy shops, milliners, and weavers of cloth. A few things were not found in the local economy: drugs, sugar, spices, etc. They were purchased or bartered.

Schools were subscription, but later free ones were established. When somebody of the right mind finished school, he opened up his own in a single spare room and taught what he had learned. There was one formal school, the Cadiz Academy, which Harry says was the most "pretentious"; I presume he knows the difference between that and prestigious. It was on Charleston street and was famous at least within the township boundaries.

In the John A. McConnell house, he was the teacher and one of his pupils was his brother, Samuel. Across the street was another school. It was two-rooms, one in which to teach boys, the other for girls. Across another street was the county jail.

A hill was leveled to make room for the courthouse. The mound was two-storeys high and it was hauled away and used to fill a dip across from the old gas works. The fill then created a lake they named Chromo. Previously, in winter, kids used to haul their sleds to the top of the hill and slide down it, it was so steep. In 1940 the Presbyterian Church stood on the flattened site.

On the night of Saturday, April 26, 186, the Harrison Branch of the State Bank of Ohio was robbed of $240,000. Six men did it. They escaped on a hand car on the Cadiz Branch Railroad. They fled to Brilliant in Jefferson County, where four of the robbers were trapped in a ravine. They decided to try to shoot it out with police. A posse of ten men charged the robbers, guns blazing, bullets whizzing. The four surrendered. Most of the money and bonds was recovered.

Among those in the posse were Ezra McConnell and Samuel McConnell. They received a thousand dollars each reward. It was a lot of money then. Another party of pursuers guarded the Ohio River from the robbers' escape. They received a hundred dollars each. Martin McConnell was in their number, Cousin Harry proudly relates.

* * *

It all started with Samuel McConnell, who came to this country from Ireland, as did John Gallagher, on my paternal grandmother's side. (It isn't very clear to me, either.) He was Cousin Harry's great-great-grandfather. This makes him, I think, my great-great-great-great; four greats and a grandfather to follow. It is on Saraleigh's mother's father's side. Ah, it is much clearer to me now.

His wife's name was Brice. Her last, the first being lost to time. Both were born and married in Ireland, but came to America about the time of the Revolution. They had a son, perhaps more children, also missing in names and dates. Their son was Alexander. He married Rebecca Melvin, whose parents were also from Ireland. Alexander was born in America, either in Maryland or southern Pennsylvania. They were married in Maryland and moved to Steubenville, Ohio, shortly after their son Michael was born. (We have already met him.)

Alexander was a nailer, that is, he followed along behind the carpenters and pounded down the boards. Funny but, when I was in college, trying to earn pocket money for the following school year, I once worked for a carpenter, who soon discovered my ineptitude. Rather than fire me, he put me to work pounding nails. There, he figured, I couldn't do so much harm or damage boards in a manner to make them unusable and cost him money. He was right, of course, and kindly. I wonder if Alexander was like me, or rather I was like him, and fit only for pounding? If so, perhaps he is where I caught the defective gene.

This is mere speculation, of course, more than 150 years after the fact. No doubt the genetic defect got ironed out in all that begetting. Perhaps because nailing other people's work was not all that satisfying, nor paid very well, or maybe because he wasn't any better at that than I, he ran for deputy sheriff for Jefferson County and served in that capacity for several years, until his term ran out. Then he bought a farm near Unionport. Not much is known about his agricultural adventures, but as an under sheriff there is some record.

The sheriff was a Tom Carroll, a single man. The sheriff was provided with a house, but he did not have any use for it, so Alexander occupied it, for he was married. It was near the jail and one of the deputy's duties was to oversee the prisoners. Among them was "a harmless, crazy woman." She became very much attached to the McConnells and when Alexander was out of office and had decided to farm, she went with him to their new home, the farm owned by John Brobston, who rented it to them by the year. It was the prudent course because her relatives had to pay her keep in jail and they had had about enough of it and her.

I suppose Cadiz had no loony bin and the jail served this purpose, among others. It kept the indigent and the weird off the unpaved streets. There were no taxes, so the nearest relative got the bill for upkeep, which was mostly for food. I presume the jail was not always full and there was generally a spare cot or two. And I also would guess that the woman performed certain housekeeping chores for her benefactor, Under Sheriff McConnell. So it was a quid pro quo arrangement. They got themselves a servant and she got herself board and room.

She lived to be nearly 100, outlasting them all. She was deemed harmless, but scared the children, and they avoided her. Harry's sister, Lizzie, went to visit his grandfather, but Harry would not go along because he was terrified of her. Instead, he remained home and absorbed stories about her. Her name was Elizabeth, but she was called Betsy. Laird was her last name. When Harry's father, Will, was a boy, he went to Brobston to filch watermelons. Everybody did it. He found a nice one and put it under his arm. While walking out past the farmhouse, Lizzie spotted him and came running out the door waving a butcher knife.

"Drop that mellon," she shouted.

And Will dropped it, his son reported much later, "like a hot potato." (It splattered more like a mellon, I'd guess.)

Then she cackled her crazy-woman laugh. It went on and on. A chill ran down Will's back. The boys departed, sans mellons. Even Will laughed about it afterwards, for Lizzie was having them on, they knew. The big knife was solely for comic effect. Everybody believed—sure as watermelons taste good—that Lizzie would not harm anyone. Still, it was safest to run.

The years passed. The household endured, even if it did not prosper on the rented farm. Things remained lean. They raised a brood—Michael, b. 1801; Sarah, b. 1808; William (Harry's father), b. 1813; Rebecca, b. 1815; Hannah, b. 1818; Jane, b. 1820, and Mary Ann, b. 1823. Seven kids. In time Pa Alexander sickened and died. It was 1864, the recent war between the states recently over, and he was 85. His wife had died 12 years earlier. I suppose one or more of the five daughters did not marry and stayed home to keep house for their aging, widowed father. It's what was done.

Harry reports that Lizzie became a public ward after the death of her benefactor. The county budgeted fifty dollars for her upkeep in 1868.

I am grateful to Harry. He traced down his uncles and aunts with a newspaperman's determination. Without this, they would be lost to me and us. Sarah married John Davis and they had five children. The names are the usual—repeats of names of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts. It is wonderful to watch the Rebeccas multiply, along with John, James, and William. Variants were required. Often if you had an Uncle William, you became a Willie.

John and Sarah moved to Davenport, Iowa, and made their home there. But William, who had married Maria Pitner in Steubenville, remained in the county all of his life. They had one child, a girl called Marth. When in due course William died at age 53, his widow moved in with his sisters, Rebecca and Jane, and lived with them in Unionville, not far away. This too is how it worked out. She lived on another 33 years.

William, Harry's grandfather, was a bricklayer. At one time he was worth $14,000. (This must be equal to about $100,000 or more in today's money.) But he lost it all "after he was engaged in the drug business." What? He "went security" for a Dr. St. Clair in Steubenville. He was—as were them all—a lifelong member of the Methodist Protestant Church of Steubenville. It is acknowledged that it and the Methodist Episcopal Church of Cadiz merged during one period of ecumenism.

Harry points out that his Grandfather Burns was the pastor of the Steubenville Church. I'm not surprised. The family was fast becoming a source of either teachers or ministers.

Rebecca bought the farm. No, she didn't die; she simply married the man who owned it, John Brobston. It makes me think of the Gobles and Connellys, only the process worked in reverse. He is the man whom her father rented the farm from. It was near Unionport. Now it was hers, theirs. Brobston farmed and she bore him seven children: Hannah, who died when young; Margaretta, who died in young womanhood; Willie, who also died young; Sarah Jane, who lived to 83 (perhaps because she never married and had children); Alexander (the same names are proliferating, please notice), who enlisted in General Pope's Army of the North, was captured, and died in the infamous Andersonville Prison; Joseph; and Ernest.

John Brobston died on the farm in about 1887. Rebecca lived one year into the Twentieth Century. Their children were all Brobstons. Not McConnells, not Connellys. So I am beginning to get far afield, interesting as these dead people, in their obscure, fragmented lives. They are not applicable to my search, alas. It is time for me to return to my sources.

* * *

Harry Burns McConnell was a publisher. It ran in the family. Cadiz had two newspapers—that's a lot for such a small burg. One was the Cadiz Democrat Sentinel, about which not much is stated in Harry's book, probably because it was his competitor. But both papers shared the slim news and recorded the social events of the small city.

Let's see—Michael sired William and John. William sired Harry Burns, John Michael, and George Ezra, all of whom went into the printing business. Another son, Pearson, died young. Peart (as he was called) was in the painting and decorating business. (Every family should and does have one of these.) He started it up with Cousin Frank McConnell. He had long been in ill health and never married. It was said he made good money and his contractual work took him all around the country.

George worked at The Cadiz Republican in 1880, just out of high school. Then he went to Charleston, Illinois, and worked for his Uncle John on The Charleston Plaindealer. He moved to Chicago and worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He left there to head the proofreaders at Rand McNally. In 1893, he handled printing for National Cash Register, and this lasted for three years. He left for New York City and managed the Mail and Express Job Print until 1906, when he founded his own company there, McConnell Printing, a subsidiary of William Randolph Hearst. With Andrew Burgoyne he started McConnell Press. Later McConnell Printing became entirely his. He was twice married, having two daughters by his first wife. They were Gertrude and Edith. By 1931 he was retired and living in Los Angeles. At 67, he said he was never sick and as active as he had been at 25.

In October, 1905, The American Printer spoke glowingly of George's "overcoming chaos" at Mail and Express Job, where he worked 15 to 18 hours a day to establish accountability and standard working procedures. The equipment was inadequate and outdated, and he convinced the stockholders to increase expenditures, making it a modern printing plant and putting it in the black ink. He was active in the printers association and spoke to them about how to "make a continual, legitimate profit." Previously it had been thought to be "his secret."

Uncle John had bought The Plaindealer after a series of false starts in business. One was (like his father) groceries. For the following ten years he was in the tanning business. That was not for him, either. He was of a scholarly bent, but his vision deteriorate badly and left him unable to read at length. He left Cadiz for Charleston, where he bought a newspaper. (This does not seem to be the answer to his problems, but it worked out well for him.) When he sold The Plaindealer in 1888, he bought The Charleston Herald and managed it until shortly before his retirement, when it was consolidated with The Plaindealer. I think this means the owner of The Plaindealer bought him out. He lived in Charleston for the following three years and died there. He was returned to Cadiz for burial in 1908.

Accounts provided by Harry Burns now begin to blur and his book on the McConnell genealogy skitters back and forth in time. For instance, he reports that William Melvin (son of James and Martha McConnell, he a painter) entered the offices of The Cadiz Republican in 1872 and worked there as a printer's devil until 1878, when he and his uncle Martin purchased The Plaindealer. So it was not George and Uncle John? Ten years later they sold it to "other parties" and returned to Cadiz.

Who were these? Could it be that they sold it to John and George? The dates are about right. If so, why didn't Uncle Harry Burns report it? Odd.

This theory would explain how John could stay on in Charleston, Illinois, operating a rival paper, while Nephew George went to Chicago and then points East. And it would also easily explain how The Plaindealer could comfortably merge with The Herald, when John decided it was time to retire. The paper, or papers, probably remained in the family, but no details are provided.

So we have John staying on, George headed eventually to the Big Apple, and William Melvin and Martin going home. There William Melvin "took charge" of a photographic studio "for his brother, Samuel," and later purchasing the business from his brother and managing it at least through 1940, because Harry Burns remembers it "still" conducting business over Wood's grocery."

Harry also recalls Will as a baseball player who hit the longest fly ball on record—a hit from the depression "down by the woods" over the school building. Will played the bass and Harry remembers his many solos at numerous musical concerts in Cadiz.

Martin, after The Plaindealer was sold, bought a grocery store; it is not clear whether this was in Charleston, Illinois, or back home in Cadiz. I think the former. He took a government job in Washington D.C. in 1900 and remained there with his wife until he sickened and took retirement. He was known as a quiet man, so withdrawn that nobody knew him except by sight. They returned to Charleston, where he died in 1920 and was buried there. By that late date all the brothers and sisters were dead, save two: Harry Burns and the sister Susan Rebecca, my great-grandmother on my father's mother's side.

The McConnells dominated the religious, social, and business life of Cadiz, or so it appears from newspaper accounts of their goings on. Of course they owned the newspaper, so it was natural that they received frequent mention. Father William and son John owned the Wallpaper and Decorating establishment; a sister owned the Millinery Store and other women in the family worked there. They built two-storey buildings and named them after themselves; they saw to it that the courthouse and town square were constructed, the Methodist Episcopal Church, with the memorial window they paid for, erected, and the Ehrhart Hotel.

Harry Burns McConnell eventually owned The Cadiz Republican. The name had a strong political bent, as did its opposition, The Sentintal Democrat. Each paper had a strong, proprietary interest in the town and saw to it that the editor/publisher's interests were well represented and given prominence. Sometimes there was little news and it had to be manufactured to fill space around the ads that were already sold and had made possible the publication of the weekly paper. And when somebody died, especially somebody in the family, the obit ran on and on, starting on page one and continuing as far as advertising space permitted, or longer, depending on the person.

Often this resulted in some creative writing of a flowery nature. God was evoked, Biblical passages quoted, good deeds and funny incidents remembered fondly and at length. Sometimes when the muse moved the publisher, the editor, and the chief copywriter (the same man, the owner and sole proprietor) he could express himself in a cathartic manner that was almost colonic.

It was not only his right, it was his duty, he believed.

* * *

Harry Burns lived an interesting life. It was also a satisfying one. At least it sounds like one to me, and for much of it—minus the bombast—I have to resort to hints and clues. Some of the clues appear at the end of his genealogy. They exist in the form of photographs.

A photograph is invaluable to a writer. It grabs you by the ears and hauls you into the frame, taking you back to the time and place and immersing you in the family situation that prompted the tripping of the shutter. You are suddenly in corporeal touch with relatives you didn't know you had and, in some instances, whose names you do not know.

There is nobody left alive to introduce you. But you have rights. You are family, too. And you have learned so far the indisputable fact: Family Counts. It counts for a lot.

From the biography of him that appeared in the filial The History of Harrison and Carroll Counties, Ohio (Chicago, 1921) I unearth the following:

Harry Burns McConnell was born in Cadiz at noon on Saturday, September 14, 1867, to William and Eliza (Burns) McConnell. He started school in September of 1873, Miss Jennie Arnold being the teacher of the primary room of the Cadiz Public Schools at that time, and she was also his Sunday School teacher for a number of years. He graduated as a member of the High School class in 1885, at the age of seventeen years, and the next day he entered the office of the Cadiz Republican to learn the printing trade, Wesley B. Hearn being the editor and proprietor of the paper at that time. He h ad previously served as "carrier boy," delivering the paper to town subscribers every Thursday morning. He was able to "set" over a galley of type the first day he was in the office, having previously printed an amateur paper. In printing this small sheet during his spare time in the years 1882 and 1882, he exchanged his little publication with boys who were similarly engaged all over the country.

As a joke, in one issue he dated his broadside "1782," in hopes it would be noticed, transposing the middle two digits. He also called it the No Name, which of course is a name. No doubt Harry Burns had a sense of humor and one that was not immediately obvious.

There were two printer's apprentices, both named Harry. One was ours, the other a Kinsey. Fourteen months into his tour of duty, the foreman, Charles. B. Davis left Hearn's employ to start his own "office." Our Harry rose to the occasion and was soon foreman and assistant to the publisher. He was in charge of the mechanical end of the printing company, its production scheduler, and its bookkeeping. In 1890, when Hearn was elected to the State Legislature, Harry ran the shop for four months on his own. The following January, when the Legislature met again, he took over, and another time when Hearn went on a two-month vacation with his family to Mexico.

Meanwhile Harry Burns had married and started raising a family. His wife was Eva M. Dickerson, and her family was Harrison County pioneers. "For over 100 years their name has been associated with the most progressive and representative people of this section." I don't know who wrote this, but I can guess, and also where it appeared, probably early on a Thursday morning, delivered in the dark by a boy on a bike who looked very much like Harry Burns had. At this time he was listed as both the foreman and the editor of the paper. He had himself as foreman in the Republican, but the companionate Columbus Dispatch's Hugh Fullerton had him down as editor. I guess it is possible to be both at once.

Harry Burns described his wedding in his paper as having "heartiest congratulations . . . showered on the newly married couple by the gay assemblage" and "a sumptuous wedding feast followed, and all went merry as a wedding bell." The couple was recipient of "a number of handsome presents."

When you own a newspaper, you are never, never, at a loss for words.

On their honeymoon they traveled East and Harry indulged himself in pursuing some of his many interests. One was Lincolniana. In Washington D.C. the couple saw the famous Oldroyd Collection of Lincoln Relics, now the property of the government. This included a fine, comprehensive assortment of photographs of the former dead President and people closely associated with him. Harry pointed out to Colonel Oldroyd that John A. Bingham was missing. Bingham was a member of the military commission that had tried the Lincoln conspirators and spoke their verdict. He said he thought the omission ought to be remedied. The colonel agreed. Bingham was from Cadiz, of course.

Harry Burns told the colonel some more things about his home town he thought the old officer might find interesting. For instance, Bishop Matthew Simpson (another relative), from the Cadiz Methodist Episcopal Church, the one with the McConnell-endowed window, had spoken the oration at Lincoln's funeral. And Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of State, who had called Lincoln publicly "a fool," was from Cadiz. (Lincoln, hearing this, had replied, "Mr. Stanton is generally right.") Harry went on to regale the colonel with other luminaries from his home town and the officer patiently heard him out, nodding from time to time and adding, "Is that right?"

Harry was a great booster and could recite all of the town's famous people. This was long before the time, of course, that Clark Gable sent him a photograph of himself reading the home-town paper. It was The Cadiz Republican. Harry had it made into an airmail cache, designed for the Cadiz post office, and used it repeatedly in a vain effort to make famous the town that even Columbus, Ohio, acknowledged, for its size, no other had "produced a greater number of distinguished sons."

One daughter was born to Eva and Harry. She was Isabel, who went through the Cadiz school system and worked for more than a year in the Cadiz Public Library. She went on to Pittsburgh, where she attended library school at the Carnegie Library before she married. There is no record of her later work in this field.

Meanwhile Harry Burns was doing well and had hired an assistant, a L. Milton Rosheim. Though born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, he had accompanied his parents when they moved to Cadiz and had lived there from 1903-06. He attended Indiana University, the University of Pittsburgh (no doubt where he met Isabel), and Carnegie Tech. In 1916 he went to work for Uncle Harry. The war came along and Milton went in the army. There is a picture of him in his uniform, and he looks to be an officer, but I can't tell for sure. He looks cocky. Well, in my time (1953), an infantryman, I did, too. With all that college, he probably was a shave-tail lieutenant. There he stands in his khakis, his broad-brimmed garrison hat perched on his head, a member of the 332rd Infantry, Allied Expeditionary Forces. He took his training at Camp Sherman and went to France and Italy. After the war ended, he served in the Army of Occupation and was on the Food Commission at Fliume and Triesta, Austria. When he was mustered out in June of 1919, he returned to Cadiz. He worked in the printing business steadily, married Isabel, and raised a family of five.

Rosheim? I always wondered if Milton was Jewish. I guess it is the name. In a way I hope so, for all the intermarriage of the Irish indicates a need for some fresh blood and he would gladly provide it. He looks like a nice guy and a strong family man. There is nothing wrong with marrying the boss's daughter, either. It is the American way. It may even be the way of the world.

Harry mellowed and spent more time at his many hobbies and interests. He was an avid birder and went on long nature walks. He traveled widely, often taking a McConnell or two with him. His sister Gertrude had married John Schlarb. She went to Scio College and graduated, teaching as the women did (and do) until she began raising children. She was known as a scholar and intellectual, loving good books. They lived in Youngstown and she died in her adopted city in 1927, after a long illness. She had two daughters and a son. It must have been one of their children, Harry Burns's nephew, who was with him and photographed together, years later, at the Berlin Zoo.

Though the picture does not identify, I presume the thirteen-year-old boy is John Burns Schlarb. This dates the picture close to 1921. Harry is phasing out of the printing game. He lives close to nature and is knowledgeable about the realm of insects. He is becoming a world traveler and can be glimpsed with friends and family on shipboard, the women wearing cloches, the men those wide golfcaps that make them look like mushroom heads.

John Burns Schlarb wears one, too, while at the zoo. He is seated in a weathered, outdoor chair. He is sporting knickerbockers. He has on a gentlemen's jacket and tie; so does Uncle Harry Burns, who hovers protectively. There's a pair, a generation between them. In the background (and badly out of focus) a wedge of visitors look out over a low steelmesh fence. There are wild animals inside. The ground beside the chair is trampled flat by feet and paws. Man and boy are grinning proudly. It is a great day.

Oh, yes. In John Burns Schlarb's lap is a spotted beast. It looks to be a lion cub. Too big to hold standing up, it must weigh in the neighborhood of ninety pounds. It looks happy, contented.

So does Harry Burns.

* * *

Life was good to the McConnells and their descendants in Twentieth Century America; you can see it in the pictures, you can fairly scent it in the air emitted from the shiny, musty pages of Uncle Harry Burns's genealogy. Everybody was going to college now, nobody had to stay home and work the farm. There was leisure and something akin to opulence. In short, there was ease.

The boy smugly holding the lion cub (incidentally, the only way to hold one) went on become a minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church. His mother, the librarian and deep-thinker, married a lawyer. He was a Boy Scout, at one time with the rank of Life and deeply desirous after ten years of becoming Eagle. (Ah so was I.) He was impressed with the Quakers and worked with them. At summer camp, he taught scouting, woodcraft, and religion. He went on to the Rayen School, Marietta College, and the Chicago Theological Seminary. He served several churches on a fill-in basis in Minnesota, Colorado, and Illinois. Later he was called to South Dakota, where he worked under the Conference Superintendent, Dr. S. W. Keck. Or so things stood in 1940. It is more than fifty years ago. Anybody still alive is old, old. Where are you now, John B.? Come forward and identify yourself. How did it go with you? Your life, I mean? Such proud promise, with a lion cub to boot. Did it go up or down from there?

Harry's sister Elizabeth married Colonel John Conwell in 1882. His rank was obtained in the War with Mexico (1846) and continued through the War Between the States. They had a son, John W., who became a physician. He married a Cadiz Bullock named Helen. They moved to Columbus Heights where he performed general surgery, specializing in gynecology. I suppose he removed untoward uteruses. They did not return to Cadiz.

Uncle Harry was always eager to identify with his mother's side of the family and carried the name, Burns, as a full name, not using an initial. Though it seems much farther from my direct lineage, I am a Burns, too, or one as much as I am a Simpson or a Gallagher—whether you spell it with one g or two. And the Burns are an interesting family who share the same ancestry (Irish/Scotch) and a proclivity towards hanging around colleges past the point of acquiring additional degrees, and keeping well back from entering the broad world.

Harry tells us as much as he can of the Burns genealogy, remarking that the word might be Burns might signify a small stream, but more likely is from Byrnes, from which the Irish O'Byrnes is derived. He lists a lengthy number of its variants, which I won't bother to repeat. He says the line goes back to Heremon, the youngest son of King Milesius of Spain, but I think this is the usual nonsense that results when you reach too far and take this stuff too seriously. (Besides, I'd rather identify with King Somhairio, or Sam, and his Queen Efricca, from Man.) Harry traces the family name back to 1638 in America, but there is no direct linkage and his case is weak.

More likely the Burns clan begins with James, who was born in Ayr, Scotland, in 1754, and came to America with his father, Peter, in 1768. It was just in time for the revolutionary ferment and he enlisted as a private in Captain Archibald McAllister's Company, Colonel Thomas Hartley's Regiment. He fought at Brandywine and Germantown. The war over, he married Elizabeth Williams, daughter of Major William Williams, who served in the Continental Army. (I wonder if he was any relation to Major Major in Joseph Heller's Catch-22? I would so like him to be—his brother in redundancy.)

They had eleven children, six boys and five girls. The eldest, a boy, was James, and the youngest, Barbara; all the rest of the names between have been "lost or mislaid." According to Harry Burns's informant, they were all "of superior merit and worth." Of course; I'd expect no less. They became "scattered" throughout Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. All were members of the Methodist Protestant Church and several were ministers, a vocation that was to persist.

Elizabeth came from Ireland, along with her father, William Williams. One of their children, another James, was born in Maryland, but died in Licking County, Ohio. He was a coverlet weaver, but also farmed. He was not an astute businessman, according to Businessman Harry Burns, and died with an estate valued at only "several hundred dollars." He and his wife raised a brood of twelve. She must have died, for he was visiting a son, Samuel, in Natchez, Mississippi, when he met "a Natchez lady," whom he proceeded to marry. Shortly afterwards he went back North to settle his affairs, intending to return to Natchez and his lady, but sickened and died at home of cholera. Son Samuel was a slave-holder and passed through Cadiz once, with a load of furniture valued at $25,000. He was headed East. Other children were merchants, weavers, blacksmiths, farmers, doctors, engineers, railroad firemen, carpenters, and several were preachers, of course.

Harry's mother's father was John Burns. He worked with his father as a coverlet weaver and also as clerk in a glassware store in Wheeling, Pennsylvania, where he met Miss Mary Jewett Pearson, a school teacher. They married. He became interested in teaching Sunday School, which led to his entering the ministry of the Methodist Protestant Church. His pulpits were many and included a circuit that included Steubenville and Cadiz. From 1851 through 1853 he was pastor at Cadiz. May died in 1857 at Steubenville of heart disease, age 49, and he married again, a Sarah P. Metcalf, just over a year later. He was a Mason, an Oddfellow, and a Democrat. From 1878 to 1880 he was chaplain at the Ohio Penitentiary under Governor Richard Bishop. Most of his life he lived in Cambridge, Ohio.

An old man now, he returned to Cadiz and Harry Burns's home to attend the annual camp meeting of the church and to visit, but was struck down by paralysis and died of stroke two days later. He was 75.

Other obituaries flesh out his life. He was a doctor of divinity, a title that seems largely gratuitous, since he earned it in six weeks of study and then was "licensed to exhort." It probably didn't mean any more than what a bachelor's degree does today and was commonly acknowledged as such. Whatever, he wasn't grandly overpaid for this title, earning his first year fifty cents. This was at a mission in Wheeling, Virginia. The next year saw his income increase by thousand folds: he was paid $72 and given a house with its rent and fuel paid for by the congregation. This was in the Woodsfield Circuit near Pittsburgh. They lived in "a little, round wood cabin on the edge of a cornfield." He was very deliberate, never in a hurry. Carefully groomed, it was said he was of an artistic temperament. He always rode "a horse of noble mein, gaily caparisoned." He was equally comfortable in the homes of the rich and the poor. His voice was "great compass and power, well modulated and musical, and under perfect control." (This according to one C. Caddy, Methodist Recorder, Pittsburgh.) He was soon known as one of the best preachers around.

His four children were: James, the School Commissioner; George, a minister in Illinois; Liza McConnell, Harry's mother; and a daughter without a recorded first name, who married John Hastings and lived in Guernsey County, Ohio. He was a first-born and it is with his own first-born that I am most concerned.

James J. Burns also used the title, Doctor, but in his case it signified a bona fide Ph.D. from Ohio State University. It prepared him for a career in school administration. The master's degree that preceded it was from Washington and Jefferson College. Whether or not he had a bachelor's certificate or degree is unclear; speaking for himself in a biographical sketch he wrote (under duress, he mildly complains) for Educational History of Ohio, which he prepared himself (and could hardly leave himself, out of to be fair) he says only that he was product of the public school system of Steubenville. I have a hunch his education was strung out over many years and he was teaching immediately after completing his bachelor's degree or certificate.

The school he first attended as a child was among those he last administered, he notes with relish. No doubt completing this circuit was emotionally satisfying and signified something of great personal consequence. He said the hardest lessons he had learned in life were accomplished in high school during two and one-quarter years, when Algebra, Latin, Geometry, and Greek were his studies. They formed a "substantial and exceedingly regular diet" during those years. He had, he said, brilliant teachers and learned a lot from his fellow students. He first taught in the summer of 1857 at Tiltonville in a little school which stands on the banks of the Ohio River just above the city of Wheeler. He was asked to stay on (he does not know why, he says) but followed his father to Natchez, Mississippi, where I remember his father was enamored of the woman who was to become his father's second wife. There he took a job as principal of the Academy at Union Church, Jefferson County. (This was William Faulkner's home county, as I recall, so it must not have been far from Oxford and what was to become Rowan Oak.)

It was a part-subscription school and a partly state-funded one, something new and a system he approved of. "It was a pleasant life," he reports, "and better people he never served," but law was what he was most interested in, and after completing "five-sixth" of his contract year and collecting his salary, "including twenty double-eagles about his person," he went back to Natchez and began reading law in a law office. It was customarily how one became a lawyer. He was offered a teaching job in the schools there and accepted. He met Kate E. Kyle and they married in 1860. (She is also listed as Emily Kate Lyle.) She bore him three children by the time of this writing, but Dr. J. J. (as he was called) does not include their names or dates of birth in his biography for Ohio education and say only three of them survived their mother's "two-score years" of marriage to him. Actually there were five children, for two boys followed. They are: Mary Jewett (1861), Jennie Lyle (1864), Jesse D. (1868), James Ferguson (1869), and Robert Metcalf (1872). The last named is probably by his second wife, with the boy's middle name being what it is.

They returned to Ohio and he was principal of the schools at Washington, Guernsey County, for four years; then he spent nine years at St. Clairsville, a town of 1100 people. He was paid $1500 a year, he tells us. This encouraged him to run for State Commissioner of Common Schools. He was elected. He remembers those years as busy and happy, with many kind deeds and words of approval that "make a bouquet which still smells sweet and blossoms."

Words came easily to him and in abundance. Many of them he put into his books. He was quite an author. He published Eclectic Geometry (1884), Shakespeare's English Kings (1899), How to Teach Reading and Composition (1900), Some Unsettling Lights of Literature (1902), and An Educational History of Ohio (1905). F. E. Reynolds, who wrote a brief biography of the teacher who was perhaps his mentor, adds that he had "prepared in manuscript two or three other works but was prevented from publishing them, much to the loss of the teachers of the State." His chief contribution, however, was not his books but his "work in connection with the Reading Circle and the present efficient Ohio Teachers' Reading Circle is largely the work of his hands." He was on a committee formed to look into starting one and, once started, served on its board of control and was its secretary until ill health forced him to give up his duties, two years before his death.

This was in Defiance. I mean, in Defiance, Ohio, where he last served as educational administrator. He, like nephew Harry Burns McConnell a generation after him, mellowed in age and found the duties of his life work onerous. Both turned to nature and the tranquility that can be found in quiet contemplation. Dr. J. J. bought property on the banks of the Maumee River, which he loved, and where he lived with his wife and daughter. On a visit to Cadiz, Harry Burns McConnell had the pleasure of joining his uncle in a bird walk. Birds was something that Harry knew a lot about.

Friends dropping in on Dr. J. J. in his home on the Maumee would find him in his book-lined study, a little preoccupied, but he would look up, strain to place their faces, smile recognition, and join them in conversation, generally about books. He had so many books that he had to build a special shed to house the overflow from the house. A member of the Reading Circle said Dr. James J. "has contributed to the making of many books, of which there is no end." Amen.

He grew vegetables and flowers, and would look long into the swirling waters of the river, thinking his blind thoughts. But the death of his wife in 1904 deeply saddened him and he slipped into incommunicative depression. His children tried to keep their eyes on him and tend him. He developed the habit of spending winters in Florida with Daughter Jennie and her family. The warmth seemed to help some, plus the company, and he apparently rallied until February, 1911, when he worsened. He talked about wanting to return home to Defiance. Jennie could not go north with him, so Jim (who lived in Kentucky) went south to get him and stayed a week, visiting. The plan was that Father would stay with Bob, in Terra Haute, but Bob had sickness in his family and it was decided that Father would come back to stay with him later, when all were well. Dr. J. J. wrote to friends that he would soon be back in Defiance and in residence in his home on the Maumee.

But Jim did not take him to Kentucky, as was the plan. In response to his father's "urgent solicitation" he returned him to Defiance, sure enough, but left him with "a family of intimate friends" until Jennie could arrange her affairs in Florida to permit her to come to Defiance to care for him. Why Jim didn't take him to Kentucky first is unclear. Probably because his father didn't want to go there. He emphatically wanted to go home.

The friends tried to cheer him up and believed that they had. He seemed to rally a little. Then he complained, on Tuesday, of severe pain in his head, a pain that must have been recurring, for he told them that he dreaded it. On Wednesday he was better, Thursday better yet. He started out for his usual morning walk and went to his home on the Maumee. Neighbors spotted him pottering around his garden and grounds. They smiled; how much better the old doctor seemed. When they did not see him return from his walk, or head towards the house, they figured he had taken a different route. But when the friends who were caring for him did not see him by noon, they went on a search. They found him pitched down on the ground. He was dead.

This was a Saturday. The funeral was on Monday. All the school children from town came, for he was a beloved old figure. Hundreds of them, the papers reported. Plus all the teachers he had taught and befriended. His grave was "on the brow of a hill" overlooking the Maumee, in the shade of an ancient oak. A huge boulder was rolled into place to mark the grave. Biographer F. F. Reynolds thought the boulder "characterizes his love of the natural."

* * *

I recall that Gertrude McConnell Schlarb—the first scholarly woman in our family—was described in her brother's newspaper as having a Ph.D. degree that was "faithfully won." Yet The Cadiz Democrat Sentinel reported that she had graduated from Cadiz High School and, three years later, graduated from Scio College with "a diploma." The reporter for The Sentinel goes on to praise her scholarly attainments and the fineness of her mind, and says she was well known in literary circles in her adopted city, Youngstown. She was "a brilliant student; her mind was attuned to study and the analysis of intricate problems." So there is no case for pedagogical bickering among rival weekly newspapers. They were agreed on her merit.

One can be made, however, for academic bolstering, as it might be called. Elsewhere Gertrude's attainment was described by her classmate-husband as a Ph.B. degree. I don't know what that it, unless it is a doctorate of bachelorhood. There may have been some sort of thing, back then, and it may have been accepted among the townspeople without a snicker.

There is a picture of Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude in Uncle Harry's book and it interests me because she is one of the few modern-looking women present there. All the other women look as though their features were chiseled out of the same rough stone as the men and their hair, their white hair, is drawn out to points by mad neglect, for it could not be done so intentionally. They scowl into the camera with faces rigidly set for decades, perhaps fixed in the womb.

Gertrude wears the same round, wire-framed glasses perched on her nose, but her features are fine and she has what is widely bandied around today as a look of self-respect. Her dark hair is brushed and clipped back and is of practical length, as appropriate for someone who is pursuing the classics, plus German, Latin, and French. Her attitude is one of tranquility and self-confidence. Her level gaze seems to say, "I can meet you on any level that you choose." At the same time she looks womanly. If you would put your hand lightly on her plump upper arm, she would look up at you from out of her heavily lidded eyes and not command you to remove it.

Perhaps I imagine it.

She chose John Schlarb as her husband, a class-mate who went on to law school. And they broke away from the head. And they broke away from the yoke of Cadiz. They raised their two daughters and a son in Youngstown. She taught but it was only substitute teaching. Since her husband made a good living, she was freed from the necessity of holding a job and raised their children, participating in the intellectual life of their new, larger city as a matron of her class might.

This marks a family departure. Two of Gertrude and John's three children went to college. The women held jobs that might be termed career. And t heir son went to numerous schools and became—a big surprise—a minister. the only departure for him was from the Methodist Church. He was a Congregationalist, with Quaker leanings. This marks another fork in the road. the great austerity of the Methodists on all sides of my family, in Cadiz and in Westfield, Illinois, is pushed aside in favor of what might be called moral liberalism. It was now okay to take a drink and smoke in moderation. You could hold democratic views, if you spelled the world in lower case. You had the time and the leisure now to think of something other than feeding your face and keeping a roof over your head.

She was married in 1895. Her children were born as the centuries changed over: Carolyn Martina in 1899, Elizabeth Conwell in 1900 itself, and John Burns, eight years later, in 1908. This John is a contemporary of my paternal aunt and father, and even a bit younger. Thus I am beginning to come to grips with my ancestors because I can picture them as living when my remembered immediate family did. And the pictures with the modern look help me do this. For instance, John Burns Schlarb's leggings and knee socks are not very different from what mine were in the early 1930s, though we are separated by one generation. One generation is so not much. It is practically as though these people were living next door.

Milton Ronsheim took over editing and managing The Cadiz Republican in 1919. A picture was taken of him and his family in about 1930, the year of my birth. They look vaguely contemporary, but not so much so as the people I've just named. They are a nice-looking family, one might say, the boys suited up for the occasion, well groomed, their hair slicked down with water (or brilliantine), appearing as though an idea introduced into the conversation wouldn't astonish them and leave them speechless. There are four boys and a girl. The future looks bright for all of them, including the daughter, who looks cool. Milton is no longer a kid, I notice. He's lost some hair and looks a little weary. Well, running a printshop and newspaper is a grind.

The daughter, I discover, is a year younger than I. We have come up to date.

And there is Mrs. George W. Moore, given a full-page picture by Uncle Harry Burns not because she deserves one but because she is some dish. He knows a thing or two, remember, about page layout. She was Wilma Melvin "Billie" McConnell, the daughter of Samuel A. and Anna Tacy Gill. He had bought the Harry Photography Gallery in Steubenville, and bachelor brother Will of Cadiz was a silent partner in the venture

Billie was born in 1911 and graduated from the Steubenville High School in 1929 and from the Steubenville Normal School in 1931. I'm not sure what a normal school was but it sounds like our equivalent of a junior college, or a two-year post-high school institution. Promptly she was engaged to be married on January 28, 1932 to George W. Moore of Pleasant Valley, Wheeling. She would be short of 21, by my count.

Moore worked for the Wheeling Steel Corp. at its Steubenville plant and attended both Culver Military Academy and a place called Manlius in New York. Up until recently he lived with his parents on Belleview Boulevard, she with her parents on Sunset Boulevard. The engagement was announced in a cleverly, fashionable manner: Five tables of progressive bridge were set up at her parents' home. Let's see, that requires twenty people to play. As the scores piled up, the winners were announced and prizes were awarded. Mrs. Myron George won one, as did the Misses Jean Dunn and Beverly Fox.

The announcement of the upcoming marriage was brought forward in "a novel manner," the newspaper said. The engagement notice was written on the Queen of Hearts, and it took four hands of play before anybody spotted the message. Billie is listed in the paper as "a charming member of the young social set." The wedding will not have any attendants, but Cousin Jennie McConnell Warnick of Cadiz will play the Lohengrin and there will be a profusion of cut flowers around an improvised altar of tropical palms and ferns, the whole thing set off by candlelight.

Billie will wear a gown of pudre blue chiffon with flame-colored satin slippers and carry pink roses. Her only adornment will be a pair of earrings and a pin that belonged to her great-grand-mother, Mrs. Anna Mariah Gill. (I badly wanted to write that she would wear nothing but the earrings and pin, but I couldn't do it.) A buffet reception will follow for 25 guests. Then the young couple will leave for a honeymoon to the East and, eight days later, will return to be at home to their friends at an address which is one digit removed from her parents'.

I suspect that Samuel A. and Anna were no longer living together and the home where Billie's mother lived was hers, and that she would provided the young couple room in a property she now controlled. But I could be wrong. The fact that a Samuel McConnell is listed as a wedding guest and his home is Cadiz is what leads me to this hypothesis.

Yet in all fairness I must acknowledge that given names proliferate and repeat among close relatives, especially in large families. There were other Samuel McConnells, I know, including a Samuel B., who was pianist Jennie Warnick's father. That would explain how a man with her father's name might be listed as one of the guests.

But back to Billie, our first thoroughly modern Millie. If Gertrude paved the way as our first scholar-teacher turned housewife, Billie saw no point in continuing on with school, if she was to become a housewife and mother. Best get right to it. In 1932, short of 21, she is a femme fatale. Her hair is bobbed and her earrings dangle heavily from pierced ears. Her neckline plunges, then abruptly stops with just a hint of cleavage. Her brows are plucked and darkened, her hair appearing to be a natural light blond. Ha. Mascara, liner, and shadow adorn those eyes, which look out at the world levelly. Her mouth is painted; Gertrude's was not, not noticeably, which is all that counts.

If you could lay a heavy hand on Gertrude's upper arm without provoking a rejoinder, if you tried the same thing with Billie, she might poke you in the ribs, laughing or worse.

She looks the type (forgive me) to go for the crotch.

I have no idea what kind of life Billie and George had. But in the back of Publisher Harry Burns's book there is a clue. As he put his book together, time passed and life went on. People married, divorced, had children, died, and the aging Harry had to scurry to keep up with it all, right until publication date. Here I learn that George Moore was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1908, which makes him three years older than she. It is an accepted differential.

They had two children, anyway. George William Moore III, in 1933, and Sally Ann, in 1935. A boy for him, to carry on the name to the third generation, and a girl for her. Both were born in Steubenville. I might assume that George worked for the steelmills all of his life.

I could even imagine a social life for them, for the image of Billie has arrested me. I can virtually hear the whisk-whisk of her silk stockings as she crosses one knee over the other, and back again. She does this a lot and her laughter is loud and attention-getting. She likes tight clothing and is proud of her figure. She sees no good reason to hide her considerable radiance under a bushel. George approves, so long as she keeps her behavior in reason. They both tend to drink a little too much—martinis, after work, which she has waiting in a dispenser of stainless steel that resembles a silver urn and which, upon being lifted from the table, tinkles a little song, "How Dry I Am."

Otherwise they drink Scotch, not a lot, and only evenings before dinner, unless it is the weekend, when they permit themselves a few a couple of hours earlier. Work at the steelmill, though George is a manger and works in the office, wearing a jacket and tie and crisp white shirt, fresh daily, is no too inspiring, and there is a consummate need on both their parts for a little outside stimulation. This generally comes in the form of contract bridge games with friends—many of them girls from her high-school class and their husbands, all or most from Steubenville.

One New Year's Eve Billie got lit and let Harry Pederson stick his tongue in her mouth, long before the midnight permissibility. His hand also dove for a nipple and she was a little slow in plucking it out by the wrist, as though it were a soiled diaper. And it was only when he swung an uppercut, as it were, at the source of that constant whisk-whisk, his fingers extended like a trowel in order to part all that silky stuff that women put between their skin and the outside world that she slapped him, but slapped him lightly and playfully, with more of a go-away push at the end of it. Then she was instantly sorry and kissed him a peck on the nose and they went off together, laughing, and poured each other another drink in the kitchen, this time one with plenty of bouncing cubes at the bottom, for they acknowledged that they were "plenty tight."

And George? Glad you asked.

He had gone to college, they had not. Well, in their circles Culver counted as one. He had a certain manner and it was what had drawn Billie to him. Aloof, arrogant—not exactly, but those same elements to a lesser degree. His hair was worn slicked back and parted down the middle, dark. He had a heavy beard and she made him shave a second time when they hired a sitter and went out in the evening. His face was always scratching hers and she didn't like it. A second shave made him, well, more acceptable in the evening and in bed.

She liked sex and frequently came. Sometimes you did and sometimes you didn't, you couldn't always tell ahead of time and it often surprised her. It didn't make all that difference, at least to her. George liked her to, though. He enjoyed the way her body whipped around and the sounds that came out of her throat. That spurred him on. They always used rubbers now because two were all the children she wanted. He wouldn't mind one or two more, but it was her body and she always made him show her that he had put one on before she would let him enter her, because she didn't exactly trust him in the prophylactic department.

Sometimes he would show her that naked thing and ask her to suck on it. She didn't mind, though it didn't excite her to quite the extent he thought it did. Only a little, though. He wanted her to let him come in her mouth. No, thanks. That had happened, against her expectation, a couple of times and it was, ech, ugly. She had gagged. Once she—helpless to do otherwise—had swallowed it. Now she avoided the situation, except rarely when she was having her period and she could not deny him, he was so strong and persistent, and then she always had a Kleenex handy to spit the foul stuff into.

It wasn't so bad, no worse than what you encountered raising babies in diapers. But what she really enjoyed was being ploughed, as they called it, laughingly. She couldn't tell any difference when he had a rubber on, but he said he could and it took all the fun out of it for him. She understood, but it wasn't as though he were to become pregnant in her place. Until the day that he could guarantee it, he would put one on first, thank you.

Funny but it had the same name as what they and their friends called out to each other, across the table playing bridge. "Rubber!" Sometimes it sounded like they had not simply won two games in a row but were overcome with the urge to copulate and needed a skin before they could hasten to it. And it always brought a laugh from what they called the peanut gallery because of the double meaning that never seemed to get exhausted, at least not among the newly married couples and sophisticated singles and the freshly divorced that made up their crowd.

And George? Well, sure, he played around a little, but it didn't mean anything, not really. A man was a man, wasn't he, and couldn't help himself? He had "wandering hands." Sometimes they wandered in another direction than towards Billie. All those slender young women drifting around the room in their cloche hats and strapped shoes, unshackled beneath their bias-cut dresses. You could see all of what they were born with. What was a man to do? They never got mad. The most they would do is turn your hands away with a smile. They invented the come here/go away behavior mode. They wanted to have it both ways. Well, a man only wanted it one way, horizontal, and sometimes events worked out just the way he planned. Just often enough to make the effort worth while.

One night he and Billie quarrelled just before a party with some of their friends. Both knew better than to time it this way. Both of them saw to it that it happened thus. A quarrel before a party was liberating, exhilarating. It gave the evening an edge. You didn't exactly want to punish the other, but you had the mechanism to do so right at hand. Scotch extended all boundaries.

The kids were at Gramma McConnell's. It was not far away in Steubenville. God, what a burg. He wasn't born there, like everybody else, but it sure looked like he was going to be buried there. And he was only 34 and passed over twice as plant manager. He supposed they could uproot and go to New York State and try again, but he knew they wouldn't. They were buying a house now and most of the equity in it would be lost. Easier it was to stay and do the work, which was nearly effortless and beneath him, he believed. He had an office with a door and glass paneling, and he could read the newspapers and keep up with what went on in the great world outside. What did you go to college for—Culvert—if you were going to push paper, all day, and return to a wife who was losing her figure and drank too much at every social occasion?

Life surely must offer something more, if only sexual variety.

A man was a man, wasn't he, and helpless before the onslaught of his hormones. It is what was ordinarily believed and provided a broad, general license.

That night he found himself with Emma Hayes, who had been sending him come-ons at the last two parties. They rotated houses. She was a classmate of Billie's but recently divorced. That meant she knew a thing or two—what it was all about. She was not used to going without, if you get my drift, and she announced her availability like a mirror held up to the noonday sun. Only it was night, dark now, and he and Emma Hayes walked out onto the veranda, skirted a bush, and soon found themselves by the parked cars. Wordlessly she let him open the door to somebody else's and climbed inside. He followed her rump, steering it like a wheel. How great it was to be with somebody different—with a different taste to her lipstick, a new scent, and even a milder, more distant odor of the sea on his hands, after he had . . . .shall we say, introduced himself?

Emma Hayes's had clearly borne no children. It was almost virgin like, George thought. His fingers ended at the silk and snaps and found where the soft skin began. It grew warm and moist. She moaned when he parted and entered her. She told him he was big—and he grew bigger, in response. She declined to dip her head to his lap and he knew better than to try to force her with a withering grip on her neck. Maybe next time, he told himself, and thought he detected a hint of promise from her.

"Kiss me," she ordered. Yeah, they liked to be kissed, all the while; he had nearly forgotten. Used to Billie, he was already proceeding as though she were as ready for it as he and required (like a modern gasoline-combustion engine) no long warm up. But this one was different, even though they were all the same. Maybe it was romance she was looking for and had to be deluded into thinking she was receiving before she could relax , lay back, and give him his wet ease.

Different, too, in how she didn't demand a rubber, as thought this were a bridge tournament, nor ask to see it jutting towards her before she remembered to part herself. He liked that aspect. And maybe next time she would bend her head to him. He wondered if she knew how to perform, like Billie? And he wondered how Billie had learned how to do it so well, so quickly?

Was it from a lot of practice? Whatever, it was not a matter he could interrogate her over. And what did he expect to gain? She could hardly admit to having gone down on half the male class of Cadiz High. But he had his suspicions. Did they all—those old boy friends of hers—secret laugh at him, behind his back? He bet they did. For him, she had been easy.

But now, with Emma Hayes, his mind soared with possibility. He could put her up in a little apartment of her own and, during lunch hour, drift off in that direction for a little noontime nooky. It was of such a dream that the future is made.

* * *

No, no, no. Nineteen hundred and thirty-five was no libertine period, not the start of the modern debauchery, not the beginning of the descent to free love. Sex has always had its price. But it was the start of modern times. And though I exaggerate for effect the extent of George and Billie's liberation, I may not be far off the mark. Whatever the extent of their proclivities, they marked a new attitude. Yet imagine Billie McConnell Moore spending an hour or two in the kitchen with, say, Susan Gallagher McConnell, preparing a family meal, while the menfolks sat in the parlor and talked about whatever it was that men talked about before professions sports offered wan substance and grateful escape from reality.

Of course Susan Gallagher died in 1875 and Billie wasn't born until 1911. So there is a gap of more than a generation. Such a kitchen conversation as I allude to couldn't have taken place. Let's see—let's review the bidding, I might put it, in her familiar bridge parlance. Michael married Susan Gallagher and they had ten children, including six sons who survived to manhood. One obscure son was James, who was given no middle name, not one that has been recorded, anyway. He in turn sired Samuel Andrew. He was Billie's father. So Billie could have chatted in the kitchen with her mother, Anna Tacy Gill, or Sam's mother, Martha Mealy, but not James's mother, who was Susan Gallagher. Okay. But there was a strong moral and religious strain in the family that persisted to about Samuel A.'s time and then, apparently, disappeared.

Sam was a photographer, one with a gallery, and he was set up in business in Steubenville by a brother sited in Cadiz. He was known as artistic—not necessarily a compliment, not among these businessmen in the printing trade. So somewhere between James, the straight-laced son of Michael and Susan, and Samuel Andrew, there was a breakdown. And the time? I would place it shortly before the century turned over. Maybe 1890 or 1895.

Charles Darwin's ideas were permeating society on a very broad level, weakening the hold of religion throughout the Western world. Freud and the unconscious and libido and repression were several decades off, though. It would have shocked Michael and Susan McConnell, this world without religious roots and a belief system and code of values derived from the Bible. For a long time there was nothing to put in its place. Church was attended from rote as a social convention still too strong to be broken away from. It was largely the women who maintained the old traditions and obliged their children to attend Sunday School and, when older, the church services that inevitably followed. The men had long been laggard.

But Michael never was, nor his father, Alexander, before him, nor the original Samuel, long before him. Michael studied his Bible for precepts and found many. "Thou shall not imbibe of intoxicating spirits and, perhaps, the evil weed, tobacco."

On the other side of the family tree the Connellys believed and behaved much the same way. And think of John Burns, on the far side of Harry McConnell's family, and his first year of circuit preaching for fifty cents. Think of Michael McConnell's six staunch sons, all bearded formidably, grimly continuing the austere Puritan tradition. And then everything began to fall apart. Harry Burns went through the motions of religious propriety, but his first love was the printing business and the prosperity of this small, insignificant town, Cadiz, Ohio, that somehow was connected to his own intrinsic worth.

He said Cadiz was important; he would prove it to the world. He brought forward Clark Gable, Bishop Matthew Simpson, George A. Custer, Edward Stanton, as evidence. He bolstered their ranks with Mary Jobe Akeley, Educator, and John A. Bingham, Statesman, Percy Hammond, Critic, W. H. Holmes, Archabologist (whatever the hell that is), Edward Harold Hough, Clergyman, and General Thomas. M. Vincent, Soldier. I quote from the plaque erected in the Town Square. A McConnell paid for it, as he did the various public and private buildings that lined the main street.

McConnells came forward and answered the call each time the town needed a boost. The pages of Harry Burns's newspaper went to every length to add credibility to the message. "Cadiz Counts. We all do. For if this town isn't important, maybe our lives aren't, either." So did the opposition paper, The Democrat Sentinel. This was what was hidden behind the bravado of making a case for Cadiz and every Cadiz in America. For the truth was, the town was important only to the people who needed it to be and insisted that it was.

They strengthened each other's belief. They met and toasted each other and their town. The did business with each other and erected new stores and traded there. They supported each other out of love and fear. Life had to count for something. The daily toil, the seeking out of a wife, and the bearing of children, the generations adding layers to each other depth through multiplying. It all meant something. It was what God wanted of us.

If there was a God and he presided. Big word, if though only two letters long. If Darwin was wrong about natural selection and Adam and Eve were the literal truth, not a myth. For if the Bible wasn't true, what was? What would fill the awful void in our lives? It was too horrible to contemplate, too frightening to live with.

So Harry looked to the world of nature and travel. He probably drank a little too much and took frequent naps. He learned about insects and studied them, fascinated. The book ends before his death, naturally, so we would have to imagine it for him, if we are to think through the McConnell genealogy to its logical conclusion, this contemporary life. I would will him a gentle slide into the deepest sleep and uninterrupted darkness. I think of John Burns's return to Cadiz for the annual camp meeting and being struck down by stroke and the death that followed, two days later. I remember vividly James J.'s return to Defiance from Florida, his acute head pains, his noonday stroll from the home of friends to his empty house on the banks of the Maumee and his subsequent collapse on the lawn.

Billie and George Moore were the first modern couple, rough contemporaries of my parents; it is possible they are still alive, but they would be incredibly old and feeble, their minds gone or loosened by dementia. It is more likely that they are in the ground. It would be better for them than a lingering old age in the nursing home, attended by strangers, the only family they have had for years, this formerly vital couple. Juicy Billy, with the raucous laugh. Her husband with the fickle eye.

Gone, all of them; gone, gone.

It has taken me fifteen years to be able to write the following:

One day in August, 1981, my father set out from the retirement apartment at Exeter House, in which he and my mother lived, for a luncheon date with Jack Utz, a former executive from the store where the two men had worked all their business lives. Frederick and Nelson in Seattle. It was a sub-division of Marshall Field and Company of Chicago. (It is now defunct—a fond memory for many.) They were to meet at the Washington Athletic Club, where they were members; only seven month previously my parents had taken me, my wife, and son there to dinner on Thanksgiving to celebrate my fiftieth birthday. The place is modestly elegant, but a little dated.

(When the waiter brought me the check afterwards, I realized how I had become the authority figure due solely to age, while my father had unknowingly relinquished it by age, too; age alone. He was not yet 76, yet the baton had somehow been passed. Bruskly my father snatched at the check and captured it. (Always easy am I.) He signed it, and I'm sure the waiter paid the price in the severely reduced tip Dad had written in.)

Anyway, on this warm summer day, the sun glinting off the noontime streets, the sidewalks still cast in the deep shadows of morning, my father got about a block downhill —then pitched over on his face and lay on the cement.

My mother had been watching from her tenth-floor apartment and saw the whole thing. She called the desk

of the Exeter House and they called 911. And then my mother did a surprising thing. She stood and stared from the window until the fire department aid car arrived and, after it, the ambulance in which they took him away.

I never forgave her for not hurrying to his side. Of course, she was suffering from chronic lung disease and advanced osteopetrosis, seldom venturing out of their apartment and usually only so far as the elevator across the hallway that took them twice a day to the common dining room eleven stories below. And in all fairness she was none too steady on her feet, all the while she did this.

But I cannot be fair, only outraged, even after so much time has passed. Years later I accused her of a major crime of the heart. Why not risk your own comfort, when your husband of more than fifty years was lying prostrate on the cement, perhaps dying? Wouldn't anybody have done something? Taken the elevator down, afterwards descended three long steps to the sidewalk, hastened the last 100 yards to where he lay, unable to rise? Yes, nearly anybody would, but not my mother.

She remained where she was, a watcher of life, a non-participant, until the ambulance drove off with him in it. Then she picked up her favorite weapon and called me. I rushed to the Trauma Center of the hospital and joined my father in one of the examining rooms.

"Look who's here," he said. "The one I can always depend on."

It wasn't true, but it was accurate enough this one time, and, most important to me, I shall carry his words to my own grave, wishing that they were true more than this once and my long track record a better one.

His blood pressure, it seems, had dipped to nearly zero every time he tried to rise or even sit up. It happened on the street, it happened later at the hospital. He went woozy and almost but not quite lost consciousness. I don't think he was in pain, not unless pain includes a subtle mix of bewilderment, surprise, fear, and wonder. Pain then. Considerable I would guess.

I found him strapped to monitors. They provided alarming data and nobody knew what to do about it. Attendants kept him flat on his back. A little blood pressure was sustained that way. I can't give you the figures. A bed was found for him in the cardiac unit. He was wheeled there. I was allowed to follow and see him tucked under a sheet—this man who had tucked me in countless times as a child. Tests were being scheduled. This was the unit of Swedish Hospital that was expert in handling heart cases. I was redundant to the situation; worse, I was getting in the way. Soon they'd be wheeling him down the hall for tests. Would I please leave?

To tell the truth I was glad to be given an excuse to go. I hadn't done one useful thing, so far, but provide that intangible commodity, family presence. Family matters at a time like this. The trouble is, family is never ever available when it is most needed. They've all gone somewhere else, or their phone is busy, or else they have personal problems surmounting them. Alone we come into the world and alone we leave it; what happens in between those gateposts is not illusion, only unsustaining, undependable, watery substance. It is thin gruel and has no staying power.

Besides, I had to get back to the retirement apartments and tell my mother what had happened. She was depending on me. It's what parents do, all of their lives, to innocent children. They set up the parameters of filial challenge and response, like planting perennial seeds from a package, then sit back and await the harvest of responsibility. It's usually bitter, consisting mainly of sour grapes.

I parked in the lot in which, as family, I was accorded a free half-hour before the meter began ticking. I could have charged it to them, and had been told to, but never did, even though they could well afford it. I was an adult now, paid my own way. I explained as fully as I could what had happened and what they were doing in the cardiac unit. A variety of tests. My mother listened in a manner that said she knew as much already. A born pessimist, there were no events that could catch her unprepared and hopeful. Once perhaps as a girl she had been unguardedly cheerful, but disappointment had set in like cement. Never again she vowed.

I went home and told my family what had happened and sat down and slowly ate my dinner. Dad was sick. Well, we all knew he was battling cancer of the prostate and that it was pretty common for a man over 75. Nobody, the doctor said, ever died of cancer of the prostate. Well, rarely. It was always something else. Dad had had two transurtheral resectionings and I had watched as his pee-bottle on its pole had turned from cherry to pale yellow and he had been allowed to go home. In fact, it was I who transported him from the wheelchair to my car at the rainy curb and then helped him to unsteady feet, up the cement stairs, and through the spooky Exeter House lobby to the apartment, where they had lived for only a couple of years, ten stories up.

Lately he had had a bad swelling in his leg. Left. It was lymphatic fluid. His urologist—a Dr. Miller—had paid it little attention. His specialty was urology. This was a leg. Maybe, he had told me, radiation would help. There were some doctors who specialized in this, but it was August and one or perhaps both were away on vacation. When they got back, he'd give them a call. Meanwhile Dad went around bumping into things. One was a steel mail box on the corner. He didn't go down, but only because he tackled it in time. He was losing his coordination. And the swollen groin and thigh were full of fluid that probably added fifteen pounds to his weight.

"Dr. Miller knows best," he told me, when I questioned the delay in radiation treatment. When you are incurably sick with advancing cancer and the certainty of death, one puts one's faith in one's doctor. Absolutely. There is no other place for it to reside.

I called Dr. Miller's office, just to make sure he knew my father was in the hospital, which was just across the street from his office, less far away than my mother was, when my father had crumpled. Dr. Miller's receptionist said he had been notified and the trauma crew at Swedish was the best in the world; they would give him the care that he needed. Dr. Miller believed himself to be extraneous to that care. He did not take a break from making money and cross the street and enter the building whose trauma unit was within sight. I mean, I could have sprinted it and, at 50, been there in about twelve seconds.

It would be cynical to think that the reason his physician didn't cross the street to get to the other side was because there was no money in it for him and, true enough, his office was full of paying patients, waiting, all of whom fell within the confines of his expertise. And he was running chronically behind schedule. No, I am not such a cynic as to say that of anyone, let alone a member of the medical profession.

Dad called me at home about nine or nine-thirty that night. They were still running tests. He was tired, had no appetite for the meal they had served him, which looked tasty enough. He hoped they would finish up the tests soon, for he had had enough of being wheeled around the halls on a stainless steel gurney. It hurt his back. Of course he wasn't here to have any kind of picnic, he knew. He thanked me for coming over this afternoon and sticking by him. I said there was no need to thank me. He said he'd call me in the morning.

I phoned my mother. He had, of course, called her before he'd called me. She was his wife. I should have known. Still, it was good to be sharing notes. My family was small and my brother and I were not close, which is a nice way of saying there was a bond of mutual animosity that stood between us communicating and sharing much. He was presently in Hawaii on a sabbatical; he was a minister, and this was his free time to combine vacation and study. So, even if I had had his phone number, somewhere in Hawaii, I saw no need to call him. Nor his wife, who was within fifty miles of the city where we lived. Dad had been in and out of hospitals a lot lately.

My mother, it seemed, knew everything I did about Dad's condition and perhaps a few things she was keeping to herself. Her way. Personal things, things that maybe included a creeping fear he had, or should have had by now. This I understood. I was only a son. The bond between husband and wife was long and strong. A son and his father could only share conventional male attitudes and behavior patterns that had been long-ago ordained and codified as the son grew up. It could be no other way.

I went to bed. I was tired and the afternoon had interrupted my work on a short story revision for Esquire, which was dragging on and on. About three in the morning, the telephone rang. It was Swedish Hospital Cardiac Unit. My father had gone into cardiac arrest and was dead. Could they perform an autopsy? It might tell them a lot.

"No, you can't," I said. "You had your chance, and it wasn't good enough."

This didn't exactly make grammatical sense but I could be excused, this once. I called my mother. She answered instantly. They had called her first. Of course. She wasn't surprised.

"I'll talk to you in the morning," I said.

I had trouble getting back to sleep. I finally dozed off about five. At eight the people from Esquire were on the phone. New York was in a different time zone and for them it was approaching the noon hour.

"I can't talk to you," I said. "My father just died."

They understood and hung right up. In fact, the people from the editorial department of Esquire could not be faulted in any way in the consideration they showed me and the expanded tolerances they allowed me in regard to the story that was eventually published. It was the people I knew, including the close and extended members of my family, that showed little support. I suppose they were all wrapped up in their private grief and hadn't time to think of mine. And perhaps I was behaving the same way. I was expecting a modicum of sympathy—though anything more than none would have been seized upon and appreciated.

My mother received all of the attention. The loss of a husband is much more severe than that of a father. Everybody knows as much. And she had always required a lot of bolstering. Colds, hangnails.

At nine that morning I drove to my sister-in-law's place of business and loomed surprisingly over her desk. "Let's go catch a cup, I've got something to tell you." She followed me out and I told her in precise, tedious chronological detail.

"My God," she said, and she is a religious person.

"Something like that," I agreed.

She called my brother in Hawaii. He cut short all commitments and took the next plane home, full of acrimony. Why hadn't I called him the previous night, he wanted to know? Well, I didn't have his number, for one thing, and the matter seemed serious, surely, but not life-threatening.

My father's last words had been, "Talk to you in the morning." Now they kept roaring back in my ears. Sure, you bet.

I went to the hospital to collect his personal effects; the hospital wanted this done immediately. Apparently they had no drawer or file space in which to store them any longer. Money, money! And, of course, he was no longer a patient of theirs; a little while ago they had wheeled him out to a hearse and it had taken him to the funeral home my mother had specified on the phone.

Did I want his teeth?

Beg pardon?

My father's false teeth. Did I want them? They were right there with his watch and college ring, worn thin as paper from life's easy motions, the one with the fraternity crest that was both his and mine.

Teeth? No teeth.

They would throw them out, they said. Fine, I said. Throw away.

My brother came roaring in that afternoon, angry, vengeful. Where was his brother? Why hadn't I . . . ? I tried to answer his questions, then got mad myself. We glared at each other. It was lifelong stalemate again.

Where was Dad, he wanted to know? At Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, if they hadn't cremated him already. Why would he have been cremated already? Because I told them to; his will had specified "immediate" cremation, and in the section about viewing the body he had written, "No viewing."

"That doesn't mean we can't see him," my brother said.

"I thought it did."

"Well, it doesn't. An important part of grief therapy is provided by seeing the body. It's the only way most people can accept the fact of the death of a loved one."

"But he said. . . ."

"I don't care what he said."

"Well, I do. I'm trying to honor his wishes."

It was the last conversation we were to have for about ten years.

He took my mother over to Mr. Pleasant Cemetery. Well, she always liked to go for rides. He hadn't been cremated yet, it turned out. They looked at him. I guess I should have saved his teeth for the occasion, but I had never imagined he would need them to greet people with. Dead all right. It's what I had known clearly enough. The cremation took place the following day, the graveside services about a week later.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm not unalterably opposed to religious ceremonies and occasions, only ask that they be not offensive. I would have preferred, for instance, passages out of the Old Testament. Some favorite poems, such as by Houseman, whom my father liked. Maybe some Walt Whitman. But not too much Jesus, please. Jesus in moderation, if Jesus can be had in moderation. It was not the case.

He could have gotten my father's name right. I mean, he had attended the man's church for a number of years, though not so much lately, not since he had taken up residence downtown and had three other churches he visited regularly, all within walking distance. Edmund is memorable for a name, while Edward is not. And there was that fat actor with the other name. The mistake was natural, human. But it is not forgivable.

Edmund I am aware is a rare old name. On two sides of my family, both patriarchally maternal, they weave in and out of the history like a silver thread. To . . . demote him suddenly to a common Edward was, well, a slight he couldn't defend himself from, nor protest, nor could I very well, all of us gathered round in a hot circle of black, that August day, to hear the virtues of Edward announced to a robin's egg blue sky.

I only wish that pious bastard had gotten my name wrong, but he didn't. My brother the minister of the same faith in whose Magnolia church he, my brother, had been ordained, tipped him the cold minimum. I don't know what it was. I am not privy to the fee structure in this line of work. But I know he paid it with my mother's check book.

In my brother's mind was the image of propriety of him sitting on one side of my mother, clutching her hand, while I sat tight on the other, her opposing hand in my sweaty grasp. It was not to be. For one reason, I did not know this was his wish. For another, had I, I wouldn't have done it. Sure, she had her grief, but I had mine. It was not to be minimalized on this tense occasion. Not for Edward or for Edmund's sake, or somebody's uses of him for their private reasons.

Instead, my family and I stood together on one side of the grave, as a body, and glowered (at least I did) with mounting indignation, as this stranger was described to us in faltering detail by a man who could not even get my father's name right. And we listened to a lot about Jesus. I—the wishes of me and my family—were overruled by my brother. A consort of ministers, all of the same denomination. It was an exercise of religious authority I thought I would never see performed anywhere in the Twentieth Century, let alone over me and my family. The minister was not going to change his graveside service to accommodate the wishes of some members of the family; he was going to give them what they deserved, what they had coming. He knew best. It was a dumpload of Jesus.

And not even my brother agreed. We all have to grieve in our own separate ways.

In due course my mother's lungs and spine worsened and she became bedridden, subject to about $40,000 worth of private nursing care before she was enrolled in Exeter House's terminal facility, the Infirmary. The Infirmary is for the infirm, it only holds to reason. If you aren't that way when you first enter, you soon will be. After a few months in prison there, it became clear that she would not be able to return to her apartment on the tenth floor. The management insisted that the apartment (which she owned, so long as she could remain in it) be vacated so that it could be sold to the next victim. Well, my brother and I agreed, for the cost of double maintenance was high, and the unused apartment was wasteful and expensive.

My mother was under heavy sedation and a combination of drugs that fought with each other and rendered her zombie-like. (I soon had another physician come in and review her prescriptions and establish the degree of dementia she was suffering from. It was about sixty percent drug-induced. She rallied a little and began to see the hideous place the infirmary was; I'm not sure I did her any service, consequently. In the meantime, we emptied out her apartment, consulting with her whenever we could, but she was so dopey and dull that we never knew whether or not she heard what we were saying. Some of her household effects went to family, a little bit to the denizens of Exeter who showed an interest, and the rest were sold; I saw to the latter at an auction house.

Coming out of the drug trance she asked to see her apartment, not realizing that it had been cleaned up and sold. Another aging couple lived there now. Gently we tried to tell her this, and when the full shock registered, she was properly irate. How could we have done this to her and not told her? We had told her, we explained, but it had not registered. Since she could remember none of this, she didn't believe us, and I don't blame her any. It seemed a paranoid conspiracy. Everything she had owned and accumulated over a lifetime was gone, vanished. She retained a table, a favorite armchair, and that was all, except for a few personals effects that would fit in the minuscule closet or in a bureau drawer, of which there were three.

My father had said, when he felt himself waning, "Thank God for television. My parents, when they were old, didn't have TV. I don't know how they passed the hours and the days. How lucky we are."

How lucky he was, anyway. In the Infirmary, there was only one TV and it was in the Day Room. The manual channel changer was way up high, where nobody in a wheel chair could reach it. The remote control was always disappearing with one of the nursing cadre. But it didn't really matter. Whatever you tried to watch, one of the staff was always coming in and changing the channel on you. You lost what little sense of continuity you had left in life. Pretty soon you gave up watching, gave up trying to understand the flow of images. It was too frustrating, too much trouble.

Ah, but she could have a TV of her own, couldn't she? Why didn't you boys buy her one? (Dad speaking.)

Well, she couldn't. Almost as if to mock my father's words of gratitude, the nursing staff forbade personal TVs as anti-social. There were no antennas, besides, and when the building was modernized, it would have been easy enough to install a cable outlet by each bed, but this wasn't done intentionally. Nursing policy was to discourage personal TVs. So my mother and the others stared at the walls by the hour. She had been a reader of nothing more than women's magazines, all her life, and these now were hard to look at, the print so small, and besides they had nothing to do with real life, which was confinement in an Infirmary, without hope of parole.

In time she worsened and began to die. The doctors kept feeding her antibiotics to fight off the infections that raged through her lungs weakened by fifty years of heavy smoking. Deeper and deeper she sunk into unrelieved funk and depression. None of us could reach her; often the stupor seemed merciful, for she was not enjoying life. Visits to her were unrewarding, unresponsive. She was soiling her bed frequently and the stench before the underpaid orderlies got around to her was horrible. I went to visit her less and less.

I waited for my brother—the expert in death and dying—to give the staff and the doctor the message. "Enough is enough." He didn't, I don't know why. Finally I did. The doctor cut out the antibiotics and in three days time she succumbed. I felt as if I had done a worthwhile thing. I wondered why somebody didn't think to do it sooner.

It isn't a matter of somebody playing God. It is simply a matter of somebody being the humanitarian. And everybody shuns the role till the last possible moment. It is ultimately a close member of the family who mumbles in full-dressed anguish to the doctor, "Isn't it time to let her die?"

And she and the doctor are doubly grateful for the release.

* * *

It is a cool day in December and I have just been to see a doctor who says I need to have my colon probed with a special instrument he has to examine it with, and for this I will have to be anesthetized as an out-patient in three-weeks time. It is not for this reason, though, that I decide to go for a walk on the same day around the old neighborhood in which I grew up—a place I have not visited for, oh, ten or fifteen years. Well, it is not for this reason solely, for I have been thinking about doing it for some time. It's just that today I have the remainder of the afternoon free (it being too late in the day to begin to write anything of substance), it is not raining, and it just somehow seems right. Thinking of Edmund, my father, it is also imperative that I view the old neighborhood with fresh eyes. Additionally, I have just turned 64, and at that offbeat age one feels one's years and one's fate rushing at him.

So I drive my Ford Explorer on an exploratory trip to Carleton Park, Seattle, in a general area called Magnolia Bluff—though I have been taught during my youth not to say I lived in Magnolia, which wasn't so posh, but to say Carleton Park, which many had not heard of, but those who had knew it to be a couple of steps up. As if to drive this point home to me, I passed two fine new houses built on the sites of older homes that were in no sense ready to fall down, and only a week later saw that they were listed in the Sunday papers real estate section as being slightly over $600,000 in price.

I had guessed about $150,000 less, but who am I to know? I mention this only to put into perspective the kind of neighborhood it is and was. The houses I grew up in—and these were four—today all sell for about half the price of those mansions. This put them in the ballpark at $300,000, which is to say still pretty nice.

To reach Carleton Park from my modest North End home near the University, I had to cross the city. There is no speedy, efficient way to do this. I followed a series of arterials that snaked across town and each contained numerous stop signs and signal lights. But it was, I knew, the fastest way possible and the journey took me less than half an hour. With a crosstown freeway, the distance would have been about seven minutes. Dream on.

The people who live in Carleton Park are inured to the trip, which they make daily, twice, being once in each direction. This leaves them deliciously isolated, and they like it this way. Since nobody rides the bus except cleaning ladies and school children, it is simply a matter of hunching over one's steeringwheel for the ride down Elliot Way and the waterfront, veering off at the Denny diagonal to reach one of the one-way downtown avenues that will transport you into one of the cavernous parking garages near the office. At least this is what Edmund did, during the bulk of his working life.

Me, I took the bus, back then, transferring once or twice, depending on where I was headed. First it was to Magnolia Grade School (more anon), then as an eighth-grader to Queen Anne High (now a mastodon whose bones were made into several layers of retirement apartments), and finally to the University of Washington, which I attended up until I went into the Army in March of 1953, a date which though a bit late marks my formal severance from Carleton Park and all that it stands for, which is unmerited luxury. That is, until today. Today I renew the association and find, as I park my car on 39th Avenue West halfway between our first house and our next to last one find that I am elated.

It is always nice to go back to somewhere and know you don't have to stay. That piece of the past is all behind you.

Park on 39th West, I say, and pull my nondescript and carefully chosen (for exactly that reason) tweed cap low over my brow, bundle up my down coat to my chin, and dangle a couple of 35mm. cameras from my neck with which to record—first in living color, then in dull black and white—the precision of my return. The cameras are to take pictures of the houses in which we lived and to which my life for only slightly more than a decade, I suddenly realize, was tightly roped. Those threads are permanently broken, I know, and this is why I feel ebullient today. That and having the brief reprieve from Dr. Feld, the proctologist.

Here is where the Storhows lived, a childless couple who were contemporary with my parents and of nearly equal rank in the hierarchy of the retail business in which they both worked as divisional merchandise managers for Frederick and Nelson, a subsidiary of Marshall Field and Company of Chicago. We were all of Chicago originally, transferred here at the parent company's urging, which would have been tantamount to suicide to refuse. Peggy and Len, I recall, retired and moved to a house on the beach at Carmel. I stopped by and saw it, but didn't knock or phone, after learning that my parents had done so once and had been mildly rebuffed.

Only I was not quite sure, this day, which house it was. One of these two, surely. The houses did not look smaller, as houses of one's youth are supposed to look and which was soon to be pointed out to me, erroneously, but a little less grand than I had thought they might. Make no mistake, and I didn't, these houses were far above my purchase, and I didn't pretend to myself that they were otherwise, although the two mansions I had passed before I had parked, the ones in the 600k range, were so far out of grasp that I had failed to guess their price within as many dollars as the house in which I had lived for 30 years now might bring on the currently depressed market.

So these were indeed grand houses, but I had grown up surrounded by houses of this kind and had been inside many of them, as a boy. I tried to identify which ones, but they had changed substantially, being upgraded and restored and redesigned over the years—fifty now—that many were ghosts of themselves, images unrecognizable to me unless they had some irremediable distinguishing characteristic, and most didn't.

As I came closer to the first house and saw up ahead the intersection of 39th West and West Armour, the lay of the land became familiar. The corner house across from me, for instance, belonged to a couple whose name would not quite come to me. A L something, I thought. Hadn't I cut their grass for them? Weren't they on my route of grasscutting, the little business my father urged me to start and which for a year or two I conducted desultorily? I studied the yard, the house front, and decided maybe. Better, I remember being in the living room for some obscure purpose. I think they had two little girls, but I can't be sure.

I can't be sure of much of anything, I find, but one thing is roaringly certain and that is that 39th West used to end at the property line of our house—which has an address of 2827, not 2828, which I remembered wrongly, for this would have put it on the opposite side of the street, the odd numbers all being to the West out here. Now the street ran through the dim woods I remember having a pheasant or two in it, plus some rat-like creatures called mountain beavers. The street was put through so long ago that the houses that begin where ours ended show no discernible age difference and are all of a kind called loosely modern, which means they aren't very new.

And weren't the telephone and powerlines all above ground, back then? I'm certain they were. But now they have vanished like relics from a lost civilization, and what a difference this makes in the appearance of a neighborhood. It looks like one of those carefully planned communities, rather than one that got that way as a result of a special assessment long after the fact.

One thing that immediately strikes me as unusual is the crew of gardeners tending the lawn of one of the houses. In December? The grass shows the tires of the mower that has just finished manicuring it. In this neat neck of the woods the crews are not dismissed at the end of summer but are employed year-round. And these people do not stop sprinkling their lawns in June, as we do elsewhere, both as our civic duty to conserve water and because of the summer tariff enacted to ensure that we do; they simply pay the premium and continue living in the green world. And in winter they see no need to stop cutting and snipping at the borders of the lawn just because the grass has nearly stopped growing.

Republicans all, perhaps they see the expenditure as trickle-down economics and themselves as doing their part to provide year-round employment for the Japanese sub-culture which excels at this work. If this premise is right, Reagan and Bush were not fooling most of America with their theories but making uncanny reference to a world and system of money-at-work which is rarely glimpsed. Today I thought for the first time in my life that perhaps they were right, or right at least in certain rarified spheres and atmospheres.

I took one color picture of the house on K-64, of which I had but five frames left on a roll of 24, and then two black and whites, one vertical and one horizontal, an old trick of mine developed when I edited a magazine and found I had to do my own photography. I liked the vertical format best because it fit a full page perfectly and, besides, one could manipulate the middle distance to fool the eye into accepting tremendous depth of field, especially if you stopped down the lens and had some curving object that linked foreground to background. The walkway leading up to the house did handsomely for this purpose.

The house was brick and always painted white, I remembered. It looked like the painters had only put away their brushes an hour ago. The shutters (inoperable) were green and there on the left was the bedroom window that my brother and I shared for that brief duration when we had bunk beds. I was eleven, he nearly six, and it hadn't worked out well, only neither of us yet were aware that we could make a fuss and if we kept at it long enough get our way, so long as we were unified. Different was a different matter, and different we were, most of the time already.

The house next door was not recognizable. Nor the pair across the street. Well, we hadn't lived there long and I was pretty young. As for the house to the North, it hadn't existed, being then Pheasantville. Now the road wound to my right and bent out of sight around the bow of a house that hadn't been there before but was instead some trees, brush, ferns, and a pathway running through them. I recalled none of this but thought I had wound through here to reach Barrett and Dravis streets, and I remembered the watertower that still loomed. Remembered too how a barrage balloon had been attached to it during the war years in hopes of averting an enemy attack from the air intent on blowing it up and, thus, depriving all of us good citizens of our water supply.

It was a crazy time, so long ago, and everybody was paranoid in 1942, with the prospect of a Japanese invasion dim but an attack by submarine or aircraft more of a distinct possibility. It is why I had memorized the silhouettes of all the world's aircraft, from the side (unlikely to be seen from this perspective, I suppose, until too late) and from below. I had offered to pull a tour of duty as a spotter at the station on Magnolia Boulevard overlooking Puget Sound and the source of any such attack, and had been kindly declined.

The watertower brought it all back, and more. Down the Dravis Street hill only a couple of blocks was the house of my first real love, Cary Southworth. My mind flitted on the many journeys I had made from House Number Two to her house, and what could be presumed to follow, and did, but that was then, and this is now, and I am an aging man on a neighborhood trek, one who must push away the past or else be engulfed by it. (Engulfment is the route for today.)

I walk up Armour Street, past the corner house whose memories are too dim to recall, looking for other houses to speak to me, but if they do their voices are too soft and muddled by time for me to hear the words. I see and am fairly sure I spot two houses that backed on ours whose lawns I regularly attended irregularly, that is, only as often as I could not get away from not attending to them. I cut that grass weekly, or was supposed to, and was paid, I am sure regularly, upon the completion of my chore, which included crawling around on both grass-stained jeans knees with clippers, chop-chop-chopping away at errant blades that threatened to break the line of sight with their irregularities and be displeasing to my customers. To me there was nothing wrong with a few unruly blades, but to my father (who set the standard, then and now) and to my customers there surely was, and I knew I would be subject to review before I was slipped my few quarters, so I clipped away, until I was sure the edges and flagstone paths would pass inspection, then knocked on the doors, my grubby hand held out.

Were these two doors. . . those? I was fairly certain they were. I would have loved to sneak around in back and peer into the yards and see if any landmarks of my youth remained, but knowing who I was and that an aging man is but a paltry thing, especially when wearing a tweed cap and burly jacket, with cameras dangling I decided not to. How could I explain to the police what I was after, if not my youth itself some shard of it? The trouble is, they would have believed me. I have never much looked like a common criminal and police have the distressing trait of calling me, "Sir." This they have done since I was about thirty. Perhaps it means nothing and is merely a subservient tic, a bit of professional protocol, but I think not.

I identify these two houses as Probables. Yes, I did indeed cut this grass, or its ancestor, but so what? I find that whether or not does not matter even to me. I am after meatier subjects. I move on, looking to the right and to the left, and up ahead, but everything I see except some distant houses rising ahead on Viewmont Way is foreign. Perhaps a curve of lawn or a curbstone or the way a house sits on a corner stirs a ghost or two, and perhaps not. It is best—among all this uncertainty—to keep moving. Move fast.

Upon reaching Viewmont I am flooded with memory. My God, it's all here. The corner house contained a family that had been the Philippine consulate, only that country had just been overrun by the Japanese and whatever was ours had retreated or been captured. I remember the dark drapes, tapestries, mahogany furniture, an overall funereal aspect. They must have had some child around my age whom I visited, in order for me to see all this. And I remember—since he was so famous and important to us all and our future—the pictures of Douglas MacArthur on the tables, all of them inscribed with a flowing hand, a little bit mushy. But the people, adults and children, names, sexes, personalities, all of them gone. I picture some postage stamps (which I then fiercely collected) and some cutglass lamps with brocaded shades. Nothing, nothing. The house is still imposing, obscure, impressive. Next door, though, is the house belonging to the Hepburns. Remembrance is clearer. Originally they had lived on Queen Anne Hill and I had visited them there. They had a son, my friend, Jack. I had overnighted. He sold jewelry, I recall, and was often on the road. A mustache, a big belly, suitcases—or was this from some movie of the same time? Mrs. Hepburn, though, was a sex pot. I'm sure there is a better word to describe her, but it will have to do. She is the first woman in my life who I was aware of having a distinct sexuality. She moved through the house in a silken glide. She smelled of power and perfume. She brushed her hair and wore clinging gowns, pumps, stockings with garters that required attaching with a slipping sound and resulting soft snap. She smoked. They drank They drank cocktails. There were bottles around the house with whiskey and wine in them. With a boy of eleven you did not have to be too careful about your person. I mean, you could be yourself. You didn't have to concern yourself with something showing. A breast or a glimpse of thigh through an open doorway, for instance.

It would have never occurred to me until now that it might have been vaguely intentional. That she knew I was looking and reacting and she wanted me to. She was . . . putting on a show. She was bored, wanted attention. She could imagine my boyish hardon. She smiled and lit another cigaret. Her husband was gone for another two nights. She and a female friend of hers were dressing up and going out tonight. Dinner and drinks. On the town, it was called. Who knew what might happen? I was there to sleep over with Jack and provide him with company. Perhaps I was a year older and it was deemed a good arrangement, for she could not very well leave him home alone, but if there were the two of us boys, then it was an acceptable arrangement and Jack—for Jack's father's name was Jack, too, I suddenly remembered—would have no grounds for redress.

And besides home was all too boring.

The house was stucco and probably today would sell for $350,000, considering the location,which was prime. What had happened to them—what had time construed? An impending divorce, or was this the normal way of life for people, without dire consequence? What had happened to Jack, Jack Junior? Had he gone on to college, married, had a son he named Jack, too, and had followed his father into the jewelry business, which he no doubt had owned? What if I walked up to the door, knocked, waited? Would a new Mrs. Hepburn come to the door today, bundling around her the same peach-colored silky garment, a breast nearly plummeting out, cinching the peignoir tight around the waist, a thigh clad in old-fashioned black mesh stocking (seamed in back) whisking into view and then, just as suddenly, disappearing back into its folds, the spike-heeled matching mules scudding and skipping on the floor, the door widening to admit me, she smiling with a lipsticked tooth smeared in front, a cigaret dangling in her hand, smiling still, smiling ever, gesturing me inside with fingernails tipped scarlet, matching her lips, nobody home but the two of us. Would I like a martini and . . . some head?

I move on up the block. Across the busy street which is not busy is the Boyd's house; I knew I'd remember the name if I kept my mind away from it just long enough and let my thoughts roam wildly, without control. A parcel of kids and a boy about my age, or else I would have had no entry. I remember a basketball hoop, nothing more. Did he become a player? Beats me. A sister or two, but none with names or faces. And the next house is dimly familiar, but nothing arrives. How sad it is to have lost so much. Or was any of it worth retaining? I suspect not.

Weren't there more trees? A house that resembles the mansion it used to be but is lacking something both general and specific. It stares boldly out at the street, whereas it used to peer through slitted eyes from behind some firs or cedars that would pass for old growth no longer. I remember it as dark and ominous, but today it is brightly spangled in yellow stucco. There is a drive-through passage and a car is parked in front, sheltered by a portico. No, no, the car is not a Caddy or Lincoln, but it is one of those big Fords that pretend to be and is but one year old, I'd guess, I who do not recognize the years of new cars anymore. Funny, but I only come across one expensive car on this long walk and it is a Mercedes that sits dumbly by the curb ahead, not in the driveway, as if it doesn't know its place or doesn't much care.

I come to the corner of Barrett, where I waited for a school bus for so many years that I am sure the sidewalk is still grooved from my steel-cleated oxfords. School bus tokens used to be the size of nickels and cost half as much, while tokens for ordinary rides were dime-sized and cost twice as much. And then there were the city's tax tokens, originally three of them to total a penny. Since then Seattle has come up with many more sophisticated ways to nick us, but none so evocative.

At the corner of Viewmont and Barrett, right where I waited in the hard, slanting Pacific Northwest rain, is a monster brick house, yellow-red, where Betty Latimer used to live. She was my first date, and a precocious one at that. I must have been all of fourteen and we went to the movies, a matinee on a given Saturday, and of course I never slid my arm around the back of her seat, let alone kissed her. We went out two or three times, always the same way, riding the bus from in front of her parents' house here perhaps to Magnolia Village, where there used to be a neighborhood theater, back before television invaded people's homes and usurped going out to the movies. In fact, I remember when the theater folded, after a decade of disuse. First it became seedy, then vacant, and finally it turned into a bowling alley. Right next door we used to play football and, farther out, some woods where we shot at preoccupied birds with our B-B guns.

This has nothing to do with Betty Latimer's house, of course. Unsure girl to accept a date with an even less sure boy, we would not recognize each other now if somebody locked us in a room forever and fed us Cheerios through the mail slot. She married and had children in time, as did we all. I remember hearing something sometime to affirm this small, universal fact.

I walk West on Barrett and see the small, tucked away house next door that evokes a dim memory and whose price must be inflated because of the neighborhood and does not reflect its intrinsic worth. I was inside for some unfathomable occasion and can almost but not quite see it as it used to be. Small, brick, and square, its confines preclude much variety in how it can be occupied, that is, lived in. I see in my mind an overstuffed chair, ottoman, reading light, Oriental carpet, and against the far wall a sofa of some kind, red or reddish brown, obscure, worn, soft, undistinguished, about the same color as the brick outside. Steps leading up, a hidden rail, the door at a ninety-degree angle away from the steps, an aluminum screen door that is anodized, a doorbell button that goes Ding-dong, a letter slot at shin-height, a handle that is shaped of black iron like a flattened letter C.

The woman inside would have hair of steelwool, be about five feet tall, wear glasses, have an apron bent around her copious waist, and smile, without meeting your eyes. Thus she was, thus she shall remain, for such houses precipitate this type of woman, whose husband departed the planet about twenty years earlier and was, let us say, a man who excelled in watch repair, back when watches were cleaned and regularly fixed, rather than being systematically replaced as being disposable items.

Onward, down Barrett, to the corner and a couple of fine old houses I remember as being inferior to what they are today. They have undergone considerable improvement and squat on their lawns oblivious to time, as unblinking as clams. I could live in either of them happily, though I doubt if I could pay the taxes. And across the way is the DeForest house. They had a daughter with breasts like bullets in their copious cashmere sweaters, of which she had as many colors as a flowerbed. And several sons of the family, one of whom I used to play basketball with, down the street. He was shorter, but determined, and practiced his set shot until he had it down cold, starting when he was about nine and could barely grip the ball with two hands, let alone shoot with one. He made the high school team on sheer guts and went on to become a lawyer. Yale, I think.

Today this fine old house is owned by a black who is free this mid-week afternoon to work on his lawn and keep it up for his and the neighbors's sake. No, I am wrong, for his truck is parked at the edge of the property line. He is one more hired hand brought in to do the heavy stuff. How can a man with a straight face cut a lawn that has not grown a half-inch since it was mowed last a week ago? The answer is easily. He carts away the clippings on a little canvas spread out for that purpose and they do not amount to more than what might be produced by the pared fingernails of a nursery school. But how nice the grass looks with its fresh wheel imprints, its blunted blades, its continued absence of so much as a solitary dandelion bract or eczema rash of crabgrass.

Now I am getting into familiar territory, home. The houses remain long after the names once attached have faded, long displaced. At the corner is the Spanish style home of Friedlander, the famous jeweler. He had two daughters, red-headed, with freckles; homely, I recall. He built one store, then another; I don't know how many he ended up with, but he was a civic figure and benefactor of the symphony, or was it the opera, and some institution that had to do with homeless children. Ryther? I remember one daughter marrying a man who came to work at one of the stores and they had several children. I think I saw a picture of Freidlander surrounded by grandchildren, looking proud as the glass of club soda in his hand. It was in the society section of the papers and was on the eve of some posh fund-raiser.

Here is Stewart's house. He was a physician, an obstetrician, who had as is often the case many children of his own. I think the number was five. I remember none of them. But the sight of a Christmas tree inside brings back their previous Christmases, glimpsed by me from the street, hardwood floors glistening, artifacts of the season, brick again, with little leaded windows and a low russet-colored wall running across the front and a matching garage flush to the street that housed as they all do here two cars. Now they build them routinely to accommodate three, but this is not a pretentious neighborhood but simply one that arrived fifty years ago and has stayed foremost ever since.

South on 43rd Avenue West was my brother's good friend and best man at his wedding, Jimmy Levitt, whose parents owned a furniture store or several. White brick, intentionally faded, so that the red shows through the wash and gives the surface a rich, mottled effect. The house, though, is white with no pretense, the red brick covered over by so many decades of paint that it has become white in itself. "You bought it at Levitt's," rings in my ears, an echo of some dim, gone Christmas past, like the ghost of a door chime, which carries the same tune. And down that street other houses that call out to me from memory but in so weak a voice that I cannot make out the message.

The houses now become sunk into the hillside, which falls sharply away, with Puget Sound looming widely, a grey wash, with the far horizon one of the islands, I've always not know which, either Bainbridge of Whidbey, and I guess it matters only if you live there and have to go across the water twice a day and a ferry is the only way it can be done. Today there is not a ship on the horizon, not a smudge, but I remember how the battleships and heavy cruisers named after cities, and common destroyers, and every once in a while for some special occasion a great aircraft carrier, with a battle name, would come drifting in like lazy carrion birds and occupy half the skyline and make us all gasp in wonder and know for the fact of their appearance that we were all loved and protected from the Jap Foe, who in those days nearly broached our borders.

Next to us was the house in which a man killed himself one night with a handgun and we never heard the report, only read about it in the papers the following evening. True, there was a commotion in the night, an ambulance spiriting somebody away, but we thought it an ordinary emergency, not a self-inflicted death. Only later did the horror creep in. I didn't exactly cross the street evermore to avoid the sidewalk there, which would have been childish, but I scurried along as fast as I could without running and looked all the while in the direction of the street.

It was the same house in which Eugene O'Neill had lived, reportedly, a decade and a half before we moved in. Or was it Sinclair Lewis? Always got them mixed up. Then our house, again built of immemorial brick slathered white, but this one not rising from a elevated lawn but peering out of a depressed one, as though sunk into its own moat and stuck there. You descended several cement steps and saw on your left a postage-stamp sized lawn I remember having to cut countless times and toward which I had to wheel and twist and cart the mower angrily until I got it there and the mowing took hardly any time. Sprinklers stood on skinny pipes and had mushroom heads, and I had to cut around them with the mower and then come back with clippers and circle them by hand, snipping away, for these were the first things my father would see on his return from the store at night, and a bad job after a bad day could irk him largely, I had learned.

Easy as the front yard was to do—only the pit and the parking strip—the back yard was a nightmare, a series of three rolling hills which had to be cut up and down, as though running a steeplechase, for if you went at them the easy way, that is, sideways, latitudinally, the blades cut into the crest of each hill and took the grass down below root level and the lawn died, or threatened to, unless given prompt, remedial attention. My father (who was not an unkindly man, no ogre) pointed out to me on many occasions the let-us-call-it unwisdom of cutting this particular lawn the easy way and my requirement to ascend, rather than descend, the mountain.

It is the same lawn that when he decided to save a few dollars by hauling in the gravel buckets for our new septic tank (this part of the city not yet on a sewer line because, I guess, of the war), he manfully lugged his way into a hernia, which cost more in time, pain, and money than if he had paid a crew to do the work, a lesson that stood him well the rest of his life, for he never tried anything remotely like it again. It is also the same hillside, pierced by a flagstone walkway, which on the same side as the new septic tank we constructed our Victory Garden. The corn never ripened there, the tomatoes remained green into November, and the peas were sparse inside their thin shells but, we all pronounced, delicious.

My brother and I had progressed in this second house from having a room with bunk beds which we were obliged to share to having rooms of our own, and these soon became rooms far away from the rest of the house. We were not alone. First my maternal Grandmother came to live with us, then her daughter, Dorothy, my mother's younger sister. They had hard times in Tecumseh, Michigan, after my Grandfather Clark, the butcher, died suddenly short of age 65 of a massive heart attack, pitching forward out of his smooth brown leather chair and glancing off the humidor in which he kept his cigars on the way to the carpet, from which he was never to rise.

So my brother and I vacated the upstairs bedrooms gladly, at least I did, for the spacious basement. We tried living together in the single small room with the knotty pine bunk beds, but this became a mutual nightmare and soon I took the rec room next door and he had the little room all to himself. I gained a lot of space and promptly expanded to fill every corner of it, not liking a vacuum any more than nature does. It was in this room that I lived and, in college, invited friends from my fraternity home to drink beer with me and act silly. And later it is where I brought classmates from the English Department to act inhibited for the first few stiff drinks and then, in the wink of an eye, like Santa at the chimney, to seque into wild animals.

It was in this room, in this second house, that Jack Leahy met Rusty, who was certifiably schizophrenic and had, at twenty, set a new record for years of consecutive psychoanalysis and spent all of her inheritance on it, and soon conceived his child, Jack's. And Paul Tufts chased my Cheryl Brown through the rose bushes outside my window, while his wife-to-be, Ann London, now dead and soon then to become the national president of NOW and debate William Buckley on national television and lay his ears back convincingly, sat on my lap in sexual retaliation, while I, not moved to lust like Paul's, or lust at all, subtly revealed how I felt about this arrangement by falling asleep. No, I didn't pass out. In those days, I only rested my eyes for a few moments, you see, eyes heavy from reading, not drinking. Yeah.

There Archie Tegland, who wrote scripts for Paladin, Have Gun, Will Travel, starring Richard Boone, pursued Janet Keller, who was an editor for TV Guide, and caught her and married her and moved to San Francisco and she had twins and divorced him and, God knows what else. And my friend Norton, also known as Dave, consented to be married to a girl, though he was not sure about how this arrangement might work out in the long run, Connie, who managed a bookstore where I worked now and who had the best D.H. Lawrence collection in the Western half of America, it was said. They divorced years later, after we shared an adventure in Berkeley, and he married again a school teacher from Santa Clara, drank himself insensible for years and finally quit his job as parole officer, was divorced by Edie, sat in a hotel room in downtown Tacoma, drinking red wine and watching American Bandstand, refusing to see anybody whom he called on the telephone until the right moment came along and he put a gun to his head and ended the torment. It is as common as recycled newsprint.

This house. I photographed it in living color (which was hard to do for, like the first house, it was black and white), then in its true colors with the little Canon strung round my neck. At the pit where the doorway stood I discovered a stone curiosity intended to hold flowers. Its interior was bare. Perhaps it was the season. A cement dwarf held a basket—he might have been a darky—out of which grew nothing. In spring it would perhaps hold petunias or impatiens, not just this dank earth out of which one or two straw stems jutted.

I was dying for a look into the back yard and those three swiftly rising hills and the place at the bottom across from the now replaced septic tank that had crumpled my father and the Victory Garden that admitted defeat to where the barbecue pit had been; it was ringed with little Greek cedars resembling cypresses and had honest-to-God redwood furniture, which was beginning to rot when we moved away, and flagstones neatly fitted and surrounded by grass which I had to hand-trim forever and in the far corner a stone fireplace with chimney that housed the cooking pit and rose and rose, and in which we never cooked anything, I recall. Behind the fence was woods that housed the Louke Estate.

They had a horse, John—yes, a horse in the city—and John was measurably old. In time he died. The Louke Estate was broken up and sold and divided into sizeable individual lots and built upon with fine houses, each having a view of Puget Sound. This I did not want to see today; it was not in keeping. We used to put out mountain beaver traps along the property line and regularly caught the rat-like creatures, which were dead if we waited long enough and, if not, we drowned them in a pail and unceremoniously buried.

Down the street from the entrance to the Louke Estate was the Gollofon house, one of those out-of-place Spanish missions with the curved red tile roofs. They had two kids, boys, one in my class, Art, who was All-City guard, back when a guard didn't have to be too big, but he was tough enough and once, in Boys' Club Football, hit me with a body block while I was running with one the rare passes I was able to catch along the sideline and totally demolished me for the rest of the day. Every time into the future that I saw a pro-athlete get his wind knocked out, my own diaphragm clutched empathetically and left me gasping for breath. His little brother was Gary and I think we did stamps together. He was a less violent sort.

Art and I were in the Beaver Patrol, Troop 81, Boy Scouts of America, he the patrol leader, me his assistant, but then the titles changed around at a week's notice, so it was no great thing. Ranny Hennes, who lived just down the street, was another eager Beaver. He went on to get a Ph.D. in history from Kent State, but spent his career doing undergraduate advising in the A&S Office at the UW. Odd, that, for he was a natural at the podium, a born teacher, but the ball bounces differently for some, and as I recall he had a couple of marriages that ended in acrimonious divorce, and both of his wives I knew slightly in a social context.

Beaver Patrol. I ascended to the rank of Life Scout and Junior Assistant Scout Master under Blondie Stamer, a relator and life-long bachelor who lived with his mother, and whom nobody could accuse of homosexuality of even the passive type, until it all came out at once when we were adults, and none of us had had an inkling. I think there was, and probably is, a lot of this going around, and the less it is looked at the better. Faultless Blondie took us out for our first hikes along the Cedar River and we presumed to drink the water and didn't get sick, not unless it was from out own cooking. We caught trout on flies abetted by caddis larvae, wrongly called periwinkles, and didn't know the fish were but juvenile steelhead captured in their mass gluttony prior to migration as smolts and the relative safety (at least, from Boy Scouts) of the open sea. It was a less than joyous time and made better by the fact that Blondie Stamer told us to bring along only food that was edible uncooked. Kippered salmon was one of his staples, I recall. Never afterwards did much like the stuff.

But I am getting away from my story of the December stroll, caught up in a diffuse and distant past. To the North of the second house we lived in was the fine home of Clarence Klopfenstein, who owned a men's clothing store that expanded to two, then three, but soon was forced to contract to two, one, and finally none. Chapter Eleven. They had three sons, one of whom was among the last in the world to catch polio, and bore the limp for the rest of his life, having first nearly died. Later, he ran the stores. Another became a physician. And a third insisted I be rushed by the Phi Delts, when I clearly was not Phi-Delt material, we both knew, so it was a discourtesy to both of us and painful to me. Years later, as a graduate student, my wife and I lived but two doors away from that frat house and daily had driven home to us our worlds of difference.

And then the frat house caught fire and nearly burned to the ground. Talk about your just deserts. There were other assorted mishaps, including a girl who got hit in the eye by a beer bottle flung in a drunken revelry in which she was not participating, only walking by, and on and on, but this is incidental to seeing again the fat spread of the very fine Klopfenstein house. The mother read books and was greatly overweight and had cats, one of which greeted my mother by jumping up on her shoulder (a Siamese trick, is it?) and terrifying her of any small furry creature with a tail into the long future.

To the North were more vacant lots, as we called them, long ago sold and built upon, as is everything now, at a premium price, and those scant woods that I remember sprinting through on my way from one friend to another were leveled by tractors bearing blades tipped at the front that relandscaped the area and made it uniformly buildable. The houses are, well, immodest, in that they are so lavish.

To the North, too, lie more memorable events in the life of an aging boy, myself, the streets soon beginning to wander and curve, defying the straight edge and right angle, as though having a will of their own, one not determined by compass. The Lukanovics lived on one; he was another of peer rank with my father at the store, and like so many of the others he and his wife, Bea, were childless. I used to think that the retail business made men, if not eunuchs, at least sterile, but there were just enough other executives with broods to disprove this rule. Hurlbuts were one, and for the life of me I can't think of any others. Oh, yes, Bill Street, the big boss. The president of the store.

My paper route lay in that direction, bounded by Fort Lawton which, during the war years, was a bee-hive. I remember one Sunday afternoon, after a troop ship had landed, making $40 shining shoes at a stand owned by Don Kopp and an associate. They were so tired of making money that they rented me the stand for a pittance—$5 or $10, I recall.

I had to furnish my own polish, which I could buy at the PX for next to nothing in brown, black, and of course Marine Cordovan, which the soldiers all wanted, if it was allowed. In my own time it wasn't, at least not during basic training. We who dyed ours had to scrub them down to bare leather and return our boots to basic brown. But I did not know about this when I returned home tired, my pockets filled with money. I had been advised to tell the flush soldiers, "Sorry, sir, but I don't have any change," and they invariably replied, "That's okay, kid. Keep it."

Wasn't it always the case, everywhere, during the war years?

My paper route was less than 100 papers, but Sunday was always a burden and necessitated rising early, Edmund, too, and the use of a car to lug them from the station to the start of the route, and then my father would dutifully follow in the Buick, its backseat and trunk jammed with the fat Sunday editions, bulging with stuffs, as we called them. These had to be hand-assembled in the shack before we started out. My father helped. And sometimes my mother, too, all the boys, their mothers, their fathers, standing around, shoulder to shoulder, in the shack that was a converted garage, stuffing and assembling, rolling and rubberbanding, then bundling them out to the Buick and driving slowly away, the springs groaning.

But I also remember a little steel wire cart which I bought or rented from the Times and which stood me in good stead while on the street, Sundays, in the dawn's yellow light, and on Thursdays, too, for Thursdays were killer loads for boys with no parents to assist them then. I'm sure I never thanked my parents for their help on Sundays. It's what parents were for, wasn't it? Thanks go without saying until it is too late to say thanks, which is the only time it really needs to be said. For your own sake. They have already digested your ingratitude and are inured to it.

My paper route was bound on the North by Fort Lawton, which I and my friends visited regularly, though we didn't use the front gate, which was for official business and guarded. We had a way of going over the cyclone fence by way of one of its cable supports which was strung and linked to a handy telephone pole. True, there was a war on, and this was a military post, but we were only kids, weren't we, in search of cigarets from the PX (13 cents a pack, as I recall) and first-run movies that were 15 cents. This was our main purpose in going there, plus the gym.

The gym was wonderful. The soldiers never used it. We were presumed to be from military families, I guess. Or we were just broadly accommodated. Everybody loves kids, don't they, and none of us looked very much like a Japanese spy, which was the main threat, these days. So, smoking our Luckies and Chesterfields, shooting baskets, shining shoes whenever the stand was vacant and we had the tariff, we prowled the fort and saw every good movie months before our parents did. And entering by way of the fence, we left by the main gate, the soldier on duty eyeing us half-menacingly, unable to figure out how we got in. Leaving, we posed no threat, even if we had earlier, which we hadn't, and we used to laugh back over our shoulders at the guard, knowing he didn't have any bullets for his gun and even if he did he wouldn't shoot us.

Americans all.

I snap pictures of the house in its pit, only slightly put off by the car at the curb. It is an old Jeep Wagoner. People in this part of the city do not effect prestigious cars, though all can afford them. There is a kind of reverse snobbism at work here. The older and quainter the car, they more value it has. Aside from the solitary Mercedes parked apologetically at the curb ahead, the vehicles are ordinary medium-ranged ones. Volvos are a favorite, especially gray stationwagons, and so are the small Honda wagons, though I am told they are not cheap. I don't see any Explorers like mine, or unlike mine, and conclude they are either all garaged or outrè.

I am headed South towards house number four, three being out of sequence, but this was also my route from house number two to the Village, where everything that happened locally had its source. I see an ivy-covered brick house with steep front gable that I remember well, though what I know is quick to fade. The man inside had a wireless radio and a car with a long whip antenna that permitted him to send and receive voice messages from his car. Also an early vanity license plate with his call letters. I see him seated at a desk with a movable mike and a cord which permitted him to slide it along as he talked, giving his words emphasis and drama. In front of him were receivers and transmitters with a green light in their windows and countless dials that he kept twiddling as he talked, calling in new stations and broadcasters in a network that reached all the way, he told me, to New Zealand.

I was impressed, but I don't know what my relationship was to this man, whether he had children, a wife, or what on earth I was doing there.

I move on and come to the vacant lot which I used to cut across and descend on my way to the Gollofons. A fine fat house squats there, blocking my route. Surely this house is not thirty years old? Its owner paid a price for the last available lot with so fine a view. Of course I can't glimpse the Sound, which must be encompassed by all of his westward windows, protecting it, saving it for himself, if he anymore thinks to look out at it. The trouble with views, I recall, is that they are soon ignored. A ship on Puget Sound has practically got to explode to be noticed, at least in those long years after the war's end and the purposeful morale visits of the fleet to the docks of Pier 91.

Across from Gollofons we used to play a form of touch football that might as well have been called tackle for all the gentleness it contained. The street has thickets of Himalayan blackberry skirting its huge vacant lot, a lot I suddenly remember tunneling under with my toy gun and setting up some kind of subterranean camp in, with candle stubs for lights and overhead boards through which the dirt upstairs would sift threateningly but never quite collapse, killing us. Oh the memories brought back by a street corner blocked from view by a new house now thirty years old.

Once I caught a pass (I think I caught two in all of my boyhood) that nobody thought I'd get and so had slacked off on guarding me. It was at the edge of the blackberry brambles and I went flying into them, catching myself with the palm of at least one hand. (If two, I didn't receive the pass, or else fumbled it, out of bounds.) The thorns went into me everywhere and later festered and caused blisters, which opened and wept and infected and required a doctor's treatment and (joy) bandaging, and for a while I went around dramatically imitating the little drummer boy, hoping for sympathy and gaining only odd looks at my wraps.

Didn't they understand I was an injured football player?

Gollofons' dad was a distributer for Paramount Pictures and had the glamorous, enviable job of taking canisters of film in his car to small towns to the North, where he left them off for a week's showing, picking up at the same time the canisters from the week before and, I suppose, leaving them off at other towns big enough to contain a movie theater. Sometimes we went with him. We were all three fishers, we boys. And we were scouts together. The Beaver Patrol of Troop 81, if it did anything, fished.

Mr. Gollofon once took us to Arlington, where he dropped off a second-run film and trailer, and then journeyed on to probably Mt. Vernon, by way of Lake McMurray and Conway on old State Route 9. This took us within a mile of Lake Sixteen. It was famous for its big cutthroat trout. We caught one rarely, but it was invariably fourteen inches long. We caught them from a boat lent us by the farmer who owned the lake. I suppose Mr. Gollofon paid him something. I remember buying a quart of whipping cream, no longer available in the stores because of the war being on, and bringing it home to my delighted mother, who promptly baked a cake and slathered it with the fluffy white stuff. How delicious it was. And the farmer had a manure pile that was alive with thick angleworms. We dug them and filled a two-pound coffee can, but nearly all of our fishing was with Flatfish. (It is a lure.)

We had a tent in the spring and slept out of it in summer, and built a fire each night, for it is what Boy Scouts do, and told scary stories and traveling salesmen jokes, which we only half understood: "Me, cold? I'm six inches in Snow." I think it was fun, but I'm not quite sure, for often the memory is richer than the event. I remember an old man who came down to fish in a pram of and how he trolled a long line behind him and caught more trout than we did by many orders of magnitude on a special wooden orange Flatfish on which he had painted red spirals with some woman's nail polish. Of course we emulated this, but caught no more cutthroats than before.

It all stopped, I suppose, when each of us in turn discovered Girls. They were much more important than the Boy Scouts, hiking, camping, and catching trout. There was an interim period, brief, and it consisted of playing spin the bottle and kick the can on long summer nights. And then we all forgot each other and were pursuing one single girl most seriously. It never stopped even with college (and in some instances not even after we got married).

I turn to the East for a block and all the houses are unknown. A man twenty years younger than me is fiddling under the hood of a car in a driveway and is helped by a beautiful girl who is half his age. A daughter? I think not. They scarcely glance at me as I pass by at my walker's pace. I wonder about their relationship, but then I wonder about everybody's relationships, so what's new? There is never anything much surprising in my life, I suddenly understand. A thing is new only in my comprehension of it.

The corner house is vaguely familiar. I've never been in it, I'm sure, but across the street is the magnificent Kingsbury house, where one sibling, Bruce, used to admit us for Friday night poker games through high school and early into college. Well, our first year, anyway. Did he have a pinball machine in his basement? I do think so. It's what a gang of us did, when we had no girls going at the moment, which was more often than not. Many of us pledged the same college fraternity. There was Kingsbury (who went on to Stanford), Mike Sheets (same), Elander, Kobacher, Keller—I can remember no more. We became Delts. And we used to go downtown to movies together and play pool afterwards and shoot baskets at the same athletic club my father, Edmund, took me and my family to dinner at to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.

My, how things come round, given a little time. Soon I'll wax eloquent about the maple court and the steam showers and the rooms with soft chairs the men, not the boys, were allowed to enter after some manly sport or workout and have a cold drink served to them and maybe a club sandwich. And I remember some blond young women, others not so young, who brought the drinks, gave massages and "rub downs," and I suppose all the rest. We weren't allowed as junior members into that area and if we strayed were ordered by some muscled attendant to get away.

Manicuring the edge of a flower bed that looks dormant at the front of the old Kingsbury spread is a young woman who looks like she lives there. I deign to speak; in this neighborhood and in comparable ones elsewhere we all reach out to each other familiarly, even though we have never seen each other before. When staying with my parents in California's Rancho Bernardo, among all the swells, I slipped into the manner and the idiom as though I had never been away from it, which perhaps I hadn't, only deludedly in time and geography. "Hello," I said. "Not a bad day." It was not raining, that is. "I used to play poker in the basement of your house, as a boy." There—that ought to do as introduction, and it did.

She chatted warmly, clutching her trowel in one little gloved hand. Did everything, she asked, look smaller than I remembered it? She spoke as though she were accosted like this nearly every day; perhaps she was. Was everybody these days out for a stroll down memory lane? Did it happen just often enough to be no surprise, or find her unprepared for it?

"No," I said, "everything looks nicer than I remember it. You people"—I wasn't one of them, clearly, on foot and with my little odd tweed cap pulled at a slant over my right eye, my nondescript navy blue down jacket snapped up to my chin, festooned with cameras like Dennis Hopper—"certainly do a nice job of keeping up your places." Not one of them, no, but not so far away as to be unappreciative of what I saw or too uncomfortable with it to be able to comment on it without evident envy.

"Well, it takes a lot of work," she admitted, not immodestly.

She was clearly the wife of the place, not a daughter, I could tell from the way she said this. She was in charge here. True, they had gardeners, but they only helped with the routine stuff, the weekly cutting, year round, and this left a lot of the detail stuff for her to do. I remembered all at once how Bill Street had walked me around his eleven-acre estate on my river, the Stillaguamish, and had pontificated about how "he" had cut back these trees, spread cedar chips along the pathways, moved rhododendrons that were twenty feet high from this place to that place, sawed up maples and alders that were beginning to rot. What he meant was, he had made the decision, hired the men, pointed out what needed doing, and saw to it that it was done to his satisfaction before he paid them for it. In his mind, and perhaps in mine, "he" had done all this, for without him it would never have been thought to have gotten done.

This is management, you understand?

The woman in the old Kingsbury house had never heard of the Kingsburys, but she remembered the name of the people who had the house before she and her husband bought it and she told me. I had never heard of them. We looked at each other, grinning. I waved and moved on, not quite the stranger.

I crossed back and proceeded up the far sidewalk, coming to the house once owned by the sports writer, Royal Brougham. He used to give us balls in season—little round white ones in spring, big round bouncy ones in winter, and spiral-shaped ones in fall. Only a block away and in the center of its block lived Doug Welch, another writer for the same paper, the P-I, who was a friend of my parents and, during the war years, a part of their car pool. Car pools had a way of persisting past their time, past the rationing of gas, mostly because the people liked each other and the long daily commuting out past the end of Magnolia Bluff, down the ramp where the piers were to Elliot Way (sometimes called 15th Avenue NW.) and hence five miles to downtown Seattle, where they all worked. This arrangement was so congenial and long-lasting that it comprised a sort of club and it was the same people who got together on holidays for a dinner that was called Progressive. This meant they had cocktails at one house, moved down the street (much as I had been moving along today) to the next house in the series for, say, the soup course, then on to another house only doors away for the entree, and perhaps another drink or glass or two of wine, and then on to yet another house for dessert.

New occasions were found for Progressive Parties and they began to multiply like hamsters. Soon strangers began imitating them and having moving feasts Parties of their own. This cooled the idea and soon killed it. The parties stopped and became less jovial, more casual, and in a way less intimate. They began and ended at the same house. Only the houses on each different occasion rotated in the future.

Then everybody got old and sick or else died or moved away.

Here was the Douglas house. I remember Dale, who was in my class in high school and university. She had brothers and sisters. Was the father a cop or a fireman, somebody high up? Some sort of politician? I really can't remember. Athletes ran in the family, but I don't recall the sport. Dale was tall, skinny. Then she grew up, married, and had children. I wouldn't recognize her if she bumped into me on the street and knocked me down. Or it happened the other way round, which is more likely.

I am nearing house number four and the richness of associations is increasing, though my parents didn't live in this house until I was grown and married. In fact, they bought it while under construction, and they had to wait until house number three was sold; when they were ready to move in, my wife and I (who were newly returned from Berkeley) insisted on cooking them their first meal there. It was spaghetti. Spaghetti is a traditional early American dish, don't you know, though many of Italian ancestry may not believe this. If you make it with Velveeta cheese it undergoes a radical transformation, even if you sprinkle on top the traditional Parmesan. And we add lots of ground beef, which makes it the entree, not the pasta course.

Thus I was a grown man when my parents came to this house, so it does not really count as a house of my boyhood, and I've never stayed the night in it, but since this neighborhood was mine since I was eleven and we came to Seattle to live out our respective lives, I must include it by rights of accession, or something like that. Today it is on my zigzag course, which to transverse in chronological order would take me a mile out of my way, and the perfect symmetry of the act is not necessary to my mind. Besides, the house is as much mine as anybody's, having lived in houses surrounding it for all of my boyhood and longer.

How odd it now seems to comprehend that my parents had lived most of their lives in a series of four houses, none of which was more than a few blocks away from the others. The area prescribes not a rectangle but a tetrahedron—which is nothing more than a square kicked slightly out of shape and with one or two of its sides slightly shortened. Yet the route which I have knowingly taken will return me to my Explorer (a fit name for a vehicle used for such a researche into temps perdu) parked at the curb about halfway between house number one and house number . . . not four but three.

Clear? Well it is to me.

Odd too that my father, his peers at work, and even one or two of his bosses should all live so close together. Packed, you might say. All except for Dad childless, besides. Past the Douglas house that I've never been inside and past several that are expensive, I see the house one away from Kingsbury where Marilyn Morgan lived. She was fittingly like one with such a redundant, alliterative name—precociously cute, cuddly, bosomy, pert. I had an unremitting crush on her in the Eighth Grade, and it was not returned. I did some embarrassing things I'd just as soon not recount, things many fourteen-year-old boys did shyly, abruptly, with great trepidation, a bit shamefully, too, to their everlasting chagrin. She did not encourage me and I did not discourage. Finally when the charm I gave her for her bracelet was returned to me in its little white box, lined with cotton batten, I realized that we "were through," though nothing had ever begun. I turned my love, my bright lust, to somebody else and had it mildly reciprocated, which led to bigger and better things, if you catch my drift. Thank God.

One down from the Morgans was the grand house of the Parishes. They owned the third Seattle newspaper, The Star, long ago folded. Besides the house lurking inside the acreage of the Louke Estate, this is the only one in the vicinity that could be called a mansion (though there are several new ones now pressing it for attention and the title). It occupies a lot of three-times the size of the others and has a row of closed garages off to the side that hide limousines, no doubt. The house itself is awesome, stucco, half the street long and, of course, sitting on its own special knoll and looking down on all through its lorgnette, as it were. Only there never was, and is not today, anybody standing at those multitudinous veiled windows, veiled in gauze, peering forlornly out.

Perhaps it has never been occupied and only serves as a "front" for some sinister operations. Opium is stepped on inside and packaged up and driven away by inexpressive drivers in dark clothing, wearing little black billed caps, who turn a host of square white packets over to ordinary vendors and receive long envelopes choked with hundred-dollar bills in exchange. Or else brain operations are performed by skilled surgeons who the Cartel won't allow to practice in the United States on kitchen tables and the patients allowed to recover in upstairs bedrooms before the same limousines transport them to airports and the resumption of their remote, quotidian lives.

Probably some banker really lives there and he can barely walk, let alone get it up. He is waited on by a bevy of private-duty nurses and eats only Ovaltine and Ritz crackers.

Connie Burn lived behind the brick fence opposite, with its easy in, easy out, drive-through, along with his wife, Kay, who had a M.A. from the U. of Chicago in literature and was as mad as they come. She dissolved into making threatening anonymous telephone calls to friends, her husband's business acquaintances, and eventually anybody who would pick up the receiver. Once she was banished to San Francisco, but the city reportedly deported her. She was always nice to me, though, and I remember a house full of books. She was a friend, she said, of Mary McCarthy and Edmund (another Edmund yet!) Wilson, but then she was a friend of everybody whose books she read, and she was free to ready plenty, since she had nothing else to do with her life except rave. Like many of the women of the men in the retail trade, she found life burdensome and had no children to provide comic relief, or whatever they do in the way of sanity. She shopped all she could and was left with her packaged life on her hands. There was always the questions of whether or not to commit her. Her husband, an intelligent and gentle man, refused for as long as he could, then got a legal separation.

I see the fence ahead where she dumped her garbage into the yard of the neighbors who were Jewish. Nobody a Mick likes less than a Kike. Their name—let's call them Katzenbaum, which is close enough—was enough to provoke the rotten-food insult. They took it the first and the second time; they knew there were people who did not like Jews, for the war in German was only recently over, and they hoped she could be persuaded by her apologetic husband to mend her ways, if not pick up the stinking garbage. Finally they did. They called the police. Probably the police were persuaded with Connie's cash to look the other way, just this once. Then again. It was the era in Seattle of police bribes.

My father, Edmund, got a few calls from Kay. They came during the banishment-to-San-Francisco period, delivered at long-distance rates. They were most unpleasant. Of course the husband was my father's boss, once removed. Then not removed at all. Imagine having to apologize to your employees for your wife's obscene behavior. Not many men could do it. He did.

Eventually he divorced her. Before that, he had found a sympathetic girl friend. Who could blame him? He was a lonely man, in a line of business not known widely for its acts of kindness, and he was basically kind, thoughtful, as only heavily burdened men sometimes are; everybody was grateful for the advent of the girl friend, who was well liked, gracious, and soon could be found accompanying him to Progressive Parties and to Christmas and New Year's Eve events. It was hoped that when the divorce was final he would marry her. Only there never was a divorce. Kay was sane enough to decline the offer, which would have cut her off without so much support. So he continued to carry her. The years went by. Nobody blamed the girl friend when she looked into the future and saw more of the same indefiniteness. She broke it off, moving to a new city. I never knew what happened to him afterwards, but he no longer lived in the fine house I was passing by. It looked about the same. In fact, all the houses were opaquely pretty much the same when viewed from the outside. Ah, but were they any different when you went inside? Wouldn't they have to be, or did the faces and the clothing change slightly, but life in Carleton Park remain the same, substantially?

There were several houses I didn't remember between Connie Byrne's house and my father's fourth and final house. They were good but not grand ones, I'd say, and the house in which Norma and I prepared spaghetti in around 1956 was not very impressive. Not today. An ornamental cherry tree in the front yard had destroyed half the lawn with its elaborate surface root system. The ground around the solitary tree, a tree which tended even in winter to weep a little, like a child with a cold, was bare-limbed, as bare as if it were the earth beneath an evergreen that blocked all light and continuously shed its needles. What the tree ought to have done is to volunteer to be whacked down and removed, its roots dug up, fresh unpoisoned soil brought in, fertilizer applied, and some new flora sunk into the ground and given a chance to flourish. No chance.

I mean, my parents didn't know any better, the house being new, the tree expensively ornamental and yet unglimpsed in spring, but what excuse had these owners? The tree was obviously a detriment, or was it that I wanted to see it in this light? No, no. I had nothing to gain and would soon move on. Still, it irked me. I wanted to walk right up to the door (which had no steps to slow my approach), knock loudly, and when the occupant came to the door accuse him or her of chronic abuse of the property.

And I had never lived in this house, remember.

Instead, I took my single color picture of the front that was half-stone faced, half clear cedar, the cedar stained, with already some tacky Christmas cards stuck in the front bedroom window. Perhaps they were what a child produces in art class in grade school and, accordingly, are not so tacky as unartistic. That was it. The house was unartistic. My parents had bought it new in-—let me see—1956, which was nearly forty years ago. Shouldn't it still be pristine? It was not pigs who lived in it but ordinary people, people with children (or else people with definitely weird tastes in art), people who went out into the workaday world and came home tired, hungry, beat. And I, I begrudged them something definite, tangible, in the form of an ornamental cherry tree.

No, what I begrudged them was a chunk of my past.

I took a couple of black and white pictures, as well, and nearly had to squat to pavement level to get the composition squared away and fill the frame. Time to move on, for it is getting dark. I have one more house to go, and it is several blocks away, necessitating that I cross Viewmont Way again and remembering the arterial as carrying much more traffic than it does today—at well past three o'clock on a grey winter day.

I see Don Johnson's house; his parents', that is. He was a boy of my class and size and, at 130 pounds, we got continually paired up in wrestling class for a sport neither of us enjoyed. We took turns at winning and I remember I hurt my back, not by anything he did to me, you understand, but by coming out on top once and having to wrestle out of my class some hulking guy who put me in a body scissors and a full-Nelson (not allowed) and wrenching me into a new configuration. I had to go to the doctor but now had an excuse to get me out of wrestling for the rest of the year and got to hand out towels instead.

The teacher, who also taught algebra, thought me a sissy, but I didn't care, for I remembered how he read the morning newspaper well into the period and thoughtlessly picked his nose, all the while.

Don Johnson's house was bought by Carl Klopfenstein, who became a surgeon and eye specialist, besides being a famous Phi Delt, and raised children there, they sleeping nights I suppose in the room where Don and I used to exchange postage stamps and try to find nice things to say about each other's terrible airplane models. And across the street lived a beautiful black-haired girl whose angelic face was surrounded by inky ringlets and whose name I forget. She didn't go on to college but married a high school jock who had flame-colored hair and went into some phase of home construction. No names, only fleeting faces, and fifty years have passed, and they are probably stooped and their hair faded and thinned to the identical coloration. So different looking originally could they have grown to resemble each other in age, or did divorce claim them and they go on to other spouses, further children, divergent lives? I find I don't really care.

It is getting close to dark, but only a light or two is automatically turned on, so far. I approach house number three—my favorite—from the bottom of the hill at Viewmont Way. It occupies a double corner at Crestmont Place and Parkmount Avenue. One name takes the diphthong spelling, the other does not, and the editor in me for a moment wants to make the spelling on the wintergreen street sign consistent, then does not. Instead I take a picture of the house—tall, brick, imposing—with the intersection signs in green as the immediate foreground object, in focus, with a wide aperture that will throw the house itself slightly out of focus, for some dim, dumb reason I cannot put the finger of my mind on; then I stop down and take a second picture in black and white from exactly the same angle, with all hopefully in sharp focus. Or it ought to be. Then I bang off a single color shot and march on.

I'm sure I have a color shot left, one on number 25, for the film hasn't automatically rewound into its canister inside. This I'll save. And I take one more black and white from the steep side of the hill of the house in grand profile. I make the house level with its floor inside, but the cement of the street and sidewalk slanting at about 30 degrees—perfect. Just the way I remember it.

Funny but I was inside this house long before my parents ever were. It was my favorite even then. Rod Anderson's folks owned it. (Had to really work to come up with the name, but I did. It comes as a triumph. Only a 64-year-old voyager on a late cruise on the ship of himself could appreciate the thrill of his getting it right. Alzheimer remains at arms-length, at least for the moment.)

Does it mean anything that three out of the four houses are brick, including this one? The first three, but not the fourth? The Parkmount House—as I've always thought of it—has a magnificence still. And a host of memories, though I only lived there briefly, for they bought it when I was full grown and I was never more than its visitor. And I remember practically nothing about Rod Anderson from earlier, only that he was smaller than I and dark. He had no dominant personality, like the house did. My occasion for being there is also dim, along with the number of times. Perhaps he was a Scout, a member of the infamous Beaver Patrol. Whatever else, we kids were always going in and out of each other's houses.

This house was special, I always thought. Viewed from the front, that is, the North or East, it seemed but one storey, but from the side, the West, where the property fell away steeply, and from where I had just taken my black-and-white snap that I had to correct from an imagined floor level, making the sidewalk and street slope sharply away, one could begin to sense its size. There were second storey windows appearing and, below street level, the start of the daylight basement. All red brick, and perched high on its lot, the house dominated the neighborhood—at least the immediate area.

There is something powerful about brick. It is what the practical pig built his house out of, to protect it from the elements and the wolf's wintry blast of breath. A fire is not going to take it away. It appears impervious to earthquake (though it is not, and is perhaps more vulnerable than wood to a sudden, twisting motion of the ground). It is solid, substantial, imposing, impressive. It had leaded glass windows throughout and looked to me Tudorish. Of course the floors were brightly polished yellow oak. The rooms were spacious and well lit from winter rays entering those windows. Today they were illuminated all the same. Though not far from dark of a December day, I'm sure not a light was so early turned on anywhere perhaps except in the kitchen (which faced to the dreary northwest) and in the little room that we called a den and was where my wife and I stayed, when we came home from Berkeley for a Christmas visit.

That first year away, after I had come back from the army, my father would not hear of our remaining in California over the holidays and sent two first-class roundtrip tickets for us to join them in Seattle; though I had plenty of schoolwork to occupy me (for we were on the semester system) I dared not refuse them. Nor wanted to. Even when overseas in the army I had managed to come home for Christmas and neither my father nor I was going to make this 26th year of my life the first exception. So home we flew, met at the airport by them and their Oldsmobile that was undistinguishable from a Cadillac by anybody other than the owners of Oldses and Caddies, and the few among the automobile cognoscenti. We were not in their number.

I had stayed there briefly before, earlier in my ragged life, in between rooming houses, apartments, houseboats, with live-in girl friends, none of whom I actually acknowledged I was sharing my quarters with. So this tiny room with its built-in bookcases and corner portable TV set was, in effect, my room, or as much of one as I ever had in this house that I loved more than any of the others. This did not diminish its hold over me. It probably increased its grip somewhat because of the tenuousness of the situation.

It was mostly from the lower Crestmont side that the house took on its impressiveness, rising to a full three stories and glaring haughtily (or so I liked to think) down at its neighbors. One on this street used to have a Doberman Pincer that terrified all of us. Rumor was the man beat it, or else it wouldn't have been so mean. We consoled ourselves with the cliche that they only killed their owners, and waited for the news, but it never came, and we soon gave up hoping for it.

On that back street, one with limited access that might have been called an alley anywhere else, I had many fond memories predating our purchase of the house. A garage had become the shack for distributing the Seattle Times newspaper, and it was where we boys queued up, waiting for the arrival of the dark blue trucks bearing our day's load of work. To kill time, we shot baskets at the small backboard and hoop that hung from a telephone pole. (All the phone and power lines are now underground, by the way.) Because of the curb, and abetted by the incessant rain, basketball was hazardous. To go up for a lay-in meant negotiating the curb, and it actually gave you a step up to bank the ball. And since the alley was narrow, it was impossible to shoot from what is now three-point territory and we had to content ourselves with a greatly truncated game of 21. It was excellent for Horse.

And then the truck would come, open up its back, and disgorge its bundles of papers and we all fell to and claimed ours. Mine was two and a half bundles, I recall. Mondays and Saturdays were great, slim days, but Sundays and Thursdays were boy-killers. And Friday was not too wonderful, either.

Today there is a new basketball hoop and backboard—right above our garage door. How dare they? The garage had a dry entry from the basement and it was where I learned how to coast my car or Dad's on a hot engine running solely on fumes. Though he got repeatedly angry at this, he also marveled at how I could bring home a car—as though it were a B-17 returning from a bombing raid on Bremen—on a nearly empty gas tank.

It did not bother me so much, for I knew the strictly downhill route to the first service station in Magnolia Village and could coast his car or mine the full distance, though there was a bad place about half-way down Viewmont where the car would slow and nearly stop and if I made the best run for it (that is, leaving my foot off the brake pedal, all the while) I could just clear it and there would be no more obstacles until I whisked through the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill and turned sharply right over the lip of the sidewalk, teetered almost to a stop, then slid into the pump area, where I would blow for a dollar's worth of gas and be on my blithe way again.

He could never do it or figure out how I did.

Once, when I had returned from a date in his car, my disreputable one left home at the curb, and he found his would not start, he picked up my keys from the desk beside which I was still drunkenly sleeping on the foldout guest sofa, and drove his car pool downtown in The Beast or in Jeffery, I forget which one I owned right then. In the back was probably spread out my fishing tackle and perhaps a trout I had forgotten to clean a week previously. It often happened. I mean with a trout. This was the only time I stuck Dad with my car and it was not of my choosing, remember.

He was more amused than angry, I think, at least by the time the day had passed and he encountered me over the dinner table with a slightly admiring stare.

It all comes back, given proper stimuli. The problem is not how to provoke it but how to stem the flood. I stand on the corner, an aging man knowing himself to be a paltry thing, and snap away a final, departing shot from the North curb. There are circles cut in the parkingstrip for rose trees, and they have been severely pruned back for winter; I'm sure in summer they are in continual magnificent bloom. Now they're but bare stalks.

We didn't have circles; instead, there was a bed that led from the sidewalk to the backdoor, the door through which we all entered, our cars parked at the curb if not in the garage that had the indoor entrance to the house. The roses were in shade much of the day and didn't do well. Mother was always replacing them with roses she hoped would bloom their little hearts, but the problem was the eternal lack of sunlight. Now, on the parkingstrip, there was more light, light that flooded the street all day long, and the roses, I am certain, would have prospered. December offers no clues, though.

The new owners must be smarter than us, though I have doubts about the placement of that basketball hoop above the double garage door, which shows some lack of intelligence, if only in this one instance.

My old Cocker Spaniel, Blackie (this was, you understand, back before I had developed what I thought to be a superior imagination), had accompanied us from Highland Park, Illinois, a bedroom suburb of Chicago, to Seattle in early 1942. He had survived a kennel impoundment, distemper, myriad cuts and scrapes and scuffles with cats, but as he aged he became careless and forgetful. He slept a lot. One of his favorite places was to do it on was cement, and he couldn't tell the house walkway from the sidewalk from the street. One rainy night in an earlier December, he stretched out for his usual after-dinner nap—right in the middle of the street. It was dark. The car never saw him and was traveling at a normal speed. Bumpety-bump said the tires. And Blackie was left behind, bleeding and dying in spasms.

He was dead when I found him and, soaked with rain and tears, I picked up the solitary dog of my youth and found him surprisingly heavy. I piled him into the trunk of Jeffrey, grabbed a shovel, and drove to a public stretch of Magnolia Boulevard, one with a terrific view of Puget Sound (which I thought he might enjoy eternally, as they say), and dug my hole in the rocky ground and buried Blackie, returning home soaked to a shower and tell my family of the tragedy. In my mind was the idea to protect my little brother Dicky from the gruesome sight. But I think he thought I robbed him of some essential element of his youth and grief therapy, which was the start of our long estrangement (thought neither of us might recognize it as such and, to be honest, the meaningfulness of the event did not occur to me until right now).

I guess I was college-aged then. When I returned from the army in Alaska during the Korean War, I had another dog with me. It was a female German Shepherd. (I suppose a person might measure out his life in dogs as well as in T. S.Eliot's coffee spoons, and they would give him fair measure, too.) It was in the living room of the Parkmount House that I taught my dog your basis training in obedience in about fifteen minutes, after a Sunday afternoon of watching Lassie perform on TV with delicious Bonita Granville filling my eyes—she who always wore her fair hair in the Germanic braids I so admired.

"Wolfe can do that, every bit as well," I announced to the room, and then proceeded to corner my year-old dog, who was only waiting for the occasion. Sure enough, she heeled and sat on first command; she cornered like a Buick. After each completion she looked up at me, tongue lolling, waiting for praise. God-like I bestowed it. It was the start of a long and wonderful relationship. I haven't been long without a dog since.

The great Parkmount house played a minor role in my life in the sense that I never truly lived there, only stayed there on short occasions during the periods of my transient life. But it mattered much to me for it to be ours. It was magnificent in every detail. Upstairs my parents had their master bedroom and bath. Upstairs also were where my maternal grandmother and her daughter, Dot, my mother's only sister lived, until it was determined that Dot would do better in a place of her own, and was banished to Queen Anne Hill.

Thinking of Edmund and his houses and the retail- business devotion that made them all possible, and also our life of modest affluence together, it should be stated and noted well that he was a generous man, a man who did not shirk his responsibilities but allowed them to compound to the point that would break the back and bank of an ordinary man. At one time he was supporting or largely contributing to the support of, (1) his mother, inert for ten years in a nursing home, (2) his father, first in a halfway house for the incorrigible in Villa Park, Illinois, then in a mental institution a short distance away, and finally in a series of homes that were deluded into accepting him in Seattle and from which he was unceremonious pitched out over the last years of his life, (3) Edmund's mother-in-law, broke now and widowed, (4) his wife's sister, who held menial white-collar jobs, including that of a customer's cashier at the Klopfenstein store and then at Frederick and Nelson, jobs that were not enough to live on and required some other means of support for a woman that should not be looked at too closely, in many instances. Add to this two sons, one a deadbeat in college who only wanted to read books, write, drink beer, and make out with girls, and another soon to come along who required private schooling pointing in the direction of the ministry, and you can begin to formulate the tremendous pressures on the man.

I have always prided myself on having earned enough money to be able to tell the boss (when I had one) to take this job and put it in the darkest place associated with his body. And I did, a few times. It was not especially satisfying. Generally it was followed by some stretches of austerity and regret. But now, standing in the lowering light of Crestmont and Parkmount Drive, I see clearly that all I did was boyishly shirk my duty—not accept my responsibilities as an adult male and handle them. Edmund did. His son ought to be able to stand up on his hind legs and acknowledge this great feat sometime in the son's lifetime.

Or did I just then?

There is only left the slow walk back to the Explorer at the completion of my circuit, my trek. I do this now thoughtfully and with a chill of calmness. Ahead is one of the new mansions being constructed afresh from the ground up. It is one of the ones I later learn is in the post-half mil class. Today I would misjudge its worth, but know that it is plenty still, way out of this boy's range. There is a crew of workers standing round, in the lee of the day. One looks to be the general contractor, but turns out to be only a vendor. I address him:

"That is a mighty fine cedar roof. I thought it was impossible to obtain first-class cedar any more? I need to put a roof on my own house, you see, and I was admiring this one."

Well, it is true enough, and in keeping with cheap little trick of addressing strangers as though we have known each other for years. A social transgression, you might call it.

"Yes, it is impossible to get good cedar, but this is as good as can be bought."

"Do you know the name of the roofing company?"

"No, but the contractor might. That's him, over there."

And the man—seeing this—heads our way. He looks uncontractorlike.

"Hello," he says. "May I help you?"

I tell him how I was admiring the roof and was in the need for one myself. More like an accountant.

He repeats what the vendor told me and gives me the name of the company, Western Cedar, only it turns out in the phone book they spell it Westurn. Cutesy.

"They have their own mill. They buy the best cedar bolts available."

I know better than to tell them I have friends in the shake business and could buy a bundle at wholesale, though I have no way of judging the quality or of putting them up. Also I know better than to mention money. I do say that I live in a more modest neighborhood, but grew up here. People, I've found, have a way of relaxing in the presence of someone who quickly admits he had come down in life. It puts them at ease.

I've put many people at their easy, accordingly.

I walk on and see the red Explorer loom up ahead; an Explorer does loom, it is not a rhetorical trick or exaggeration. I offload my cameras and pile inside and drive away.

Wait, the day is not quite over, though I think it is.

I take a different route back, one that carries me up the cusp of the McGraw Street hill to the East. You see, there are these two big hills, with a valley in between them, and the Village is in the valley, and one expensive hill is Carleton Park, the other Magnolia, and part of Magnolia is expensive, too, but part of it is not, and the Village itself contains homes built at the end of World War II that are, well, cheap, though they have appreciated, too, and are what you might call modestly priced today.

If I was taught to say that I came from Carleton Park to people who did not know where that was, I was also trained to recognize that Magnolia was our common name, and Magnolia was where I went to grade school (bused there), learned how to parse a sentence, do fractions and decimals, distinguish the Bill of Rights from the Constitution proper, play soccer, and blow raggedy tunes on the B-Flat Cornet.

I decide to drive past my old grade school on my way out of town, so to speak. Approaching, I skirt the Magnolia hill. Now I turn left onto 28th Avenue West and ride the crest of the wave North, past houses of widely differing value and maintenance. Some are nicely kept up, but right next door will appear one that has a lawn that hasn't been cut since when and blistered paint or crumbling brick, or stucco, a local favorite. Then there will be a stretch of fine homes that shoulder each other proudly until you come to one sad soldier who is missing a few buttons on his uniform or has a cracked window patched with a board. And up ahead on my right, I know, sure as tomorrow is Wednesday, is Magnolia Grade School.

Only it isn't. It isn't Magnolia Grade School any longer. It has been closed and reopened with a new affiliation. I guess a grade school in an aging neighborhood isn't really necessary. Besides, there is a newer, nicer school down in the valley, where the Village is. It is where the money has gone.

Laidlaw buses are lining up in front of what used to be the school. They are private, painted bright golden yellow, no doubt as a safety feature. Don't hit me, the color proclaims, and nobody does. The drivers are pulling up to the loading zone in a curious manner. It is as though some sort of game is going on. First of all, the drivers are all black. More than half are women. The first bus moves to the furthermost end of the loading zone, where the street corner is and turns right. The next bus creeps up and touches the rear bumper with its snout; if not quite touching it, you couldn't force your hand sideways in the open slot. Then a third bus arrives and does the same thing. Down 28th Avenue West to the South more buses are arriving and slide into position and do exactly the same thing. Odd.

I dismount from my car and grab my cameras, for I've a final object to photograph, and it is significant to me, important. In order to cross to the sidewalk I must either pass between two buses or go around the long string of buses that is steadily expanding. As they arrive and close it becomes a nightmarish situation. There is a sign on the parking strip near the buses and I want it in the picture. My idea is to use my favorite vertical format to take a shot that is both ironic and historically meaningful. What I want to do is get the old Magnolia Grade School name that remains in bas-relief but is slicked over with cream-colored paint in the same shot as the sign in front that proclaims its new name. But the buses crowd me out.

I knock on the glass window of the second bus before number three has quite pulled into the station. The driver—a thin black woman with a hatchet face—looks down at me from her height with a frown. Maybe it isn't a frown, just a look. Or so I hope.

"You don't suppose you could back up for a moment long enough for me to take a picture of the sign, could you?"

She regards me as if I am mad, and I don't mean angry.

In all fairness to her, she doesn't say, "Are you kidding, or something worse?"

She simply gives me the look that one gives to an unreasonable request and is no more or less than what I deserve. Besides, the next bus is now practically touching her rear bumper in a familiar, almost obscene manner, and a third bus is nuzzling it.

Yes, impossible, and a stupid request of me, a white man, with suspicious cameras dangling.

I walk down the street to the rear of the stacking buses, still looking and feeling now a little bit like Dennis Hopper, my camera bodies bouncing around and nicking each other's black enamel. Maybe I ought to start talking man-talk, you know, and gasping throatily, as he does. I round the queue and hit the sidewalk and stroll along it northward, glancing in the windows at the bus drivers who stonily regard me while they wait for the doors of the school to disgorge their usual passengers.

I come to the front entrance, where I used to enter the school which I now feel not even a smidgeon of affection for, nor nostalgia, nor much of anything. It is simply an old, faded building, undistinguished and indistinguishable from a thousand such schools decayed around the nation, awaiting imminent demolishment. Moving back until I am literally leaning against bus number two and pressing it, I frame my shot, focusing on the near sign and hoping that the diminished words, "Magnolia School" will still be in focus at f16.

I crank off one, then the other, switching to a horizontal format in which more school is visible, but not so much framing lawn or sky.

All the driver are regarding me with mute curiosity, or is it simply the flat stare of boredom? What do you do when the school won't give you any kids yet? You wait, you stretch, you yawn, you smoke, you wait some more. I'm done, done with the day. I've got a few more frames on my black and white, but I've completed number 25 of the Kodachrome and heard the motor rewinding the film. One driver looks at me so suspiciously that he must be sure I am some sort of bus thief.

"Sure is a nice day," I yell at him, insistently, as I move to the street corner, the Explorer, and my exit. Soon I'm tooling over the Dravis Street hill and its swoops to the new stop light at the bottom and my escape through what is less than fondly called Interbay. It is a railway yard and a slum.

Oh, yes, the sign. What did it say?

"Afrikan-American Academy."

The kids are being bused here from far away so they can get their own special brand of education. Why does that make me think it is un-American in nature? Must be my upbringing.

My father's birthdate makes him roughly a contemporary of Billie, that is, Wilma Melvin Connelly Moore, of whom I spoke earlier as being the First Modern Woman in our family, imagining a life for her in my role of Freudian interpreter, but he was older, less "with it," as we say today. Besides, Belle's being born so recently as 1911 makes a huge difference in their outlook, though they both happened to arrive in March. He was a Pices, she a Virgo. Aside from a common month of birth, what they shared was only a mild enjoyment of playing contract bridge. I admit, I have no more case to link them. But surely we have come to modern times.

This began to make itself evident the generation before, but only in spurts. Harry Burns has the confident look of a man who lived across the turning of the century and faced the future unafraid, sure of his livelihood and making money. In time he came to enjoy the new leisure and to travel abroad at his own pace. How different he was from his father, William McConnell, staid and stiff and unrelenting in his Puritan ways and his grim approach to life. Religion was loosening its hold, but it had a long way to go before its grip gave way. People still went through more than the motions. Belief in God and Christ was strong in my father's people on both sides. It is only in relativity that it could be said to be weakening. I still hear many phrasings of strong belief in the words of Saraleigh, James, and my father's sister, Ruth, when she and her mother visited all those wayside churches and urban cathedrals in Britain and Europe.

What they did inside was pray.

My father grew up with unquestioned faith in the Protestant Church in a Chicago newly turned into the new century. They went to church regularly. Faith was practiced, not so much discussed as though a topic in academic circles. If you were not a minister, you kept your faith to yourself and did not openly proclaim or spout it. You were known by your pious actions, not your words. But everybody went to church all the time. Well, every Sunday at least. My grandmother would see to it. She was the little girl, remember, who wept when she missed Sunday School or the evening service.

The school he went to I never saw or remember hearing about. He played the tuba in the band and gave me my own choice of brass instrument, when I was of appropriate age. The cornet was the key instrument of the marching band, not the trumpet, which was longer and more slender and had a piercing tone and could be made to wail impressively. So the cornet was mine. This was long before jazz had made its inroad on American culture and Sousa remained the mainstay of popular music.

He could play most brass instruments, I learned, but I never knew how well. I mean, how good do you have to be to play the tuba in a patriotic parade? He also played catcher on the baseball team in high school; I saw his letter and coveted it, not having one of my own. Too young for the first world war, he was too old for the second, and regretted it, in both instances. (When I went in the army, how proud he was, and the fact that a war was on increased his pride and I suppose uniform envy. He had taken out a $5000 life insurance policy on me, and the company had given him a double-indemnity provision when the war started. I remember the chill that ran down my spine when he told me the news. I don't think he realized that I would have to die in order for him to collect. It simply seemed to him a good deal and real bargain.)

The school band welcomed the boys back when the war ended. He was fourteen. He participated in volunteer ROTC in high school. I paralleled this with mandatory ROTC in college, two year's worth, anyway. In high school he wrote for the school paper, covered sports, and broadcast games for the local radio station, after which he wrote up accounts of the game for a local paper. This showed the initiative and resources which I, in my turn, were singularly lacking.

He and his older sister, Ruth, excelled in academic subjects. My grandmother saw to this with home coaching. She supplemented my grandfather's income with tutoring, some of her students being those deficient in Latin, Greek, and French, which were requisite in college liberal arts. (The U. of Chicago was nearby.) In turn, my aunt became proficient in the same subjects and was a teacher for her first few years out of Hillsdale College, before she married and became a career housewife whose outside duties were largely charitable, though comprehensively so.

They went away to college together. She was a couple of years ahead of him in school and I'm not sure why she waited, only that they were in the same class. There were 75 of them who graduated from the small, private college in Ohio, and he was class president, while she was secretary-treasurer, besides being president of the honor scholarship society and associate editor of the school paper. He joined a social fraternity, Delta Tau Delta (as did I, but not my brother, nor my son); I was not aware that the choice was mine. To say that brother and sister were achievers is not enough. To achieve was expected of them. They only did what they had to do. There was no acceptable prospect of doing otherwise. Nor thought of it.

Much, much different in my time, and I'm not sure the competition was harder.

Hillsdale College is a curious place. It is proudly independent and does not take federal subsidies. All of its operating budget comes from donations from like-thinkers. Plus high tuition. It actively recruits both students of a particular bent and money. You don't give to Hillsdale College unless you are a believer in the Free Enterprize System. This makes you a Republican of the first water. (The second water is reserved for those who will tolerate a free-handout, especially if their taxes are supporting it. It is only a case of just dues.)

I have pictures from that idyllic time. Do not think that it is not one. These were the gravy days. The men have the same slicked-back hair as Scott Fitzgerald. (He, I suppose, got it from somebody else, somebody earlier brilliantined and closely shaven and super suave.) Only recently have I come across some new pictures of Edmund and his girl friend, Cec, whom he later married and, thus, became (wonder of wonders) my mother. To me they are astonishing in their power. They will literally transport me back to that time, 1922.

My father had worked a year before going off to college, which may explain how it was he, not Ruth, who caused a delay for both of them, but since he was out of high school at 16, it was not for long. He worked the summer of his high school graduation at Marshall Field and Company, and continued there in some menial capacity he never spoke of precisely for the following year, after which he and Ruth packed their bags and told the old folks good bye, taking the train (I presume) for Ohio.

He joined a fraternity for the same reason as I: it offered a place to live and pre-packaged friends in what must have seemed to him, as it did to me, a politely hostile environment. And it worked. The friends he made there he kept for the rest of his life and they were special, different from business associates, accorded a higher level of accessibility and uncritical acceptance. There was Lee Cross, a big jovial man who later went to work for Firestone, a name you could trust, the ads ran, but Firestone dumped him in his middle years and he never fully recovered from it. Lee married Palmer, and she was my mother's best friend. What a coincidence! Each had a son of approximate age, and they used to come to see us, or we them, and I remember visiting them in Detroit, when he was high on Firestone, and the ferry ride up Lake Erie and how Canada, a foreign country, rose on the far shore, and we came to an island and a place called Put-in Bay, where they had slot machines that you could play for a penny, and I did, and how in Chicago, on the Fourth of July, Lee and my Dad shot off fire crackers, while Lee Junior and I watched, too young to do so ourselves, at the risk of losing a finger or permanent ear damage, it was told to me. Meanwhile the dads hogged them. And once or twice we visited them in Fort Worth, Texas, where Firestone sent him in his prime years with them, and we rode the Roller Coaster and I drank a frosted shake afterwards and threw up all over the backseat of their car.

How we all laughed, at least they did.

There are pictures of Lee before he became burly and grew a gut, and of Palmer, when she was girlish and pert, before she became roaringly fat. When we ate pork chops or fried chicken, she was always after our bones and the fat and gristle left on them, and she would nibble with tiny front teeth and suck the juices out. It was a fond characteristic.

In the college-aged pictures there are no signs of any of this type of porcine behavior. They are singularly young and sweet and smooth and slim. I believe the pictures more than what I know came later: age and death. I love looking at them and my parents before they were my parents, before they had any idea of what life had in store and each day was a new one, and the dance coming up on Saturday the first of its kind, full of sparkle and promise and perhaps a kiss to end it.

Oh for such times, even if they are untrue.

One such picture is of my father in the winter he first came to college. I remember he worked in a student cafeteria to earn money for private tuition and board and room in a fraternity, which was one of the optional living arrangements (or perhaps the only one). There is snow on the ground, but none in the trees, which are hardwoods. The snow is hard packed from many feet crossing it. Edmund is standing in a woolen overcoat, its throat bare, which displays a white shirt-front and small bow tie. I imagine it to be a tuxedo and he is on his way to a dance, and she who took the snap is evidenced only by a pale shadow cast by the thin sun ont he grey snow. It is the kind of picture my mother took all of her life, for she always remembered to put the sun behind her, but did not look to see the shadow it created. Also, there is a tree—a birch, perhaps—growing right out of the top of my father's uncovered head. Another photographic trick of hers. But the picture is too well centered for it to be her. She was always lopping somebody's head off, too, as though she manned the guillotine. So she didn't take the picture, I am certain, and it predates their meeting.

He looks eighteen but hardly any older. There is a nice, boyish, unformed look about his face and jowls. Jowls? There really aren't any on those smooth, freshly shaven cheeks. His hair is (as it was, all of his life) parted in the middle and symmetrically waved back from his face. His ears lie close to his head, his brows turn slightly downward, his forehead is broad and uncreased, his eyes tiny level dots, his mouth small and impassive, almost truculent, nearly haughty. No, I decide, his lips reveal only self-confidence. He is paying his own way in life and has that look of self-assuredness that indicates he has anticipated every exigency. Perhaps he has.

The photographer reveals him or herself with a pyramidal shadow that starts out thick at the bottom edge of the print but slowly pulls in on itself as it rises to occupy about two-thirds of the pressed snow area, forming a crude pyramid; you can see how the elbows of the one behind the camera are drawn close to the ribcage in order to support the camera and hold it both steady and level. Level it is. Then the photographer's head dissolves to a rounded point, indicating both the fall-away perspective of a shadow in such a situation and the probability that the photographer is wearing some sort of hat. Male or female, who knows?

Edmund is not. He disdains a hat and even the idea of one offends him. He deigns a hat, you might say. (Later in life, in business, he would never be without his fedora.) And the hat of the photographer would seem to be either a cloche, then in high fashion, or else a knitted cap that might, because of the snow and the thinness of the sunlight, be pulled low over the ears.

They wore such knitted caps to school, did they not, but not cloches, which were a young woman's formal dresswear and saved for a night out on the town. Well, maybe this was one of those occasions, for why else is Edmund wearing the bow tie?

He might be on his way to work as a waiter or busboy, or whatever. Ever think of that? His dark trousers might be part of a tuxedo (rented, surely) or else a uniform furnished for a dining hall with pretensions and more than collegiate prices. His shoes are black and shine slightly across the laces, where the brush and rag have burnished them. His shadow stretches behind him and disappears into the back of his black coat. How near to his comes the shadow of the photographer, hinting at an intimacy but avoiding it by just a narrow strip of bright snow that comes teasingly close, hinting, just hinting, at something not to be stated. Especially not to be defined after nearly 75 years have passed.

The trees are sparse in number, though there are more clustered behind them, their branches angling skyward in a series of interlocking Vs and Ys. It is as though somebody with a soft pencil is scribbling nonsense against the sky. And there is a building with flat roof and a portion of visible window and what looks to be an outside stairwell running up at swift diagonal to a mystery that lies just out of recognition. I used to speculate on what the building was used for—classroom, dormitory, cafeteria? For years I was satisfied with not knowing.

Yesterday I put a strong magnifier to it. It read, "Variety." Well, well, well. Not only is variety the spice of life but it is the name of the store in the background. How much variety is there, I wondered, in the life of a freshman at a proud, private college in Ohio in 1920? Probably never enough.

Edmund looks both slightly overwhelmed and self-confident. No, the qualities are not inconsistent or contradictory. Other men and boys of the time wore a similar look, just as they might put on a four-in-hand or bow tie, depending on the occasion. For a look is but something to wear. A sneer is always nice. Well, not always, for if you are with a woman it is not appropriate, but for many male situations it is just the right thing. More suitable for both solitary, male with male, and male with female occasions is a look of half-boredom, half-bemused arrogance. Is this what Edmund has put upon his face for the photograph? No, but I'm getting closer to it.

Maybe he is just cold. Ever think of that? The photographer is bundled, hatted, shoulders and elbows bunched together; Edmund is standing bare-chested, as it were, his bow tie on display, along with the sparkling white of his shirt-front that puts the old snow to shame. True, his hands are plunged into his pockets, but his recently cut hair is proudly uncovered. And right where his part trails to the rear of his scalp there rises the strongest birch of them all. Or perhaps it is an oak. A photographer's trick or inattention.

If you squint your eyes hard enough, Edmund looks a little like an elk. No, he doesn't; I only want to see him as one to shame the photographer for being so careless. After all, it is my father he or she is taking a picture of, and it must last me for eternity. But I must say, "Good enough," and be grateful for what I have. It sometimes seems inadequate, but I can easily visualize a situation when there is less to go on and I am impoverished for detail.

I would have Edmund going off to a formal dance in the Christmas of his first year at college with a flapper date, she in cloche and thin dress, over which has been added her heaviest wool coat, for the presence of shadows portends a cold night, and it is well on its way, judging from the steepness of their immaculate shadows.

The dance is nearly five miles away in town, whichever town it is, and they will ride there in a flivver driven by a friend, as part of a contingent of youthful party-goers. There will be a band playing the new jazz. Coloreds. There will be cocktails and dancing of the type not yet called jitterbug but slowly moving in that direction. The Charleston, perhaps, with arms aflappping in a contrary direction from what the knees and feet are doing, or going, or saying, all very athletic. The girls are nervous and active and flighty and jiggedy, while the men hold back, masculinely, and dance at only half-speed, grinning mockingly, watching their dates and others undulating unshackled or nearly so beneath their frocks in summer pastel colors and Maryjane shoes with the club heels and T-straps that make their ankles look thinner, their feet desirously longer and more slender.

Then they will drink from silver flasks tipped back and quickly exchanged, for they are forbidden, and kisses will be wetly given in warm, scented rooms, music flaring beyond a cracked door, the notes remote though close, and bodies will be pressed as trousers and lapels were earlier, as though with a hot iron, and then boys and girls will push apart, the boys angrily, the girls flushed and worried and excited. And eventually the evening will end, the "Good night, Ladies," waltz be played out liltingly, the flivver returned to, the cold drive of sweated bodies home through the starry night conducted, and the final ambivalent kiss be made at the doorway of some sorority or dormitory, half pledge, half refusal, and the quotidian world of classes returned to, a long slow day away.

Or maybe not. Perhaps it is a Saturday night, sure, but he is on his way to the cafeteria, where he must work with sloppy trays and filthy dishes, many of which have a cigaret buried in their pie or mashed potatoes; the dishes washed, the chairs put atop the tables, the floors swept first then mopped with suds and finally with clear water and tracks from the mop sponged up and finally a coat of wax laid down and buffed, after all of which it is ten o'clock on a Saturday evening, too late for much of anything to start and, besides, one is simply too tired and longing for bed. Yes, this too is in the picture, or can be, if you so want to see it.

It certainly is not to be denied.

Somewhere soon my mother comes into the picture. Literally. There is a photo of the two of them, and nobody was ever so incredibly young-looking as this pair. It has only been in the past couple of months that I have experienced this picture, and it is invaluable to me and my purpose here. It is remarkably well preserved for its age—75 years—and the printer did not scrimp on fixer or washing, as I always did, for the worst result. This tiny print evidently has been denied the light for all these years and, to return the favor, shines forth in a way that should make today's print processors envious. The blacks are black, the whites are white, and all they multitudinous shades of gray just as brilliant and separate from each other as can be. It is a contact print, obviously, measuring two by three and one-tenth inches, and was produced by a box camera on the slow film of its day. But how wonderfully revealing it is.

My mother. How slender, young, and fair she is. She is pretty and knows it. It is a commodity to be traded on. She has come all the way from Tecumseh, Michigan, to attend this school, for reasons I have never had explained to me. Are there not good schools in Michigan? Was it known to be excellent husband-hunting ground? I don't mean this to be cynical. It was, and is, what girls often do. If you want to be a wife and mother, you must find yourself a man who is going to be a good provider—it only stands to reason. And he, the man (a boy still, but knowing in the ways of girls and the broad world), has no good reason to work hard in business or industry except to provide for a wife and family. He owns them; they are his rewards for industry. It is the way of the world. Otherwise you are apt to become some weird old bachelor, muttering to himself, putting away rolls of dollar bills in Mason jars and secreting them in some forgettable place, such as deep in the ground of the backyard of his rooming house.

He studied business—what else? Well, there were other more interesting subjects, but they were and are a waste of time to the practically deployed. She took a broad course in teacher training. The major subject was domestic. A girl looking forward to running a home, raising children, entertaining her husband's business associates needs no more than a smattering of Shakespeare, Roman History, Algebra, and French. You aren't going to Parley-voo Francais very much in your life. Nor is he.

Accounting, business law, ethics, math—these were hands-on subjects that could be applied as soon as one left the cloister and entered the workplace. The world of profit, markup, inventory control, personnel management had a substantiality that was crowding; look around you and you saw the applications in every direction you turned. Each seemed only minutes away from necessity.

And he already had a job. Marshall Field and Company was hospitable to him. They wanted college-educated management trainees and held out the carrot to them. Money. Edmund had worked the summer of his first year out of high school for the Goliath of Chicago department stores. His pride was quickly bound to their pride, which was not inconsiderable. He was—point of fact—Marshall Field and Company to his immediate world. He could speaking knowingly about their goals and align himself with them. It was what was called a perfect fit. After high school, when they asked him if he'd "mind," staying on for a full year, they'd read his thoughts, he knew. But they agreed that college was critical to somebody who wanted to get ahead. This year, and then it was back to school, right? On this and practically every other subject they were in tacit, superior agreement.

Summers he returned to Chicago and a variety of jobs they held out to him. He was gaining experience. All experience was valuable, if it was in the same line as you intended to make your life's work. So if he stocked shelves, it was something he needed to know about; you couldn't exactly direct others in how to stock shelves and maintain a rolling inventory if you hadn't done it yourself. Or dealing with troublesome customers for a store where the customer was never wrong. What could he do to ensure this customer's good will and return business? It was at the forefront of every sentence carefully chosen to placate irate matrons and send them on to the next sales counter.

He knew where the future lay and it was in Chicago. He was stretching his horizons but only with a short rubberband, and it always returned him to the Loop and State Street. The big store loomed. It dominated the city's retail thinking and acted as a gravity force-field, drawing everybody who thought him or herself possessed of good taste to it and its goods. And those goods were simply splendid. This was the glory years of merchandising. It was connecting the id of people collectively to whatever it was that would satisfy and satiate them. Well, for a little while, at least.

There were elevators and escalators, tall ceilings and multifaceted chandeliers. There were display counters stacked with spangled goods, shelves bulging, stockrooms crammed full with multitudinous sizes, colors, patterns, weaves. Rich matrons shopped leisurely and bought copiously. Green delivery trucks brought the goods right to impressive doorways.

It was the lure and the allure of money, of course. Its challenge. Money drove America and money was in the driver's seat. You rode along on the coach called money, pulled by horses named money, entered a store called money, spent money, and had money, or the fruits and rewards of money, delivered to where you lived in the form of money, or goods. For doing this you were paid in money. It was money, coming and going, that made everything possible. This was also called the Economy. The Economy, everybody knew, was just another name for money and how it behaved in concert.

In college, though, it was called Economics. Same thing. Economics was how money in action behaved. It was also how people concerned with money and in possession of it behaved. They behaved in a series of ways that could be called a science, or social science, and analyzed and predicted. Men and money in motion was what America was all about. At the heart of the system was the retail business. At the core of the heart of the business was the department store. In the mid-West this meant Chicago and Marshall Field and Company. Everybody knew it. It was a fact of everyday life.

I am trying to understand what it must have been like to be a representative in college of the Retail Business and its particular manifestation, Marshall Field and Company, but all I can come up with is it was grand. O, to be part of a bigger thing, something infinitely respectable and a subject for broad veneration. To be a Management Trainee was tantamount to being already a part of the Entrepreneur Class. You didn't exactly own the means of production yourself, but you were the next best thing: you managed it for the benefit of the stockholders who were individually and collectively the Entrepenurial Class and represented by the Board of Directors. They, in turn, delegated the day-to-day decisions of running the business to the Managers. And who was he, Edmund? Not yet a manager, admittedly, but one of the anointed, one of the managerial-training class, one of the mangers-to-be. The future was assured.

If it were I, not Edmund, I would have worn it like a badge. Merit badge, fraternity pin—something like that. Athletic letter for a multitude of sports, me each of their quarter-back, pitcher, point guard. It proclaimed you Not Ordinary. You were Special. In time you could only be More Special. You would become so Special that you were Somebody Special.

You do not hear mockery in my voice so much as envy. I wish I could, or could have, believed so purely in something as to become it. No, I was different. A college teacher maybe? Sure, but only if I couldn't write. I mean, Write. Maybe do it temporarily, something to do briefly to make some money. The Writer in America (I believe there was a book with such a title, and Van Wyke Brooks wrote it) was the goal of many. We emulated Fitz and Hem and Willie the Faulk, but could not drink like them, try as we did, nor could we write like them, try as we might, or do anything except think like them, we ultimately learned. I mention this because if there is a literary equivalent of the Merchandise Manager, Edmund made the grade, I did not.

Envy you hear, sure, but spiced with a modicum of contempt, the same way I was trained to view everything by my Lit Teachers.. Camus came along, and none of us was ever the same again, not to mention reading Sarte. I won't recite the litany of poets and novelists and philosophers who stole our will and our intention, only state that there were some, and they were a powerful influence. In the saga of the Arnolds, Connellys, McConnells, etc., there was as much a weaning away from commerce as there was, around the turn of the century, the daily weaning away from faith. And surely now we cynics of the end of the Twentieth Century will have our progeny weaned away from disbelief to some new form of acceptable belief. In Business again? My son, for instance, accepts the tenants of Business without a qualm, without qualification, and wants nothing more than to work for someone hard and long and be rewarded with (we might say, and I do) with the earthly manifestation of the eternal values. Money and goods, I mean.

So have we come full circle? You'd have to ask Edmund, but not now, for he is but a callow college student as much interested in girls as he is in commerce, and headed sharply in both their directions. Not yet dead. A long way from it.

My mother came to small town Ohio from small town Michigan and did not detect much difference, there not being any except for the college life, which anybody who ever saw a Jeanne Crain movie will tell you is beautiful but insignificant. She pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma, that national group of girls and women who like to have their consonants come together in pairs in the middle of word groups. Kappas world-wide tend to be beautiful, conventional, spirited, prejudiced against anybody without money, and prefer you to be white, if only because you will have much more in common with them, conversationally and otherwise. My mother agreed with these principles and pledged because she had all the right clothes for this time in history. They fit each other's templates.

She made friends, but only two or three of them have survived in two dimensional form, that is, as snapshots. This would make them, if living, 90 years old. Possible, but unlikely today. Forever on the printout paper they remain le jeune filles. Or as we translate here, "fillies." One is Bea Cash. (No, I don't not make up these names, or intend any symbolism, for if I did, I would do a better job.) Bea has wavy hair, probably permed, dark, dark brown, parted on the right side and combed or brushed straight back over a fine forehead to fluff over her ears. It is short, standoff hair. She is not beautiful, but at eighteen or twenty a girl has to be really cursed by her fates not to be attractive in a smooth, healthy manner, and Bea is this. A man of whatever age would not be ashamed to be seen in her company (for men of today and yesterday, alas, are like this, as I suppose am I). She is bright, pert, alert—the qualities that other women admire and stand the possessor in good stead when they might not have that intangible quantity called "it." "It" has always been loud sex appeal.

Bea I am sure went on to attract men and, selecting one, became a wife and mother. Looking into her eyes, I see no other proclivity or warring urge. Her lips are lightly rouged and follow the natural line of her mouth, making it a little smaller, though I should like to see them painted to match her lips, a little fuller and brighter, though this apparently is not Bea's style, and I for one should not want her to change it, at least not for me. Be yourself, Bea. I'm sure she was without urging.

I like the way she looks into the camera. It is a professionally taken picture, one paid for for some occasion, not one taken by one's friend, as is the snap to follow. Bea wears for the mysterious occasion (perhaps college graduation, for she looks too mature for high school) a blouse with a wide scalloped collar set off by a tiny spotted bow. It is either a dress or a sweater she has on in addition to the collar, probably the former. I have to guess the rest, but I'd say a long skirt that halts just inches short of the ground, and some shoes with little low heels, perhaps ones with bows duplicating the ones at her chin.

Was she—gasp of admiration—a Kappa, too? I hope not, but there are worse fates. As I say, I like her level, bemused look, one side of her upper lip lifted a modicum higher than the other, not so much as a smirk as in a kind of pixyish, quizzical manner, as her eyes intend to flash but do not quite make the grade because of the photographer's studio light, which is constant and diffuse.

Where are you, Bea? How many kids, grandkids, great-grandkids? Were they dutiful, considerate, adoring, or were they like most of everybody else's—unresponsive, forgetful, and spiteful? I wish you the first but suspect the second, that being the way of the world and not much different from how I turned out, even though now I am regretful at being such a neglectful son.

Another friend is Palmer Cross, née Fingel, who I've already described as the sucker of the porkchop and fried chicken bones of others—at least she was many years later. I know not what else, but can testify to both of these, from my personal plate. In a newly discovered snap from Hillsdale times, dated 1923, she looks already plump and full-bodied in this day of slim flapper courtesans. She is caught up in the photographer's unintentional chiaroscuro, a trick of light, a patch of sun at her hairline on her forehead, her right eye deep in shadow, her left eye not much better off, her chin as bright as her glaring brow, a wisp of curl drooped downward toward her eye but not obscuring its vision. Her left arm is bent back, holding her hair away from her face and showing the smoothness of the inside of her wrist and forearm, perhaps secondary sexual characteristics that drew Lee to her and urged him to marry her, not let her get away. And soon.

The mouth is a little sardonic, mocking, the outer corners turned up if a fixed grin, as if to say, "Some people always have to be taking pictures, regardless of the wishes of those whom the camera is pointed at, don't they? Well, I won't protest any more than this, but it is not what I would choose, were I given any say in the matter." And what might that be? "Well, I'd just as soon be left alone. Aren't people given any privacy while at college?" And I would reply, No, they aren't, it isn't part of the social contract, and it isn't supposed to matter, even though it does. Privacy comes later, Palmer, when you are married and have kids. Then you are left alone longer than you might wish. To which she would reply later, "True, true." Only it isn't so late in life and I, of course, am not born yet.

"Fingel?" I've just hear the name for the first time in my life. Could Palmer be. . . Jewish? If so, well and good, but then she would not be a Kappa, like my Mom. She would be outside that close confine of look-alike, think-alike young women, and all the more power to her and to my extremely social-conscious mother. Just think, or I would like to think, my Kappa mother choosing as her best friend in college and in life a Jewess. My admiration knows no bounds. It is almost as good as finding a Ronsheim in the family.

The third friend from college is Helen McIntyre. I dimly remember such a name from my past and that she was a school teacher far off somewhere, perhaps in the shattered South, whom my mother corresponded sporadically with over the decades and once visited in a nursing home on a swing through the states sometimes in the Seventies. This would make her not so old, but as sometimes happens a victim of bad luck.

There are two surviving pictures of Helen McIntyre and my mother is in both of them. They were taken at nearly the same time, for the corner of an identical peaked building rises, stage left. It looks to be a garage. In both my mother-to-be has her head tipped peculiarly to the left, as though doing some cruel warming-up exercise or, more exactly, as though she were suffering from some disease of the spine that would not permit her to stand up straight and her spine was collapsing, starting from the top and grossly affecting first her neck.

More likely is the idea that she, my mother, thinks she looks more fetching, more touchingly poignant, viewed from this angle. It is in keeping with a certain neurasthenic attitude, then popular. If so, it turns out not to be entirely inaccurate as a prophesy.

In the one picture Helen McIntyre goes along with the gag, turning her own head slightly in the direction of my mother's but only reflecting about half the degree of severity as hers. In the other, as though both of them had sobered up, my mother a little less so than Helen, my mother has hers only slightly tipped this time, as though being a brave little girl, in spite of her affliction, and now able to fake it, well, almost. Fake what? Why, a normal neck, one capable of supporting her head, which was not large.

Helen McIntyre parts her blond or light brown hair in the middle and clips it back from her fine face. It runs around the back of her head in a large curl. She is wearing a high, scooped-neck thin shirt that might be called a peasant blouse, with pushed-up sleeves, and in the first picture her arms hang limply at her sides, a little smile on her lips (though you have to really look for it). In the second snap her arms are brought around behind her, her fingers probably locked against her buttocks, out of sight, the surplus material of the blouse tucked into the waistband of her long, flowing shirt. I search for the curve of a breast, which ought to be evident in such a garment and think in picture number two I can discern her right one, but it may be just another fold of clothing. Helen, though more buxom than my mother, who is really fashionably slender, probably from self-starvation, appears to be flat chested. But she has a nice, wholesome look, and since pictures fascinate me and are truly images out of time and any place but my present, I'd really like to walk right up to her, look her over more closely, and start a conversation. As in the case of Bea Cash, both look to be cheerful, approachable women, and I'm sure plenty of guys took them up on their appearance of vulnerability. (Or is it invulnerability that is contained in such a look and is so attractive?)

Cannot see Bea's feet, not that I am much of a footman. They are shaded by the fullness of her skirt. They look to be ordinary, capable of supporting. My weak-necked mother has slender, white shoes with pointed toes and little white laces. Above them for the whole world to see her very slender ankles. She is wearing a huge belted coat that makes her look even more fragile. To be frail was highly sought after, I remember, and I congratulate my mother on her achievement, but must question the price of victory.

Two more young women come to light through snaps I've recently come across. Again there is my mother's clue to help identify them—a scrawl in pencil on the back. One is simply labeled Gert. Gert had her picture taken at graduation, going by the cap and gown. Her tassel hangs to the right, a sign that she is being awarded the baccalaureate degree, probably the only one that Hillsdale was authorized to issue.

Gert has a nice look, not beautiful, but no dog, either, a wholesome, healthy, attractive young woman who has the same aura of quiet confidence (or is it simply youthfulness?) at going out into the world and finding her place in it, presumably as the wife and lifetime companion of some man of high prospect. Her eyes are bright, her lips are full, and the glance from the side to the camera is slightly flirtatious but I take it so many years later as pleasingly challenging. I'm sure Gert did well.

The remaining young woman I've located is Skibo Meredith. It is an unusual name, perhaps a nickname, maybe some abbreviated, complicated family name passed down through the ages. (But I wonder what?) Skibo does not have the dark, solid good looks of Gert, but she has her own individual high quality. Her hair is permed in finger ringlets that run across her head and dissolve into a tucked-under curl that stops well above her shoulders. As is the case with all of them, all five of my mother's friends and my mother herself, their hair is worn short, not in the manner of young women of later periods who affected long flowing locks sometimes caught up in pony tails. A pony tail, in fact, would be as out of place among this graduating class as a bald head and draw just as much open comment.

Skibo wears a dress with oversized white collar that plunges not all that far in a vee, the dress itself appropriately dark but this being another black and white portrait its color cannot be ascertained. Besides its color is not important. Let's say it is black. The light for the portrait is soft and even, arriving a little more strongly from the right side than from the left and producing only the vaguest of a Rembrandt eye patch of illumination on the right cheekbone. Nice.

In the case of neither woman is there a discernible nose shadow, and only the lower lip shows any shade, which gives the mouth a pretty fullness that might be solely the effect of lighting. Of the two, I'd rather spend an evening with dark-haired Gert, even wearing her graduation gown, for there is a hint of sensuality and responsiveness I do not detect in any of the others.

Funny thing is, you know, you take away the oddities of the time and fashion, and people look remarkably as they do today. Thus Bea Cash, Palmer Fingel, Helen McIntyre, Gert, and Skibo Meredith all resemble women of my youth and later, and I feel as though I could sidle right up to any one of them, strike up a conversation (as I have been known to do), suggest a cup of coffee, and, if all went well in the little cafe and I could make her laugh and blush enough, agree to a date.

What would it be like? I wonder what each of them would taste like?

But back to my mother and father sitting on the wooden steps of some college building in say the spring of their senior year, when they are already as people used to say trothed. Edmund has three years of college under his belt, three-quarters of his time spent at Hillsdale, the rest of it working in the saltmines of Marshall Field and Company in Chicago. He knows the course ahead and so does she. It is a wonderful picture, and I am thinking of spending some coin in order to have a copy negative made, from which I will order 8 X 10 prints for everybody in the world I know named Arnold.

This is not so many and won't break me.

For now the picture is mine to enjoy and meditate on. It is astonishing. Imagine this. Your father is dead, these fourteen years, your mother the last five, but here they are at their most vital, regarding you (not you, I know, but the camera, which now is me) in their very prime, he twenty, she a year older, their collective look benign, confident, cheerful, bemused. How hard then it is to remember them at their respective ends, he seventy-seven and only a little feeble with metastasized cancer, she bent and bowed from osteoporosis and bad lungs, lying on her terminal bed, her breathing raspy and difficult.

No, I say.

I want them this way, for eternity, and this way they shall stay, so long as I have this picture shining before me.

So young; I cannot remember myself this youthful. That weak neck I mentioned earlier is for the moment strengthened and there is no more than a birdlike tip to her head, as though hearing a distant melody sweet and impervious to the ears of others. That's it: there is a certain birdlike quality to my mother's bearing and, I suppose, her carriage. Just noticed it. Jesus! The word wren is not inappropriate. She has heard the distant sound, a tweet, and is about to answer back. Give her another moment and you will hear her whistling vibration.

And I remember how, as a signal between them, my father would imitate the bob-white, a dotted eighth note and accompanying sixteenth, followed by a sixteenth note stressed a full three or four notes higher and fully piercing. He would initiate it and she would echo it from farther off, faint and mysterious. What they used it for is none of my business, though I'm sure it was nothing more than a kiss or two, for my mother loved to be held and cuddled, but not much more. Yes, it is a wonder I and my brother were ever conceived. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a mentally healthy man to picture sex between his parents, yet he has known all of his life that it was precisely this that resulted in his being.

For this you are not so much as to be grateful as to forgive.

She was called Cec, this sparrow of a girl on the edge of womanhood and sure of her attractiveness, her ability to command the future, well, order it into being about as much as a woman could then or now, when her life was to be irrevocably hinged to that of a man, the one she had now singled out to be, e-hem, my father. Cec, too, because all of them in their crowd and every other clique worth notice had nicknames. He was Eddie. (Once he confided to me that he would have liked to have been called Harry, so I, his mischievous son, at certain strategic times of my growing up (if I ever truly did grow up) would call him that, where I didn't dare in no manner of joking say Ed or Eddie or even the formal and correct Edmund to his face. Because of his misplaced confidence in me at, say, the age of twelve, it was always Harry, and he knew what it meant and probably regretted telling the writer-to-be with the near-photographic memory for everything unessential in life his most secret wish.

I'm sure he never told my mother this. There are a few things not shared between wife and husband that might be confided from father to son, and thank goodness or whatever for them.

Cec parts her hair for the occasion on her left (as I do), but the part is faulty (I've inherited this) and some wisps of topside hair parallel the line and seem to mock it. A little of the errant part slides forward and forms a false bang. Otherwise, her dark, shiny hair (brushed hard how many times?) is swept back slick and smooth, causing a ring of light to run across her scalp. It is most attractive. (Call me Oedipus.) Her little eyes are pinched tight against the glare of sunlight, with her tweezed brows nearly touching the eye sockets themselves in the vicinity of her nose. It is a straight nose, narrow and nicely flared at its nostrils, beneath which is a bud of a mouth lightly lipsticked, mostly on its lower lip, which stops just short of a pout—this at a time when a pout was most stylish.

Thank God for finely boned women and their wren-like quickness. She has a superb jaw line, to go with that nose, coming nearly to a point. High cheekbones frame that face from this angle, which is high, too high. The person holding the camera is standing, while they are seated on the porch step just before the beginning of the decking (which is boards nailed too close at a right angle to the steps, and moisture has caused them to swell and pull up at the edges, which appear to be tongue-and-grove but without middle support). Thus my father's rather peculiar expression which is only, I think, from being forced to look up at a severe angle, one in which the pupils roll into the top of the head and a great deal of white is revealed beneath the irises. This is what is produced if you don't want a haughty crick-in-the neck look, which he didn't.

Cec is wearing some kind of dress with a shoulder strap that has slipped, beneath which must surely be a blouse, though I can't detect any sign of it; if not, the square neck of the dress is cut at a high enough angle not to be extreme or revealing. The dress might be velveteen, soft, the kind of fabric that drapes but does not cling, it being of sufficient thickness. It might be red or navy blue. It is lighter in tone that the coat she wears over it that is left open down the front. It looks to be black and at the neck is a scrap of fur. It is hard to tell if the fur is part of the coat or a separate item. If the latter, it might be significant.

Significant for soon (if not already) my father was apprenticing himself to the fur business. I would like to imagine this the spring of their senior year, and it already determined that he would begin his life's work under George Metheral, buyer in the fur department at Marshall Field and Company. It was a good place to learn about merchandising, markups, customer service, and the procurement of quality goods. Their slogan, "Service, Quality, Integrity" was not meaningless cant but words to live by. He lived by them and so, by God, did I, reared as I was by this pair to draw to. The coat, topped as it might be by a scrap of fur in the form of a stole, a wasted bit of animal hide, could have found its way into the discard pile, for he often frequented where the skins were cut up and sewn, that is, prepared to be joined into coats, and a scrap could have so easily found its way or been pressed into his hands.

"For your sweetie, Ed," he would be told. And he, shyly smiling, would stuff it into his pocket and bestow it on her, as though it were booty won on the field of endeavor, which in a way it was.

So I would have it that she wears his scrap of fur around her neck on this and countless other occasions, and underneath it and detached the rich wool winter coat bought her (along with the belted number we saw earlier in the picture with Helen McIntyre) by her doting father, Albert Clark, who had a butcher shop and corner grocery.

As for Edmund, he is attired in white shirt (the only kind he was permitted to wear for thirty years and even after that went the only kind he felt truly comfortable in, working or not) with neat rep-striped tie, the light and dark bands of equal size and running at a twenty-five degree angle in an optimistic direction, that is, uphill, and across his thin shoulder is a coat sweater that is not buttoned up all the way. For one doesn't do this, then or now. I remember how his father and I love them, but he wore his only rarely in retirement, and those sweaters were always orlon, not wool, just as the polo shirts he wore under them were dacron, not cotton, and all had the familiar little clinging alligator above the left nipple.

So I am correct in presuming his uniform of that moment was as precise and reflective of his time and station as it was to be later. The tie, hair-style, collar, and sweater might have as easily been worn at Princeton as at Hillsdale. Or anywhere else where style was paramount. Slacks are dark and woolen, shoes missing because of the camera's cutoff angle But they would be well shined, presumably black, perhaps wingtips.

Framing the porch are two bushes to which cling the withered leaves of autumn, so this data informs us it is not yet spring but possibly late autumn, or even a warm day in winter, with the sun shining coldly. On my father's left is a little ringed notebook and single volume; jutting out of the notebook's pages are some oversized sheets that might be part of an assignment. Or they could be a class passout.

My mother has no books that are revealed. My hunch is that this is the Kappa House, she has taken her books inside, chosen her best coat, applied some fresh lipstick, and joined my father on the porch for the photo taken by some classmate, probably a sorority sister. If it had been a man behind the camera, the angle would have been more acute because of his height and my father's upturned gaze would reveal nothing but white, the pupils being totally obscured. How much easier it would have been to tilt his head a little, but to this he seems morally opposed.

Behind them on the porch is the entrance to the building. It contains a door that is fully sixty percent glass and which reflects the doubled image (a little dizzying and sickening, to be sure) of some tall deciduous tree with its bare branches stretched skyward, demanding spring; there is also in the door glass a horizon line visible and a pale sky. To the right and to the left of the door are panels, the upper half of which is also glass, and the only clear one shows us more sky and a bare reaching tree. Below is a wood panel, which is painted light-colored. Two such door panels are present, and running up along the front of the largely obscured one is the leaning handle of something that might be a broom. It is the houseboy's duty to keep the porch swept clean of leaves and litter. It is not the job of any of the Kappa Queens.

All right. That pretty well describes it. The photo will be milked for no more than this and perhaps less than I have found. I want so, you see, to know all that it will reveal, even if that much is somebody else's little. These are my dead parents, all I have left of them in their prime, all that is on the planet to evoke them and their time, all that immediately precedes me. To put it a little differently, I am responsible for what happens after I am born (though of course I am not), but as far as the past goes, it must be reconstructed from the available data, and it is inadequate to my purpose.

What is that, man? Why, to know everything.

If I try to imagine a life for them, I must draw on the Van Johnson-Jeanne Crain movies of my youth, and I know they are wrong. Those were mainly WWII-based stories, and my parents were caught between the two wars, luckily or unluckily, it is not for me to say. I picture an idyllic day for each of them, starting with an early rising (my mother would have hated this aspect) in their communal living quarters, that is, respective fraternity and sorority, with a massed breakfast of some sort of gruel, toast, and coffee, followed by a wild dash off to the first class, scarfs flying. Yes.

I see a uniform classroom, circa 1923, with oak furniture and student desks, you know, the kind with a wrap-around arm forming a little writing platform whose top lifts back on hinges to reveal an empty compartment containing rubber-eraser droppings, loose tobacco, pencil shavings, and perhaps a bit of crust from somebody's lunch yesterday. Books placed on the ledge under the seat. Seat barely adequate to support one's narrow buttocks. Perhaps an ink well, dry as dust, in the upper unhinged corner of desktop, with a rusty hinged lid, but then this is my youth, my school days I am recalling, not theirs, so I am handicapped by both time and experience. But not, it so happens, by imagination, so I will persist.

The lecturer, in the manner of lecturers everywhere, time before time, drones. It is an occupational hazard. The subject is American history from the Civil War (that is, the War Between the States, as it was still called) and the present time, that is, the period of normalcy following the end of the Great War (it was still called this, up until the next Great One came along, to usurp the title). The books are ledged, the notebooks unfurled, the pens uncapped and tips wetted, the teacher's truisms written down dutifully. There will be a test Monday next and it is best not to overlook a word, for teachers are known to be tricky and are their most precise at those moments when the attention is most apt to flag.

Perhaps they are in the same class, but not seated next to each other unless the class is small enough so that A comes next to C, which is unlikely, I've learned, if there are more than six or seven in a room. There never is. So they are seated apart, but not so far apart as not to be able to exchanged meaningful looks, looks terminated with a smile and lowering of the eyes, a pledge, a pledging of the troth, over and over. But they may not have classes together, for he was heavily business oriented and she in the muzzy direction of home ec. So maybe they met for lunch, maybe not, to munch sandwiches and share an apple. But then what was the purpose of frat and sorority houses if it was not to feed their minions? So a joint lunch might be out.

There was always the library in the evening. I think my mother's studying was perfunctory, my father's quickly accomplished in most subjects through natural intelligence. But libraries were for socializing as well. The two would share a table and shush each other, for they were there to study, weren't they, not hold hands beneath the common table or exchange sweaty squeezes and gropes.

My father grope my mother, not likely?

So sex was different then from now, or in your own roaring time? Not likely, either. Sex has always been sex, and it is why one generation follows another, its participants helpless before the rush of hormones.

And he would walk her home in the packed snow of a new January, shoulders bumping, tarrying in the cold, perhaps a full moon overhead so bright it was blinding, the night starry, lights in windows of dorms and frat houses all gold and warm, with shadowy figures glimpsed crisscrossing the path of light on the way to accomplish unexplained chores.

He would remark on the multitude of stars and she would marvel at his genius, thinking nobody has looked up at the stars in the way we do. How lucky we are. We are going to have a good life. Never are we going to grow old, sicken, and die.

* * *

One of my favorite writers is Ian Frazier. He has just published a book called Family. It is about tracing his ancestors in and around a bunch of towns and farms in Ohio. Systematically, I understand, he tracks them down and interviews them. He has taken time out of his life to do this. He is a man at least twenty years younger than me. He writes for The New Yorker and when I see his byline I always stop turning pages and settle down to sample his ware. Rarely do I put the article down until I reach the end. Often I tear out the article in its entirety and send it to a friend who I think will appreciate it; if it is important to me, I Xerox the article and send on the copy, keeping the original.

As much as I'd like to go to Frazier's book and learn from it, most likely crib, I will not go anywhere near it, thank you, until I finish this long work. And you know why. My story is my story. I don't want anybody else furnishing directions, either literal or stage. But I envy Frazier, at least what little I know of his purposes and intentions. He has family alive to interview. All of the family that precedes me are dead. I have come too late to the scene, the task. I am left with a handful of snaps and my imagination.

It could be worse. I could not have this small assortment of snaps to draw from. I could be rootless, sourceless, without fuel for my soul to draw its pictures from in the blastfurnace of my mind. What I have to do, you see, is fill in the dots where there are no dots. In some instances there is not even a blank page in which to fine some dots in order to construct a straight line. But even there I am not lost, only undirected. I am thankful for what I've got, or so said the one-armed man limping along on one leg with his solitary functional crutch.

"I've got you, babe." Isn't that what Sonny told Cher? And look where it got them.

I could, of course, create some warm, wonderful relatives, ascribe names to them, give them idiosyncratic traits, put words in their mouths, describe them fetchingly and at length—even put them together at family occasions and let them interact, speaking for their fictional selves, running alongside them with pencil and pad, writing down their very words. And it would work. Well, sort of.

I am tempted to try it with, say, Ort and Doc Connelly. Maybe bring in Wirt and Fred, as well. Cause them to come together in the proverbial locked room and let them work things out, or kill each other. I'm not saying that before we reach the end of this sleigh ride I won't do it. Only that I don't want to. For fiction pales along side the truth. If you don't believe me, ask Jeffery Dahmer.

* * *

In college my father and Ruth (who is never mentioned as being there, her letters from this time vanished at the receiving end and none received retained) graduated at the same time. There is one more highlight from that time that I would like to draw from and it is wonderful, for it brings into the drama several of the characters already introduced and, possibly, ones whom you thought you would no longer hear from again. It is a letter quoted in Harry Burns McConnell's book, McConnell Genealogy, and was written by my grandmother, Leigh C. Arnold, as she signs herself. We have also know her as Saraleigh Connelly and ordinarily as Leigh, pronounced Lee. It is dated November 11, 1924, the place Chicago:

On June 3, 1931, Harry received another letter from my grandmother. She was something of an early public-relations whiz, I am beginning to think—and a pioneer flack. Here is an extract:

Hallelujah, I am born!

It was not as easy as all that. Between their graduation in 1926 and the birth of their first child (c'est moi) lie several years from which there is no textual evidence to draw a story line. But there are a couple of snaps which again provide clues.

Edmund must have lived at home during the vacations from college in which he worked at the store. This was in the Beverly section of Chicago, which we always called Beverly Hills, but I see it recorded only as Beverly in preserved letters, and so I follow custom. He and my mother married in Tecumseh, Michigan, a suburb of Ford, in the living room of a house I still remember and am aided by yet another snap from my mother's side of the family as a crutch for memory. We used to journey back and forth between South Chicago and Tecumseh, passing through among other burgs Gary, Indiana (which still clings to my nostrils) and a little place in Michigan called Coldwater. I was encouraged to call out, "Coldwater, Hotwater" in passage, and each time this was deemed charming, but when I do it now, there is no appreciative audience in the front seat and I am met with frosty stares of from my family and friends, so I've stopped.

They moved to Chicago, where my father rode streetcars to work in the Loop six days a week. The streetcars are what made San Francisco famous. Depression Chicago as well. I remember them because when we left the city in 1939 for a bedroom community to the North I had ridden them plenty and had come to enjoy them, their clatter, and their thrilling openness of access and egress. Even so young, I was able to hope on and off the moving car with some degree of safety and confidence.

We lived at three different addresses in the cluster of new apartments on the South Side, only one of which I remember at all. The other two are familiar through dimly remembered words and some snapshots again, without which I would be lost, trapped in the present. The first is 7505 Yates. It exists as the corner of a three-storey brick building, only the tipsy upper corner of which is visible in the Kodak print, an indication that my mother took the picture. She was always having trouble with viewfinders and committing the same small crime, over and over—not wanting to press her eye to the glass. She always feared the onset of even the smallest pain. (It is a wonder she ever had a child, namely me, but apparently didn't comprehend the extent of what was involved. But then how to explain my little brother, who followed six and one-half years later?)

Brick with a castle-wall turreted effect up along the roofline, with cement pickets forming a rail so that whoever finds himself up there is not going to fall off. A neatly cropped hedge forms a boundary to one side of the sidewalk and there is a thin planting strip between it and the street on which nothing is evident growing except grass. The brick pattern is broken at the corners and elsewhere with the introduction of cream-colored cast inserts. These tend to entertain the eye and relieve the monotony. Windowwork is wood, and each centerpane is bound by twin narrow mini-windows rising; in all three visible windows facing South the blinds are half-drawn, I presume against the sun, which is coming at a strong slant. The glass on the lower two storeys have discernible curtains drawn clear across; the third storey does not, and an interior is darkly revealed, one with a bright center at the lower edge indicating a ceiling light being left on. It is too high for neighbors or sidewalkers below to see in, so no blind need be drawn.

On the roof is a dim shape glimpsed through the railing (the rails look like bowling pins), and I take it to be some kind of ventilation stack. These used to run up the center of the buildings and be completely enclosed; children were warned against falling into them and being dumbly imprisoned and starving to death there, for they were seldom looked into, though I'm sure our wee, wailing voices might be heard in the distance, and we shall be released.

At the edge of the property and penetrating the hedge, or demarcating where the hedge of this apartment building leaves off and the next one begins, is a narrow drive that heads for the rear of the apartment complex. If it is like any of the others I remember better, it leads to a tight, narrow, closed-in yard in back and the individual garages. These were built of wood and stood shoulder to shoulder in such a row as to comprise an entity of its own. It is where boys played, in among the garbage cans, exposed back staircases, and garages with their doors mostly closed and locked. At least my friends and I did in the second apartment on Essex street, where we soon moved and which I remember quite well.

Let me see. In 1925 there was a Willys Knight vehicle in my parents' life, which coincides with their graduation from college. The license was 953-850, the state Michigan. This predates their move to Chicago as a married couple. Were they always so affluent as to own a car? And ever afterwards? I suspect so. It would be a point of pride with my father. And he would strive to be able to afford one.

They lived in the apartment at Yates in 1930, according to my mother's pencil marks (made late in life and probably not very inaccurate, if inaccurate at all) on the back of the snap, and in 1933 there is a picture of me as a cute little ragamuffin, a pose which I was unable to maintain much longer, growing uglier by the minute. I stand in the backyard of the first Essex apartment and one which I am sure was pointed out to me many times while we as a family were in transit, probably in the car that came next, possibly a Chevy. I don't remember it.

I am wearing what is called a playsuit, with a little cap perched on the back of my head in such a position that nobody (not even I) could wear it there and it would immediately come tumbling off to lie on the packed earth of the backyard. Not a blade grows there. Each crowded apartment nudges its neighbor and backyards, such as they are, are separated by little low wire fences, so as not to be contaminated by each other's occupants, it would seem. The sun is bright again (it is when cameras come out to record events, the sun being one in itself, in drear winter and spring) and next door, behind the first fence, a baby's buggy rises, its canopy pushed back. Probably there is an infant inside and it is being protected from the strong rays which are said to be able to burn a baby crisp, at least in June, at least in Chicago.

Back staircases occur in these three-tiered buildings and they are built of wood. They are there not for easy access but because of the danger of fires. All are alike, yet a little different. And in the same year, according to Mother's penciled notes on back, I am revealed standing alongside my father in the side yard or in an adjacent vacant lot (still numerous then), us in tandem, washing the family car.

The car is new, a modern sedan, I would guess black, the only color they come in, reportedly. It is so shiny that we can see our reflections in it. I remember my distorted image in the wheel cover frightening me. I tried to stay away from wheels, accordingly. But even in the body of the car in the picture I can see myself reflected so, as I must have been able to do in reality, at the moment, thus time is captured and pictures are made eternal, so long as the fixer holds. When it fails we fade into the oblivion we may deserve but are not yet able to achieve. It is akin to the rest withheld from the wicked.

I was a cute little bugger—you have to take my word for it. (Please do.) Curly blond hair that was unmanageable then as now, though I have learned clever ways to defeat its wave and make it obey briefly. I am able to stand upright and my pixy face (if I do say so myself) is adorable. I was soon to change in the direction of Pure Ugly. Again I wear my little bibbed coveralls that might have been called in white-collar families, of which we surely were one, a playsuit. It looks like a worker's coveralls. I wear a short-sleeved shirt underneath it, for the weather is warm and what Dad and I are engaged in is surely manual labor.

Edmund wears a white shirt, probably one with a slightly frayed collar, making it unsuitable for work, certainly for one bent upon rising past the station of assistant buyer of anything. His sleeves are rolled up to just below the elbow, the way a manager rolls his, not the way a worker does—to show off his biceps. The car has a running board, on which I have placed at crotch-level my implements—drying cloth, clean polishing rag, spare duster, etc. In one hand I hold what I am working away with. It can't be a bar of soap but sure looks like one.

Edmund is remarkably thin and chronically underexercised. Well, this was always the case, up until he aged and grew a pot belly. I wear one, too. It is like a great vest that goes with one everywhere. Such a garment is unavoidable, unless one is a coal miner or acrobat, and they never live long enough to earn one. Edmund is wearing his old pants, too, I see, neatly cuffed, probably what is left over from a business suit. I remember how old-clothing collectors used to come to the back door in carts or trucks, and holler up, and my mother would sell them things, generally my father's old suits. I don't remember what they paid, but it was no more than they had to. And my father got a discount on buying new, it almost goes without saying, but it must be noted in passing.

So if a suit cost ten dollars and you could sell if for two, and it cost him but eight, he could afford to rid himself of them fairly often, because it was necessary—no, vital—to be spiffy. In a store targeting the affluent, one must appear affluent oneself, or how else can the clientele relate to you well enough to consummate the purchase? Exactly. And never forget the fact, because they didn't, that there was a depression.

My father was doing well, according to Saraleigh's accounts and to those of most others. Three k a year was a terrific amount, and with it he was able to provide my mother with some help around the apartments that grew ever more spacious as their children arrived. What to call these women has always been a mystery. My parents didn't like the word "maid," probably because it smacked of European gentility, when they were plainly Americans—Americans, plain. Plain-states Americans, too. Remember the Connellys and McConnells, the Burns, Gallaghers, Clarks, Velies, Arnolds, all good common folk.

Yet the poor Polish girls and Negresses who came to work for my mother to clean and do the heavy stuff for this woman with the bones of a wren were clearly cleaning ladies, if not maids in the sense of attending to madam. And some of them my mother was sure were dishonest. What they were paid must have been a joke—a few cents an hour or a dollar a day; some such. So if they, say, were the only employed in Chicago's South Side from a family of eight or ten (not uncommon) and groceries were needed, one would not be too scrupulous about the guise of honesty. Honesty was for them that could afford it, and such were few. So if they stole coins or food or garments or jewelry, may they not be damned for eternity, but only for a day. Yet my mother correctly begrudged them these things that she was entitled to by sheer force of Edmund's industry. (It was the usual Republican slam.)

Also she was afraid of them. She was always lacking in self-confidence among those she believed to be her social betters, and this did not preclude deference and total terror in the company of those who were socially beneath her—those poor as the common soil, needy, hungry, and slightly soiled. I am sorry to report this, but an accurate version of the truth is what we are after. I learned snatches of popular song in Polish from the women who came into our apartment to clean but were not exactly maids or cleaning ladies. I can still hum them.

"What," I asked Mother, decades later, "were they then? Friends, bridge partners, chums, sorority sisters?"

My mother thought and said I was being facetious, and I was. Yet there was no accepted word in her and their vocabulary for who these poor girls were. Their core identity. They were the needy, and one gave them jobs doing undesirable tasks around the apartment as one's method of spreading the wealth around, though it was never called this. It is how a staunch conservative, just starting out, helped out those not so fortunate, and the fact that that help greatly benefitted my mother, who was not strong and lacked workingclass endurance, is only a side issue. Yeah.

My words, not theirs, for I was light-years away from being the Marxist I became at sixteen.

And if I had been sixteen and in South Chicago, with Polish cleaning ladies who were not really maids, and not acknowledged to be the former, either, I might have been initiated into the mysteries of sex by some sad-eyed bored girl brought into the house to help my mother (as I have read about), but by that time we lived far away, alas, and the cleaning ladies (now called that in help-wanted ads) were small black women, or huge black women, who did not consider this as one of their duties. Thank goodness for the both of us.

But I can still imagine a pretty young maid coming into the house and doing the floors, then me. She is Polish; they all are, in our neighborhood. And she is slinky, sensuous, lovely, but in so hidden and subtle a fashion that only my young, discerning eye can recognize it. And she sees in me something other than the bug-eared kid with the gold-rimmed glasses, flaccid in body and only keen in his unformed mind that I know myself to be. She would view me as a robust man in the making and who, with her help, would become even more worldly masculine because of the invaluable experience and knowledge she brought into this cold household, along with her ability to banish dust and cobwebs for the following week.

She would value me for my imagination, you see. (What else?) I, in turn, would value her for both her transient beauty and the prurience factor. I needed to know . . . so much. Yes, a writer tends to get horny at his keyboard, late in the afternoon, with no distraction at hand but his computer monitor to stare blankly at, an object, which in all major ways is lacking in nourishment

.

* * *

I was born on Thanksgiving, 1930, and though my parents publicly celebrated the day in several ways, I'm sure there were many long stretches in which they lamented the event. I've heard the tale so many times of how my mother was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night to believe the mythos itself, unquestioningly, and how my father had no turkey to eat the next evening but joined friends down the block to share in their dinner, only to hurry away from table to hospital to be with my mom again. I'm sure it is true, as true as it might be, which is fairly true, not false, anyway, except perhaps in the emotional heightening in which it came wrapped.

And I get it mixed up with the story about a baby that might have been born between my brother and me, and have foreshortened the difficult reach of years and distance that have always stood between us, irremediably; not a baby but a Fallopian tube pregnancy that exploded in the night and caused another rush by ambulance to the hospital, just in the nick. So perhaps I was only delivered still inside my mother to Chicago's South Side Hospital by automobile sometime during a long November afternoon at the start of labor and struggled to get born for nearly the next twenty-four hours, a length of time fairly common in first pregnancies and which motivated the attending physician to grab his forceps, clasp me by the top of the head, and apply enough pressure with his tongs to rip me untimely but overdue from my mother's womb. I've worn the imprint of his instrument all my life and it prevents me from parting my hair in the middle, as did my father and later my son, for a ridge is ever there.

I was their little turkey, they always said, and I suppose I did resemble one, if Thanksgiving birds ever come so small as my eight pounds. It was a joke that never wore thin for them and for me only after that first year. I suppose I struggled to get out, but was prevented by my mother's small hip girth and narrow pelvis, but I persisted, I would not be denied, I would endure, and finally (my head pinched tightly with the doctor's pliers) I popped out. Her little fowl. And as soon as they let her she bore me home in a baby basket (free) and placed me in the bedroom that had been specially prepared for me as a nursery, swathed me in a tiny cottony blanket.

We moved from Yates to the first apartment on Essex Avenue, most likely to gain more space, for now there were three of us, not the concise pair. From the start I had my own little room, a baby's. I don't know whether my mother breast-fed me or not; I suspect, from a boy's sly glimpse of her dugs later she did, for they were terribly pulled out and descended. Yet I cannot picture her wanting that closeness to anything not truly herself, not even her baby, her first-born. So, given final judgment in the matter (and who else's is there?), I would say not. Thus I was given formula and supplements and soon solid foods from Gerbers, the kind that comes in little glass jars not big enough to store anything else in after they are devoid of apricot puree, apple sauce, whipped carrot, spinach mush, etc. except perhaps salesman's samples for a dietary supplement.

And cow's milk, of course.

I was loved by parents blindly devoted to themselves and each other and now to this new added entity, a child. Son. This was the time, remember, of Thursday-evening give-aways at the movies, that booming industry that took people away from the sordidness of their homes and into the mythical glamour of people's homes much happier, grander, and soul-satisfying than theirs. The children in the movies were Jackie Coogan, Deanna Durbin, Mickey Mouse (hey, he wasn't a child, but a rodent), Mickey Rooney then (not a rodent, though rat-sized, but a child), and that formidable standby, Shirley Temple. The word I'm looking for is cute. For a while I was cute. Then I wasn't. How disappointed they must have been.

On Thursdays invariably they would have a sitter come in, somebody who lived in the apartment, Mrs. Burgee from downstairs or Mrs. Willock from upstairs, who for a few coins would make sure nobody would steal me out of my crib and sell me to gypsies. My parents would eat a quick casserole my mother had prepared ahead of time and dash off for the movies. Sometimes it was free dishes night, while other nights they passed out stainless steel silverware. And often it was drinking glasses, gratis.

The movie starred (invariably too) William Powell and Myrna Loy. They wore tuxedos and ballgowns, as none else did in real life, unless it was people who did not need to go out to movies on weekday nights for their glamour and were kept busy attending the real thing. They would sit through the first feature, the main one, maybe holding damp hands, maybe not, and when the intermission came exchange questioning looks and sometimes stayed into the start of the second feature, which of course was free, free with the price of admission, but it persisted so late in the direction of midnight and was sufficiently inferior to the first that more often than not they sidesaddled out to the aisle and walked home. It was not far. They paid and dismissed the upstairs or downstairs sitter, shed their clothes, brushed their teeth, and slid into dreamy sleep, thinking about what they had just finished witnessing on the screen, with its silver-coated version of life.

I go into all of this simply to point out the inevitable uplift and subsequent demoralizing of all the people who unsuspectingly walked into the movie trap. For this was not life nor any reasonable impersonation of it but mass fraud. Couples could look like them, the stars, he by parting his hair down the middle, she by bobbing hers, and they could buy clothes of acceptable daily fashion, but they could not make the world change in the desired direction. There were too many daily reminders of how it was different. Bad.

It was, after all, the Great Depression. It surrounded them. Down the street was a WPA project, massive, employing hundreds daily to level the ground and construct the foundation and eventually help rise from the quotidian earth the cement structure that would eventually become a stadium. True, men leaned on shovels all day long there, as my father said, he who had no need of a shovel to lean on. Men sold apples and pencils on street corners. And there was crime—both organized and the other kind. Dis-. People were always getting beat up on the street, some of them killed. I remember the blood-stained pavement splotch and how the rusty stain would linger through rain and snow and, if you knew where to look for it, never quite disappear.

Drive-by shootings were not invented in the past half dozen years but were a mainstay of daily life in Chicago ever since the advent of the automobile. I suppose before them people shot at others from horseback and coaches. I recall seeing the bullet hole preserved in plaster of the friends who, but for a moment's grace, might have caught a round in the forehead while sitting on their livingroom sofa, listening to Jack Benny. Or so it was presented to me and the world, and so do I remember it, probably faultily.

Killings and muggings, purse-snatchings, wallets and watches taken. You did not go out at night unless you had to. Yet my father rode the streetcar to the Loop and I, so young, took it to movies at the Avalon Theater, down 79th Street, the trolleys swaying over head, the car running in street grooves along its tracks which were something less than what a real train would require but a shove in that direction.

You could swing on board, as though the streetcar were moving, or if it was moving slightly and you were a bold kid. You could even hang on the back, somehow. A ride was a nickel or less, the movie not much more. The theater (probably spelled Theatre) was grand. It was royalty extended to us masses, with velvet drapes and curtain that would slowly slide back with a hushed, rattling, slithery sound to reveal a shimmering screen, and often the movie would start dramatically before the curtains were completely moved to the sides, so that you saw the start of the movie cast over thick maroon velvet, which only added to the mysteriousness that now surrounded you.

Often it was the news, Movietone, or the Preview of Coming Attractions, which would so whet your appetite you were already planning to attend next week without fail. Those scenes from the World at Large (often the World at War) would crackle and crinkle so that you knew they were real, and you got to visit strange foreign lands where people looked different from you or me so that you didn't really mind that they were killing each other because they weren't like us, they were black, or squint-eyed, or wore funny clothes, or spoke oddly, being not quite human, and their brand of warfare was not ours, though if we wished to or needed to or were provoked enough we would marshall our considerable forces and teach them a lesson they would never forget. Blast them to smithereens. For sure.

Still, it was interesting to see how other people lived, informative, instructive. It drove home to you how lucky you were, everybody said, especially my parents, to live in America and have freedom, when everybody everywhere was losing his or hers. Outside the theater the Depression ground on, but inside all was splendid, hopeful, magnificent. Even war was wonderful, when it wasn't your war, when you were a child, a boy, and guns went bang and people fell down dramatically and rose slowly, sheepishly, and went on about their childish business.

There would be a cartoon. Porky Pig was a favorite, but Donald Duck was more likely, with his zany nephews, and would be happily endured and enjoyed, though it was not what we came here for. My parents came for romance and to be transported. I came for adventure and to be transported. But meanwhile values were being formed in all of us. Xenophobia was one of them and would soon serve us well as preparation for war again. But worse than this, if anything is worse than war, is the daily values we carried out of the theater and into our lives.

They made victims of us all.

If women couldn't be like Myrna Loy or Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth (alas, alas) or Rosalind Russell or funny, outrageous Bette Davis, they could at least approximate their hair styles and clothing. Likewise men might resemble Robert Taylor or William Powell or the one who sings, what's his name, Dick Haymes. Half of the men had little mustaches, neatly trimmed, that must have tickled, the women mused, and nobody then as now could be too thin to be unfashionable. Starving for effect is not new, though as I recall nobody ever died of it, not directly, not then. How times have changed.

How easy it is to be deluded by surfaces—names, costumes, taxicabs, dancebands, mansions, dark roads, the moon, the sea, the spangled sky. Beneath the drama serious lessons were driven home. A man could work hard and come to something. Success followed the course of effort as does the sun the moon. The plums of achievement in the business world brought success in the private one, that is, a beautiful, sexy, obedient wife, one not crippled by neurasthenia or neurosis or that worse goblin, psychosis. And children were cast in the classical tradition not as scheming Ids but as small adults who would not outgrow their clothing but would remain charming, witty, cute, adorable, and small. Stay small. Please.

But we were not like that. Freud had unraveled the multiple mysteries of the psyche that said the soul schemes to have its own way, for Johnny to marry Mama, for Barbara to bed Daddy and have his child. Nobody dared look at the psyche hard. So we went on with our lives and were met by acute disappointment. Not everybody was beautiful. That cute kid, Bobby, grew in a few years into an unhappy, brooding, ugly little child.

How else do we get our writers?

The arrow does not fly straight from the bow that is not bent. I had badly crossed eyes from that high-forceps delivery meant to ease my mother's labor pain and the doctor's long loss of time unto himself. My little bald head came to a point, then the soft skull strived to return to its original shape but only partly achieved it. The muscles alongside my poor little head got stretched, I guess, or so I was told, and the eyes were pulled into a crooked path. One looked at my nose, the other at the ceiling. It was a subject for continual comment and it took its toll on my little mind. We must live in a world of others. Shame, shame.

How else do we get our neurotics?

I was inducted into the world of glasses early. Already one eye had weakened and would go more weak if not held in check by corrective optics. It is not possible for a little kid to look good in glasses. He appears precocious, scholarly, unworldly. There goes all resident cuteness. But there is nothing more awful than an eye that strays, unless it is two that do.

I had my first eye operation to correct the condition at age nine. Two more in my early teens. The idea was, it was better to undercorrect than over, for a walleyed look would result. Besides, as one grows into life, there is a tendency for eyes to go in the opposite direction. What might look nice now would put you into the pickerel family in ten-years time. So I was briefly blindfolded until the stitches in my little eye muscles had time to heal and when they the bandages were removed I had sufficient dark humor to tell my doctor, "I can see, I can see," when there was no doubt about that, only whether or not it was funny. It was to me, at least, and my due, after all those days in the cave.

I do not want to make too much of a case for this. It was probably worse to look at this crosseyed kid than to be behind the eyes and then glasses, looking out at the curious world. I remember how many glances aimed themselves over my shoulder, or theirs, to see what I was looking at. I got to know those horrible looks and they permanently squinted me.

There is no wound without the arrow and no arrow without the bow and no bow unless the limb is strung under tension. The wood must be right. Hickory will do, but fir will not. The conditions for neurosis must be right, or what follows is mere phenomena. I have a sister-in-law who moves through life suffering incidents that would stumble a horse yet is in no way neurotic. She simply moves on along, the waves parting before her. I envy her, but then she misses much. I think I would rather suffer it all than to have it pass on by me, unrecordable and unrecorded. To each our own.

One Christmas I had the chicken pox, which is no joke. You run an awful fever and are weak and watery abed. You require a darkened room. I had all of these things. You are told not to scratch your scabs or you will scar yourself hideously and nobody will hire you in the future and the girl who would have been your wife will not be.

That Christmas or another near it I was given a little typesetting kit. The form was of grooved wood and the type was rubber. Individual letters slid into the grooved lines and you could spell out words, your name, for instance. They formed a rubber stamp, sort of, but you were not limited by what you could spell out in four or five narrow lines, only by your imagination and what characters this single font would provide. I think it was presumed that you would make yourself a name-and-address stamp. That was what the ink pad was for, and the vial of supplementary ink.

To me it was a printing press. I could record my ideas, such as they were, my anger and my joy, and reproduce them into the future, limited only in my scant typography and the time it took to "set type." I'd like to report that I reproduced The Book of Common Prayer, or Julius Caesar, or even a stanza from Prufrock, but I didn't. I think I made up my name and address, and then various critical letters got vacuumed up by the Polish lady and I abandoned the project.

What is a boy to do when all of his vowels are taken away in the same bag as the lint and yesterday's broken crackers?

And yet there remains a snap of me, as bespectacled as Joyce, head bent over a little ringed notebook in which I recorded for a while whatever drivel entered my small head. I am wearing knickers, knee boots (with a little pocket on the side in which I carried my little fold-up knife), a leather jacket with mouton collar, and my aviator's helmet, sans goggles. My nose is pressed alarmingly close to the notebook and I have no idea of what I had written, only that it couldn't have been worth reading. Yet there has to be a beginning to this long effort with words of mine.

I am not sure this was it.

* * *

My parents were expecting a small adult who could be depended on to be delightful, especially in front of others. It was a great status symbol to have a Jackie Coogan, say, or little Shirley Temple living in your home, brought out for special occasions to entertain your friends. Yet I suppose I had my moments of endearment.

My father was assistant fur buyer for Field's flagship store and the section in which the department was located far up off the ground floor was spacious and commanding of attention. In front of the department was a Mama polar bear and three cubs, all shot dead as stones by a bounty hunter. They had been rendered lifelike at the taxidermists and served as an attention-getter for shoppers to draw them into the baited strap of the Fur Salon, where they just might buy a coat or some lesser wrap.

I astounded them by adopting as my own a bear cub, which once I attempted to spirit away to the elevator, then I guess to the street, then to the elevated train that circumnavigated the Loop. I got but halfway to the elevator. I mean, the damn thing probably weighed more than I did, and the best I could do was tow it as far as I could a bag of cement. But it was far enough away to delight them all and provide cutesy anecdotes well into the future.

And I was once lifted atop a small bear cub (stuffed) and told to straddle it like a pony. Snap goes the camera. I also remember having my picture taken astride a real pony that was brought door to door for pictures taken by a man said to be a gipsy. You did not let him out of your sight, ever, or else your blond-haired little boy might disappear from sight forever; there was rumored to be a good price paid for pale children, who the gipsies might use them to pull carts (their ponies all occupied for picture-taking purposes, these days). So often I was lifted atop that white bear cub to amuse my father's friends that I soon developed the thighs of a barebacked rider. No, no; I do exaggerate.

I keep straying from my subject onto subjects tangent to my purpose, though ones interesting to me. Of such vignettes is one's childhood comprised. My goal is to explain how it was not my fault that I disappointed my parents by not being cute enough to fulfill their expectations of me and now, both of them dead, to tell them that I forgive them.

* * *

Each June my father traveled to New York City to buy furs for the store. This necessitated knowing the vagaries of the garment business, which included bits of occult processes and variant behavior in factories where the pelts were prepared, sorted, bundled, and sold at auction. He didn't buy at auction himself but simply watched the lots being sold and the people who bought them, and it was from them that he ordered coats for the store and the lot prices determined in large part how much the coats would cost him, or rather the store.

Why my father went each June and not Mr. Metheral, his boss, the buyer, I have no idea. I'm sure Metheral went, in his time. Nobody with any sense would pick June to visit New York City (I speak from experience), but then nobody would choose to be in Chicago in June, either (experience speaks once again). It was Edmund's job and I suppose it was necessary for him to become knowledgeable about what went into a coat and how it was put together, and he was a better salesman and manager for knowing. Metheral went through the training before him and life is a series of initiations of actions, some of them necessary, many of them symbolic and not. No doubt the boss had had his fill of New York in June and it was now my father's turn.

In 1950, aged 20, I went with him once, and he proudly showed me much of what went on. In the evening there were parties and we drank. I gathered what happened was you went to the Statler Hotel, you took a fine room, you ate in restaurants, you went to parties in banquet rooms of other hotels, you swallowed Scotch, you shook hands, you laughed, you got quietly drunk, you went back to your hotel late and fell into a bed in a stupor and you rose the next morning at seven and did the same thing again. You did this until your two weeks were up and you boarded the train for Chicago and returned to the murmur of daily life in Seattle and were grateful its quietness. If there were women available to the buyers—such as passed for fashion models in those days—I saw none of them.

I got glimpses of the fur industry but was not interested enough to observe it closely and it remains after forty-five years in the form of staccato impressions. Clothes carts being wheeled along sidewalks on 33rd Street and pedestrians dodging them. Panhandlers, one of which addressed me fetchingly as, "Tex." Skins in warehouses tied with cord and labeled with lot numbers, looking as though a host of little animals had turned themselves inside out in order to get closer to the action and nuzzle each other as some sort of game. Men in shirt sleeves shouting things at each other in some foreign language that was either Russian (sables) or Yiddish (everything else on the table). Coats on mannequins but never living models for I, a boy of twenty, would remember their slick grace.

And dinner parties for gangs of men, all buyers from faraway burgs with orders in their pockets to bestow on manufacturers who entertained them the most lavishly and promised the best deals. I was proud of how I could drink and hold it. I was not a barfer, nor was Edmund. We drank well-watered Johnny Walker Black Label, given half a chance, or else the bar Scotch, and after some evenings we would return to the Hilton for ten-o'clock bedtime (his) and I, the budding writer, who had scribbled all the way out on the Empire Builder to the rhythm of the rails some nonsensical sketches in the manner of Scott Fitzgerald or Tom Wolfe, I thought, would set out to wander the nighttime streets of glitter, imbibe some more, and listen to what proved to be the legendary jazz of the day and all time in downstairs clubs that were mostly black.

But who wants to hear again about Charlie Parker and Miles Davis? They are cliches from another time. It is all true, what others have said. At that time they were simply what was playing on Broadway, late at night. And to say I partook of glory is only to put me in a vast category of white voyeurs listening to vital jazz.

But you see, I can draw from it, even now. (Nothing is ever wasted; it is a law of physics.)

I had them pretty much to myself, Edmund and Cec, for the first six years. She had her tubal pregnancy, recovered after almost dying from loss of blood in the night, became pregnant again, and soon my brother Richard joined us.

I had been conned into accepting this as a gift in the form of a new little buddy, somebody to play with, in short, a clone of myself. Ha. Life was best before he came onto the scene, just another baby, one like everybody else was having in the neighborhood and a little somebody who took away all of my parents' attention. Snatched it away from me, you might say. There is no series of lectures at the local junior college to acquaint a boy of six with the symptoms of sibling rivalry and to explain ways to mitigate it. Words like envy, jealousy, hatred, loathing, are not appropriate, not within the context of the family unit, which is supposed to remain pristine. Ha again.

William Powell married Myrna Loy and they had a baby, Jackie Coogan. All was idyllic. Then along came Mickey Rooney. Chaos resulted. It was a twist of the psyche.

He was sickly, to begin with, and truly required special care because of his eczema, which necessitated oatmeal baths, lotions, unguents, and even splints taped to his little arms at night so he wouldn't scratch himself raw in his sleep and infect. Some stuff that was called tar, and looked and smelled like shit, was periodically rubbed on him. It was dabbed on his arms and legs, giving him a slightly minstrel look—this dwarf.

I couldn't have ordered it better.

The idea of having a little brother was superior to the experience, and before he burst forth into this world I imagined a scenario for us, abetted I am sure by my mother's sly programming. I had a little red wagon left over from my babyhood, precursor to a tricycle, and in it I would take my darling baby brother for rides around our neighborhood, showing him off, for this was a great event and surely everybody else was as eager as we for his arrival. I was to be in charge of transportation and publicity; this would make our tandem travels more interesting for both of us. I envisioned him arriving fully formed, talking, maybe even reading already, knowledgeable, the perfect companion for someone like myself, but of course smaller, much smaller, having only just been born.

I was considering building us a series of tunnels beneath a vacant lot on the corner South, where we all played and fought and quarreled and skinned our knees. It was open and accessible to all and used for a variety of purposes, none of them very constructive. Here I would excavate the hard-packed soil and begin my series of tunnels, which in time would be covered with boards and the self-same earth, loose now, and tamped down. I would conduct my brother on a daily routine of underground tours, our way lighted by candles I had filched from the dining room table or perhaps been issued for this special purpose. Afterwards we would return to the warmth and comfort of our second-storey apartment for cookies and milk, followed by some stimulating conversation.

I'm sure I was not encouraged in the specific nature of this project, only in the joyous, anticipatory mood which accompanied its planning.

* * *

Somewhere along the way Cec had become Mimi, I can't explain precisely how. There was a song sung by that old pervert, Maurice Chevalier, that proclaimed the charms of a certain Mimi. Most likely it was drawn from that song falling on more innocent ears. After all in France love and sex and romance were common currency, and age or sex was no barrier to doing the dirty business.

They still had their little birdsong with which to call out to each other, and as soon as my adult front teeth were in (about now) I was taught how to whistle the songs of the day, including this one. "Bob-white, Bob-white." I called it out long before I could whistle it, and of course the words incorporated my first name, though I was still persistently Bobby, an appellate I at once and forever loathed. (In time I broke up with a girl from North Carolina in large part because she could not be trained to not call me anything else.)

We used to call out to each other mawkishly with our single birdcall inside the apartment and wait behind half-closed doors for the response. It was what the three of us did when we wanted to be playful. The reply always brought a chuckle. Nobody tired of the game, ostensibly, surely not I. And then my brother came along and the music went out of our lives. Or so I saw it.

Mimi and Eddie entertained his peers from Fields; it was expected and they participated, though my mother was never comfortable with strangers or friends about, and since everybody pretty much fell into these two categories (except the cleaning ladies), "having people in" was a big chore for her, fraught with anxiety. I have just enough of this fear in my own life not to be unsympathetic. Her entertaining trauma continued for the rest of Edmund's working life and posed a burden for them both. She would much rather have an evening of greeting him with martinis-at-the-door and then a lonesome dinner by candlelight. She had studied and taught for one year Home Ec and my father thought her a marvelous cook, and so they were happy—whatever the reality might be.

The Depression was held at arm's length for practical purposes, though there were signs of its diminished human activity everywhere around them. It could not be escaped from. I'm sure they regularly thanked their stars and perhaps their God for good fortune, not that it wasn't earned, you understand. My father always believed that poverty and unemployment were linked to laziness and lack of serious application. Thus people were surely out of work because of wide-spread lack of jobs, while at the same time anybody who was industrious could find a job through constant application, and while that job might not be what he desired or dreamed of, it was a job, and any job was better than no job. Women went out and scrubbed the toilets of other women, washed windows and floors, tended infants not their own, all in order to hold their heads up high and avoid the welfare; men could do the equivalent thing.

Down at the corner where I walked to Coe Grade School each weekday rose the WPA-built stadium or coliseum, I forget which, don't remember it because it wasn't completed until after we had moved away from the mid-floor apartment at 8128 Essex Avenue. Oh why couldn't they finish it, my father sighed, over the evening meal? It was because there was no incentive to work hard, for weren't the workers paid the same, whether they swung those shovels or not? Leaned on them in classic style? Indeed they were.

It was both their fault and not. True, the country was in turmoil, and very few people were buying fur coats. Fur was warmer than wool, but wool was cheaper and had greater utility value. Thank goodness there was still diversity of income in America, or else—if the communists had their way—everybody would be paid the same, except unless you had a lot of children, in which case you were paid more, which was unfair to those who had endeavor. This was not fair. And it was not likely to happen, not in America, because individual initiative and effort resulted in an uneven distribution of earned wealth, and this is what made the nation great. Some could buy fur coats, some could not, and this was not only the way of applied economics but it had a basis in Protestant religion. It was not Godless, like Marx and communism, but beneficent and holy. I mean, Holy. It had its basis in the Trinity—God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, or was it Joseph, Mary, and Jesus? Whatever, it was what we had and would fight for, when the time came, and it was coming. Events in Central Europe were tumultuous again and it all had to do with that Hitler fellow.

I absorbed these ideas and loosely held them, attitudes I heard professed around the dinner table, about the only time I ever saw Edmund, except on Saturday afternoons and all day Sundays, when often we did something together, such as going for a drive to the country in one of the cars he kept for this purpose (generally from General Motors) and which he traded in faithfully every three years. We went out on Sundays as a treat for Mother, who had cooked for her family six and two-thirds days of the previous week and was entitled to a change. (And so was he.)

But sometimes we went to visit my grandparents, the Arnolds of Beverly. I remember those drives through Chicago and one special trip I took with him alone to a club to which he didn't belong but to which he was accorded visitor's privileges from one who did. I went along to watch him play tennis. We passed by the place where Al Capone's St. Valentine's Day massacre had taken place in 1929, the year before my birth; he pointed it out to me—a red-brick garage, I believe—and I shuddered appropriately, and then we were parked and inside the club, with its chlorine smell and indoor courts with clay floors and balls whizzing back and forth, pock, pock.

Usually though it was the four of us now, the baby swaddled both because of the cool weather and because of the eczema that continued to hound him, the rest of us dressed in winter coats, our best, and we were on our way to visit James and Saraleigh (of your acquaintance), although they were simply Grandpa and Grandma. (Never Gramps.) They always had a prize waiting for me in the old wind-up Victrola in the corner of the dining room, already laid out for Sunday dinner, and I would rush to it greedily to see what bribe for my affections had been placed there. I of course did not see it as such, but such it undoubtedly was. I responded as a dog would to a bone-shaped biscuit and was never disappointed, though I cannot remember for the life of me or anything else (the writer's memory, for instance) what it was, or could have been.

After my greed had been assuaged, the bribe pocketed, I would become more normal, which meant bored. I might guess that the bribe was an envelope of canceled postage stamps for my budding collection or some pieces of fudge wrapped in waxed paper or an odd coin or two, a nickel and, if I was extraordinarily lucky, a shiny dime; some such thing of no lasting consequence but momentary importance. In short, a tiny thrill. I don't know whether this made me love them more or less, for (to follow Edmund's philosophy) that which is not earned is not valued. I must have been a little like the WPA worker leaning all day on his shovel, though the parallel never occurred to any of them, nor to me, not until just now. Such is the persistence of memory, and also its unending burden.

The dinners were bountiful. My grandfather grew as much as he could, coming from a family of farmers and this being the growing part of the country, Illinois, with its requisite hot summers. And my grandmother cooked expertly; it is what women did, growing up with other women primarily and comfortable only in the company of mainly aunts and sisters. I remember my grandfather's corn, corn served on the cob, hot from the boiling pot, too hot to handle for the first minute or so, and slathering it with butter, the corn so hot that the butter would not in any manner adhere and dripped in a puddle on the plate positioned directly below against this eventuality, no, actuality. And tomatoes also from his garden, fat as pumpkins and similarly shaped, beefsteaks, that parted to the knife like peppers and laved the platter, and had to be lifted in pieces, dripping, to one's dinner plate. Their taste was pure sugar.

Boiled potatoes. Gravy always. Fried chicken and sometimes pot roast, but never steak or standing rib roast. Freshly baked bread. Radishes and sliced raw carrots from my grandmother's garden just outside the kitchen window. And we would all of us gorge, but never the platters would be made empty, for this was bountiful America and all had jobs, some like my dad positions. Then my grandfather would push himself away from the table, a huge napkin still tucked under his chin, the way no boy born in a city would wear it, and pronounce himself full. The napkin would be swept to a heap on the table.

"I pronounce myself full," he actually said, and my father later said, and I now in turn say. I have yet to hear my son say it, but then he is young and still forming, and does not yet know how much an Arnold and Connelly he is. There is no need for me to remain patient and listen for it, for time will claim him, as it claims us all, and there is scarcely any chance he will not hear himself say it.

But there was still room in Gramps's gut for some cake and ice cream on the side, and multitudinous coffee. So he was not truly full, even if he had pronounced himself so.

It is important to remember such tranquil domestic moments, especially in light of what was to follow for each of them.

* * *

There are a couple more episodes out of my early childhood that remain in my craw. One is overnighting with a little school chum on what might be loosely termed the other side of the tracks. It actually was, for a streetcar route bisected the area that drew students to Coe, and on one side of it was the Polish settlement, the other the newer, relatively expensive apartment buildings, three of which we lived in, each progressively with more bedroom and auxiliary space, as Edmund's salary rose and his family doubled in size.

I don't even remember his name, this boy, my friend. He invited me home for dinner, spend the night, and eat breakfast the next morning before we toddled off to school, or so I presume, for it may not have been a weeknight. There must have been some special occasion. I'm sure I begged my parents for permission and that they looked at each other with frowns and reluctantly agreed, once they were assured of my safety. So off I went, to eat a most unusual dinner (at least for me) of ethnic food and perhaps even (for the special occasion that I represented) a dish with real meat in it.

Sausage, I'll bet.

I don't remember the meal or the evening, or whether or not they had a radio, but this being America I'm sure they had one and we all gathered round and listened to it— probably something not too culturally uplifting. Did Chicago in 1937 have Polish radio? Maybe not. The country and city were not that ethnically divided yet; we remained still the melting pot, English its pronounced language.

We slept in the same bed, this boy and I, and I imagine that came as a big surprise to me and gave me trouble in dropping off, and I laid there long in that strange bed, listening to another's breathing and the strange sounds a different house makes, its creaks and groans, under a thick comforter, there in the cold Chicago dark, to awaken at dawn to another strange meal, this one some kind of porridge.

It looked thick and sticky, and probably after one taste I asked for sugar. It was provided, with troubled looks sideways from the parents, no doubt. And I clearly remember asking for milk to thin and cool it down some, and make it more easily swallowable, and the distinctly heavy looks my request received, for there was no milk, no milk in the house. This I accepted this news pragmatically. Well, sometimes we ran out of an item, too, but not often.

It was only years later that I realized that some houses did not have milk on a regular basis, not ever, and used only canned condensed for special purposes, a boy's daily breakfast not being one of them. So did we all have the import and impact of the Great Depression driven home to us privileged souls on the various levels which we were capable of responding to and comprehending. And yet I did not realize how fortunate we were being part of Edmund's family, for those who surrounded us in those apartments lived on a similar scale, and it was only at school, and while going to and fro, that I met people much poorer than we were. They probably comprised 98 percent of the South Side of Chicago.

My father being not quite an entrepreneur but a budding manager of like outlook, he tried whenever possible to instill in me the work ethic and the belief in constant hard application, knowing that it would lead in both our cases to success. Accordingly, I had a magazine route. It consisted of selling Liberty, Colliers, and the greatest one of all, The Saturday Evening Post door to door. I don't know whether it was by subscription, which I doubt, or single sales, which is all I remember doing. The magazines were delivered to the doors of our apartments by vendors and we loaded them in our canvas shoulder bags and set out on our assigned territories or routes.

Generally magazines cost a nickel, and I believe we bought them for half that amount, for which Edmund would explain to me was a fifty percent markup, or else a one-hundred percent, depending on what accounting system you used as your base. It was a pretty good arrangement, which ever way you looked at it, for your profit was two and one-half cents per copy. And I didn't need Gramps to explain to me in his patient pedagogical way that this is how America worked, Bobby, and how great fortunes were amassed. Hadn't I heard of Henry Ford, Nelson Rockerfeller, Andrew Carnegie, E. I du Pond de Nemours (explosives), or Andrew W. Mellon (steel)?

I had by now. And I knew that profit wasn't all profit but what was left over after the expenditure of energy and time. Also, there were people who wanted to owe you money and not pay it back. Regardless, I would set off on a Wednesday afternoon, after school, with my heavy bag slung on my shoulder, and visit the accessible backstaircases of apartment buildings, for the front entrances required a key which I did not have, but the back stairs were open to peddlers, which now included me, though I did not think of myself in the same breath as the men who came after old jewelry and clothing, who sharpened knives and scissors, or who delivered packages, or sold us butter and milk.

And I hawked my magazines, especially the Post, which was everybody's darling. You couldn't exactly claim to be well read without it. I'd rap and wait, and it was generally the lady of the house, or rather apartment, who came slowly to the back door, guardedly, for this was a time and place of robberies, and, seeing that it was only a boy with a clearly identifiable back of fresh magazines on his back, would slide open the door, then the screen, and not quite admit me onto the linoleum of the kitchen but enough to permit commerce between us. Then it was on to the next and, hopefully, another sale.

One such Wednesday while at school, at the change of classes, I happened to be passing the door to the little girls' room, as it was called, and the heavy door swung out to permit the exiting of a gaggle of third-graders and the edge hit me in the face, knocking out the lens of my right eye and forcing the empty frame against my brow, cutting it deeply. I went to the floor and rose clutching my head and exuding blood. The blood ran down my face and, while I couldn't see it, provided just the kind of drama a boy might enjoy if it didn't hurt so much and make people (other kids) look at you as though you were some kind of freak.

Freak enough without this, freak indeed when flowing red so copiously.

They brought me with great solicitation to the nurses' station. They were, I'm sure, annoyed at the interruption of their routine. They were unable to staunch the flow, though they blotted at the cut with wet compresses and then applied a dry one and tried to bind it into place with bandages wrapped round my head, but still the blood issued forth. I looked like the Little Drummer Boy. A similar incident had happened years ago as a toddler at Beverly, when I stumbled over the piano stool and struck my head on the edge of the piano, which nobody I ever heard of played. (Then what was it doing there?) Blood then too and some emergency treatment with bandages, leaving a scar I can still feel on the top of my bean. This new wound required that my mother be summonsed by phone and take me to see a real doctor. He stopped the bleeding not with a stitch or two but something called a clamp and then, applying a small patch of gauze not nearly large enough in my opinion to do justice to my injury, he dismissed me.

We returned home just in time to stumble over the newly delivered pile of this week's magazines. In the crisis I had forgotten all about them. There is nothing less valuable than a magazine a few day's old, and I owed money for these already, so there was no question about setting out on my route this terrible day, for my mother was not about to do it, nor my father, who had his own merchandising problems downtown at work. So it was up to me. Boyfully I rose to the occasion.

But I had lost just enough blood that, sprinting up three flights of outside back stairs, I felt giddy and had to sit down long enough for my small world to stop swimming. True, there was no real danger of myself reeling over a banister and plunging to my death, or even of me tumbling down said stairs, my heavy little bag preceding me. But sit down I did, and often, and finished my route, and returned home queasy and uncomfortable. I ate a little of my dinner and learned that if I remained seated in a soft chair the world would right itself and remain steady. The next day I was fine and had my bandage to display to all who saw me, a point of quiet pride. I had come through and was not the same foolish boy I had been the day before. For one thing, I swung the corner wide every time I came to the little boys' or the girls' room.

* * *

Chicago. James Farrell and Saul Bellow's town, not mine. Nelson Algren's, too. Yet I was born there and retain faulty memories etched in amber of certain things that will be with me until I die and my hard drive is reformatted by another. So it is my town, too.

Funny that such a city be called a town. Carl Sandburg started it with that sweet imprecision of his and it stuck.

The last time I saw Chicago was on that sole (soul?) trip to New York City with my father, and we pulled in underground early in June and the temperature was in the low 90s, the humidity about the same, Lake Michigan as smooth as ice and none of that famous wind for relief. The year 1950, the century pierced. We overnighted in the famed Palmer House, visited I suppose Fields, saw Ruth and Wayne, took in a play off the Loop, and then were on our way on the Broadway Express to the Big Apple, which nobody ever called it, not in real life.

Hot that day and other days, it goes without saying.

Once my father fried an egg on the sidewalk for me to prove, I suppose, that all similes have their basis in fact. We had fans with oscillating blades contained in wire cages to cool us, and they helped some, for life would have been misery without them. There was airconditioning only in movie theaters and, of course, at Fields. The streets steamed. People sweated and cursed the heat. You waited for a breeze, then gave up in cosmic disappointment. After enough of this, just when you thought you had reached your earthly limit, it became fall.

In fall you burned your leaves at the curb. Since we had no leaves, being cave-dwellers, others provided this service for us in our neighborhood. We were now in the second Essex apartment, one with more rooms to accommodate us all, since we now had Dickie. A common center staircase served the apartments for six families, three on each side; we had the middle South one, and I remember nothing about those around us. Below and across were the Burgees, including son Joe, who was my contemporary. He was ugly, too, perhaps even more ugly than I, and therefore he was eligible to become my friend. He had a sister, I think, but nothing comes to mind, nor about his parents. He had paprika freckles across his nose, forehead, cheeks—practically everywhere. If he ever had occasion to strip down in public—say, for a swimming class—the extent of his freckledom would be shockingly apparent. He too had little round glasses in cages of gold wire. I'll bet he collected stamps. Made airplane models of balsa wood. Had an erector set, Lincoln logs, beginner's chemistry kit, microscope of single low power but strong enough to see sugar crystals, sulfur compounds, and the shapeless creatures found swimming in a droplet of water.

He joined us for smoky bonfires of oak and maple leaves, and perhaps since he was groundfloor (where it was dangerous to live, you know) his father had a rent reduction for cutting the postage-stamp sized twin front lawns penetrated by the cement entrance way and, now, for raking up the leaves and putting the torch to them at the curb.

And I remember the vacant lot at the corner where we had fights with ferns stripped of their plumage, except at their feathered ends, which we treated as spears and threw with a twist of the wrist (not unlike a football) at each other, and fended deftly on spartan garbage can lids held to our arms by their reach-through handles, Quo Vais-style. We used those lids to shield us from rubberbands cut from innertube tires and fired from guns made of wood, bands of rubber that would strike with a sting and leave red welts that would last for more than a day. They could break your glasses, cut your lip, and give you a headache. We would fight out in back, that is, where the rows of garages were. They were our domain.

On the vacant lot, in autumn, we and our parents would build small fires and cook in the coals large russet potatoes, and afterwards rub them free of soot and soil, and burst them open (if they had not done this already) and sprinkle them with salt and pepper and penetrate their canoe insides with butter, and then eat them as though they were hotdogs, approaching them from one end and slightly below and attacking with barred teeth.

The potatoes were largely raw still, firm and green-tasting, and it was said would give you a bellyache, though I don't remember one specifically from half-baked potatoes.

Fall faded and cooled and became winter. Wind off the lake, plunging temperatures, a thin coating of snow that would swirl and chase itself and redistribute its flakes in never ceasing patterns, much as dust might, given enough of it in any one place. And deep snow, too, that would arrive at dusk and continue all night long and greet you in the morning with delicious drifts, for it was always dry and infinitely mobile. School was never called off because of inclemency that I remember. We trudged there amid snow piled at the edge of the sidewalk and allowed to accumulate into piles into which we would stick our booted feet almost like ginger deer. Not that we had ever seen a deer in Chicago, ginger or otherwise, you understand.

Deer all congregated, we knew, in Dearborn, Michigan. Then why couldn't they spell it right?

Coe Grade School rose in less than red-brick splendor to two dirty storeys about three blocks away. I remember only the start of the walk there and the fact that, had we remained in Chicago and this neighborhood, I would have matriculated to Horace Mann High School, which was over on Yates, our original street. This was not to be.

Remember, it was Chicago and the Depression. Some far-seeing city fathers saw to it that there was milk in the schools, little half-pints of chocolate (for a penny more) or white, served out of wire-nested cases holding many tiny bottles and brought to school fresh from trucks at a fixed time in the morning. I suppose it was halfway between first class and noon luncheon break, probably served at morning recess. While we were still young enough to require this, we put our heads down on our desks for a prescribed few moments "rest." Rest was physically impossible for any of us in a school environment and we eyed each other menacingly and waited for time for playground, in which we would strive to torment each other in the time that was left.

One special tormenter of mine was Danny Farrell. (Perhaps a distant, plentitudinal relative of James T.?) To say he was a bully is to say he had brothers and sisters on both sides of him and went unwillingly to Mass every Sunday, early, for the late ones were announcing themselves to be drunkards, or drunkard's kin.

I remember nothing specific about Danny except that he was a grade or two farther along than me, plus big and tough. He had singled me out for his concentrated attention. (A perverse compliment?) No doubt in due course he became a streetfighting man and died of drink before his fiftieth birthday. What about me caught his eye or inadvertently provoked him I did not know, or else I would have changed my behavior to prevent what came next—first a shove, then a poke, and building on one success after another soon a punch in the arm that sent me reeling. I made efforts to walk along some other route, but he soon discovered this circumventing effort and intercepted me.

Though I didn't want to and it was against the code and moreover would be of no earthly help, I told my parents about my daily torment, this routine fear and trembling I had acquired. I received a divided answer, which perhaps produced the lifelong schizophrenia which followed. (I am only kidding.) My mother—who was first available to me, time-wise, and would provide no help, I knew with sinking heart—advised accommodation, a Ghandiesque policy of supplication before superior forces (which was how I described it to her) and resistance of only the most token sort.

This would not work and I deigned to practice it.

I told my father, who had the answer ready. A bully must be stood up to. You had to let him know that he could not push you around. No? Once you told him this he would change his behavior pattern and find somebody else to bully.

Where my father had learned this piece of tripe, I have no idea, but it could not have been in the school of practical experience.

He went on. It was the same kind of stuff he had been raised on and that might have, just as easily, come from Gramps. So I was told to tough it out and, young as I was, and about as experienced in fighting as Edmund was, and Gramps, I stood up to the bully, Danny Farrell.

It was what he had dreamed would happen.

He hit me, he knocked me down. I think I may have even presumed (following instructions) to hit him back. With great enthusiasm, he struck me a succession of even harder blows. I must have stood up, for he knocked me down again. Gleefully, laughing, chuckling, roaring with mirth, he sat on my back, grabbed me by the hair on the back of my head, and began to rub my face back and forth in whatever was on the ground. It must have been gravel to do the damage it did. It bent my glasses and caused multiple abrasions on my cheeks and forehead and chin.

To beat up a boy, even one smaller than you, so thoroughly is hard work. My heart didn't exactly go out to Danny Farrell, for it was fully occupied in dealing with immediate personal matters, but I can see how it must have been tiring for him. A boy's head is heavy, you know, and if he is struggling on the ground, it must be like riding a bucking bronco, like at a rodeo. And one's clenched fingers tend to crab, and crabbing begin to ache. Eventually—after about two hours of this, it seemed to me, but was probably only as many minutes—Danny Farrell got bored with this pointless aggression and got dully to his feet. In a moment I got to mine, believing the beating was over. Wham, and I went down again. I stayed there until I was sure he was gone. Then I staggered home.

Did my father suspect he had supplied some faulty advice, as soon as the words left his lips? One might think so. There is a kind of hollow ring that surrounds one's words when they are unacknowledged lies, false—believed thoroughly but never tested in the crucible of the playground experience. As I said earlier, movies and certain popular books have corrupted us beyond redemption, and housed in our collective minds is such a plethora of harmful nonsense that we will never be free to live our lives rid of it. It will follow us, like some mongrel dog, around the neighborhood of our life, tongue lolling, eyes fixed, loving us, no matter what we do to it.

I don't remember any words from my mother and, later, now washed up and mercurochrome applied to my scrapes and scratches, from Edmund, either. Mimi (formerly Cec) was probably chagrined at one more befuddling glimpse into the world of boys and men. Never was she—one of two daughters—able to understand us, she often proclaimed. And my father no doubt merely reflected to himself that in every boxing match there was mathematically one winner, one inevitable loser.

So where did this leave the maxim of standing up to bullies?

Right where it had always been. Words for the page, for public utterance, but not to be lived by, in the retort of human experience.

I learned from this traumatic event not to believe all the things my parents told me, not unless they were accompanied by four-color illustrations that could not be refuted and that remonstrances were of no help. I learned how to be stealthy and oblique. I developed the ability to plot complex revenge schemes that would never take place. In short, I learned how to write fiction.

No I didn't; this is patent, authorial overkill. But I'm sure I learned something, something practical, something not necessarily terminally cynical, but in its own odd way useful. But please don't ask me to name it, because I can't.

Burgees below us, as I said, and above us the Willocks, three generations of them. I think of them as Irish, but do not know that this is an Irish name, necessarily. The top of the line, a woman, was unbelievably old. Would ninety-something be wrong? Close then. The parents I don't recall at all, but it was they who baby-sat me, I'd bet. And Dicky, too.

They had a son, Dave, and he went to Hollywood. For a time he was an illustrator for Walt Disney, who was one or the two gods permitted us. (Disney was for children, Cecil B. DeMille for adults.) As it was explained to me, Dave took the drawings that Big Walt originated, say, of Mickey or Donald or Pluto, and reengineered them along with a cadre of others in slightly different poses, or frames, for the purpose of continuity. So he didn't exactly develop cartoon plots for the studio but served as part of a team effort to ensure that the cartoons we saw at the theaters between features ran smoothly and you could not see the seams—the hinges and joints of creation.

It was rumored to pay extremely well, right up there wit the stars, Star-like, but in point of fact I'm sure it didn't, or else Walt wouldn't have gotten so terrible rich, all by himself. I would watch the cartoons at my Saturday matinees (journeying there often alone, on the trolley) and wonder which ones Dave drew. They all looked alike to me.

Then he left Disney to go into movies themselves, mirabile dictu, so I personally knew a real actor, and when it came back in letters to his parents about films he was in, we went to see them, or rather I did, always alone, and waited, and waited, and eventually was thrilled to see Dave Willock opening an elevator door for, say, Veronica Lake and speaking real movie words: "What floor, M'am?"

The wonderful thing was that his wonderful parents didn't take on airs, my parents said, but stayed the same, wonderful people they had been all the while. They even consented to baby-sit my brother and me, just as thought nothing so eventful had happened in their lives.

Yet I missed perusing the cartoons and speculating as to which panels or frames (I had all the vocabulary down, you see) Dave's steady hand had fashioned.

* * *

I don't know what happened to Danny Farrell but I would imagine the following for him: A position on the high school football team and a modest success there, but not to return for his senior year because already he was part of a Mick gang and engaged in minor shakedowns of storeowners, with a little alleyway mugging thrown in for comic relief. Then pure gangsterhood, starting at the bottom and working his way up by industry and bluff to third-assistant assailant and chief factotum to a minor boss, and ultimately a rise to assistant hood and carrier of the tommy gun in its special scuffed black leather case.

One night when he was just twenty, he drank a pint of Irish whiskey and went off on a caper. He was winged and left by his comrades bleeding in an alley. The whiskey came up and he drowned in his own vomit.

Or, on another nights, he had the tommy wrenched from his hands by a young intellectual who looked oddly like me and turned the weapon on him, his own finger still on the trigger, that trigger squeezed, the whole contents of the circular magazine emptied into his foul guts. Again (against expectation or probability) he died slow. I watched from afar, perhaps sucking on a Popsicle. Orange or maybe lime, a pastel to go with a scene that was comprised of raw colors, mostly blood.

Then there was John McGraw, son of Pete and Francis, more friends of my parents, though I do not know the connection. He was either a lawyer that chased after ambulances, as goes the joke, or else an insurance adjuster, who chases them too, but with different motivation. They lived on the top floor of an apartment building just like ours, perhaps its mirror image. It was two long blocks away. They had a dog, a chow, and it was best to avoid him, especially around doorways.

Again three generations in one apartment. No, you're right, it doesn't happen much anymore. There was Peter's father, John's grandfather—one person, not two. He whittled and put tiny pieces of ships into bottles and glued them there, for you to admire and ask how on earth he could do it, and if he liked you, he'd show you his special tool kit that made it all possible, if one had enough patience and dexterity. (It must be from him that I got my ideas to take up flytying.) Grandpa McGraw sat around the flat with his white hair flying aimlessly and his sharp-sharp pocket knife flashing, carving up things, and had a vaguely nautical air, as though he had been many times at sea and had never lost his legs for it, but was now as that age where the ships that concerned him could all be found in a bottle.

And of course that bottle had to be emptied first. And did I say, they were Irish?

John was four or five years older than me. We had little in common. Football was a big thing with him and he even had a uniform. Remember, this was a Big Ten state and their colleges ruled the game, long before the West Coast came into prominence and started winning the Rose Bowl. John used me as a target to throw his football at on the same huge vacant lot that was slowly becoming a stadium.

The football would bounce off my little chest, or catch me under the chin, sending my eyeglasses flying, and I would quickly set off after them and pick them up and bend their wire earpieces semi-straight again, and rebridge the angle over my nose and put them back on, lower my stance, and be ready for the next onslaught in the form of a bullet pass from John. I suppose he regretted having so small a target for his skills.

A little convivial conning went on, too. How badly I wanted to put on those shoulder pads and helmet. John alluded to there being a distinct possibility, if I submitted long enough as an object for his passes to bounce off of. Eagerly I went along with the plot; hopeful, you might say. And then the great day arrived. John consented to my stripping down to my little eight-year-old undershirt, and put the pads on me, lacing them tight across my scrawny chest, so snug that I remember the halves of the pads meeting and all that extra string or lace flopping free, and how they bounced on my narrow shoulders, as he engulfed me in his sweatshirt, its proud double-digit folding in upon itself to form a single number, an amalgam, unreal.

And then the pants, but not the shoes, and finally the helmet, with its marvelous ear holes to hear by. There was one big center one and it was surrounded by a circle of smaller ones, with a chinstrap beneath it and then a chin cup. No time to adjust it, said John; it fit well enough. In tennis shoes I ran out for a pass. John lofted it to me and—wonder of wonders—I caught it and held on. With a grin in my chinstrap, and the helmet's rim bobbing on my nose, my head aswim in it, I tucked the ball under my arm and began to run unsurely down the makeshift field.

John tackled me. He was waiting like a panther. An eight-year-old boy awash in football togs does not provide much of a moving target, so there is no possibility of missing him. He caught me about waist high, a boy's dream, the ball popped out, and down I went, the air pushed out of me by John's bony shoulder. Had it penetrated my diaphragm? No, no; I was simply and totally knocked out. The air came back into my lungs in another few minutes. No matter if I was to turn red, then black, in the meanwhile.

Of course I exaggerate. It is my privilege. I am exonerated by the passage of time. But there is no doubt about it, I was hit hard. I was crumpled, crumbled, laid flat, knocked out—call it what you will, it comes down to the same thing. And John, I am sure, had the supreme satisfaction of making a hard tackle on a living object and hearing it go thud.

John exists outside of memory in the form of a snapshot from WWII. In it he is wearing his summer khakis and cunt cap. On his shoulder is a patch that evokes a flood, for he sent me the same patch from overseas. Overseas! It was the Fourth Division's emblem and it saw action. Action! Its field was blue and white, and there were four diagonal stripes running across it.

I think he sent me other war souvenirs, too, but not the helmet of a Nazi (with a smear of brains still in it) or the coveted ear of a Jap. Or one of those wonderful swords Jap officers owned and, if things went wrong, they fell upon it, or stuck it into their body from a kneeling position and preceded to pull the handle across, right to left, and rip upward, thereby disemboweling themselves.

A luger would have been nice, too.

* * *

Football faded into winter, winter into spring, as baseball was born. It too was a great game, and I was just learning that I had a physical defect because of my eyes. Crossed badly and one of them barely able to see anything but the inner slope of my nose, I had zero depth vision. This was driven home to me at the start of the Korean War, when I questioned the doctor who had performed all that surgery on my eyes about how well I would be able to fly a plane, for my time of service was coming up. He looked at me as though I were insane, then quietly pointed out that I maybe I could take off in a plane, but I would never land it. Not successfully, that is. But the Air Force would recognize this shortcoming long before it ever got case tested and deny me enrollment in any training program. So the world was safe. Better think in terms of the Army Infantry, where I could see well enough, with corrected lenses, to shoot straight.

So in the meantime I chased after baseballs and learned to play a passable game of catch with Dad, but every time a ground ball was hit in my direction I generally caught it on my forehead.

O those dirty bounces, I told myself, wrongly.

Interesting how I viewed a moving object, especially one coming straight toward me. My good eye, carrying my bad eye much like an old lady would carry an egg in a basket, would take a rapid series of snapshots of the ball as it sped towards me, and the computer of my eight-year-old brain would process the data of the path of flight and make course corrections, all the while. I would see the ball starting out, the ball at some single mid-point, if the distance was great enough maybe for one glimpse of the ball, and then it would arrive somewhere along its flight path but a bit errant, and once again it would glance off my cheek or jowl, adam's apple or forehead, and I would retrieve it as quick as I could, wounded, from the ground and fling it with a mighty heave in the direction of, say, first base or home plate. It mattered little to me.

Baseball before or since has never been so amusing. To see me shag grounders would cause even George Will to giggle. And Ken Burns to linger musingly over his video camera in sustained disbelief.

* * *

Wrigley Field was where the White Socks played, those of 1919 infamy, while the Cubs, who couldn't win a game, played in their own stadium. Edmund took me to see a few games, as a father is wont to do, hoping some of his enthusiasm and maybe his coordination would rub off, but they didn't. Still I enjoyed his company, my Dad. Going places with him was always a privilege, a real thrill. For I loved my father, always did, always will, and if this fact hasn't been discerned by now, I am as much a failure as a writer as I was as a third-base man.

We did all the standard father-and-son bit, shtick, springtime routines. We sat along the first-base line because, he said, it was the best place to see all the action, though behind the plate was also good, though somewhat obscured by the fencing; it is where he liked to be because, remember, he used to play catcher, and he could see if the pitcher had his stuff, this day. Once a catcher, always a catcher; you sized up pitchers and had to manage them, much like a fur salon, to get the most out of them and to minimize their difficulties, over time.

A catcher was a dangerous position because you could get hit by foul tips. Also, throws outside the batter's zone had to be fielded, much like I did at third, only the ball was traveling (if it was Bob Feller, with whom I only shared a first name) at a speed up to 100 miles an hour, honest. Dizzy Dean could fling them even faster, faster than a speeding bullet, it was said, at Superman speed. You needed a keen eye to be a catcher. Yes, yes; the thought of being one never entered my head. At least a third the ball usually came along the ground, which slowed it down some, thankfully, which was necessary if I was going to catch it with my head.

Long twilight games of catch out on the parking strip— sometimes called the planting strip, though nobody ever parked or planted anything on them; most had a dwarf tree that grew out of a ring cut in the sod of its center, with a little chainlink fence surround the lawn at slightly above ankle height, just high enough to jump over with your two feet touching. No wonder the grass was always trampled to dusty brown.

Dan would throw, I would try to catch, I would fire the ball back fiercely at him and he would demonstrate that catcher's flair of old of snagging the ball in unusual positions without ever moving his feet. But often he would have to do this, going gangling off on some skewed course and not quite catching it, my fault, and having to stretch out down the street to fetch it back, puffing, its leather cover frayed from cement punishment. Then he would look at me then questioningly, with an expression a little short of pure hatred.

To me speed in throwing was more important than accuracy, though I had been well instructed in the opposite. I wanted to be a pitcher to my father and whiz one in there over the strike zone that would cause his hands to tingle for hours afterwards, the only mitt we had being the one I used and he catching my puny throws barehanded with his office hands. I'd show him.

But I never did.

Spring slid into the homeplate of summer, deadly in the city, and sometimes we would get to go away. We would visit the Crosses (remember Palmer Fingle from Hillsdale?) in Detroit or in one of its suburbs where they sometimes lived, or they would come to stay with us in Chicago. I remember shooting off firecrackers at the curb with Big Lee and Little Lee, a year older than I, only it was the two fathers who got to hold them and light them from the punk and toss them offhandedly to the curb, where they would exploded delightfully and you could hear dogs howling behind closed windows and there had not been a cat in sight for three days.

I don't remember much about Lee Junior except that he was big, big like his father until many years later his father was reduced by stroke to his skeletal self. Little Lee was big but never picked on me, never seemed to have the inclination, and so we coexisted peaceably on our dual family occasions, whenever they occurred, which was rarely. He suffered the same fate as I in being a legacy and had pretty much to join Delta Tau Delta or else explain why not, and he went on to U. Mich. law school and later became a fellow flyfisher, going so far as to buy into a shop in Lansing. It was an Orvis shop, pretty high class and exclusive, and though he owned only a piece of it I was invited to pick out some item of fishing tackle from the catalog and he would sell it to me at deep discount. But I never did.

I did not attempt to contact him until well after both his mother and father were dead, and so were mine, and learned that he had left Lansing, and his law firm no longer existed, and he has passed into the unfathomable breadth of America, and perhaps into its depths as well, never to be glimpsed by me again. How sad the loss to time is.

Fall again, my father took me to football games in Evanston, when Northwestern played either Illinois or Notre Dame, I forget which, but I remember the streets of that sparkling city littered with leaves after a morning rain under a certain slant of noonday sun, and how the team and school had not yet faded into a long period of derision, and were still one of the Big Ten teams and on a given day could beat anybody in the world who could field eleven men.

I think by this time, however, we had left Chicago and moved north to the commuter's haven, Highland Park, also in Illinois. It could be reached by way of Skokie, a great automobile thoroughfare. But it was the daily commuter train on which Edmund now rode to work, a copy of the Tribune furled under his arm and to whose station my mother drove him in the family car each morning at seven-thirty.

In moving to suburbia he was like so many others as to lose distinction and originality. Originality was not high on his list of priorities, though, and the only fame he sought was to be recognized as among the best in his field, namely retailing.

He wasn't, but he was pretty good at it, and by all the ordinary measures of success—say, those four houses in Carleton Park—he did well. Impressively so. Consequently, it is a shame the company for which he worked all of his life and loved so much ultimately shafted him.

He remained as assistant buyer at the Fields's fur salon under the tutelage of Mr. Metheral, his friend and mentor, and rose in authority and knowledge to the point where a promotion was offered him. Of course that was what he wanted, what he had worked so hard to attain. He could not say no.

How would he like to be buyer of his own (so to speak) fur salon?

It was his dream, the next stepping stone up.

There was one hitch, however. This was 1941, the mortgage on his first-ever house paid on for only two years, his life comfortable, his salary and bonus growing annually according to his productivity, the department's profit. (Gramps has explained to us how this works in a letter, without benefit of reading any Karl Marx on the working day, surplus value, or historical determinism, let alone dialectical materialism, a pattern of behavior of a slightly different sort.) So the reward leading to promotion has a rosy glow. Edmund was happily settled in and did not particularly want to leave. But he agreed to go.

The hitch was, he would have to sell his house and relocate. To Seattle, half the nation away and in the direction of where the war threatened to rage on its Western frontier against the nefarious Japanese. Don't laugh, it was a very real threat in December, 1941, and a pincer movement of troops might any day land in the Aleutian Islands, which were being softened up for it by air, while our great Pacific fleet lay in ruins at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack force steaming East, with submarine sightings common off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California.

If the company wanted him to go, it was his choice, too. Such an opportunity did not present itself or occur to the general merchandise manager just every day. In business it was commonly known a big opportunity arose about once every ten years and he was into his present job or position a little longer than that, having previously been employed in the Bill Adjusting Department, as Saraleigh has informed us, ever since his college graduation. He could well be making five or six thousand dollars a year by now. It was not a small sum, though hinged directly to his ability to turn a profit and his general productivity.

He would not have had it any other way.

So we moved West. He headed the fur salon at the subsidiary store, Frederick and Nelson, in downtown Seattle. I am only interested in the work aspect of this move, for now. He had an assistant buyer who functioned very much as he had in his previous incarnation under the tutelage of the esteemed Mr. Metheral. He treated his assistant as he had been treated in turn—firmly but with respect and collegial affection. In time he would bring Jimmy (let us call him this, for I forget his name) along, and when Edmund moved up, Jimmy would, too. It was understood how things worked with loyal employees who were dutiful and not temperamental.

But the war was on and we were not winning it. Jimmy went off to fight but did not forget his loyalty to Edmund, the buyer, his boss, or to his employer, Frederick's, as the store was popularly called. He wrote from camp, then from overseas in the European theater. He accompanied his regiment to North Africa, through France, and into Germany. The war ended, he returned home to his job, preserved for him by law, though my father had held it for him, anyway, having handled both the buyer's job and that of the assistant himself. Everybody made sacrifices in wartime. It was his bit.

And then Edmund moved up. He became assistant merchandise manger of a larger area, nearly two whole floors. There was another assistant manager, true, and it was a woman, a bit unusual, in those days, but Bernice was competent, even more so than some men who found themselves in women's wear, and Edmund acknowledged her as his equal. In some ways, he admitted to those closest to him, she was his superior. She certain had a firm way of dealing with subordinates, whereas he tended to be soft, dilatory about disciplining them. He could not exactly say, you see, "Off with their heads," though this was a dog-and-cat business, whatever that meant.

It meant the dog will eat the cat, if the cat doesn't eat the dog first.

Thanks. (No charge.)

He handled a floor, half a department of women's wear, which included coats and dresses but not shoes, never shoes, which was a well acknowledged nightmare, and women's separates (whatever they are). And he did well at this, as well as Bernice, and it came to the attention of the Higher Powers how well he was doing, how astutely he could manage inventories and develop promotions, and it came to pass in a number of years that an advancement again could be arranged and, lo, he was given a floor of his own to manage the merchandise of, and it was called the Basement, or Downstairs Store, a great opportunity because it was a store in itself, the next best thing to a department store, though tiny in comparison, but with a number of buyers of small departments, some of them no more than a counter or two and several shelves in the stockroom, but each with the management components of something larger, such as its own advertising budget, promotions, manufacturing sources (the war over, Tokyo was one, Hong Kong another, and there was that emerging entity, Formosa (now called Taiwan), the Chinese driven off the main land by the Communist Revolution and the Japanese, consisting of enterprising people much like ourselves, anxious to do business and who could manufacture whatever you wanted, at a considerable discount, only you had to watch them, for they tended to cut corners, and you had to keep looking over their shoulders on your orders, for they might deliver shoddy goods. And they lived, worked, far away.

But if you could provide them with the specs, they would execute whatever you said. They made suits and sports jackets and topcoats that mimicked the top of the line and were steadily sold to thrifty shoppers of the kind that frequented downstairs stores. (We were told never to refer to it as "the basement.") And Edmund was good at it, merchandising, having a flair for figures, as well, and would disdain the use of an adding machine, preferring to add up columns of figures in his head with a smoothly moving pencil recently sharpened, moving down the columns at a walking pace and never making a mistake.

Thus he became famous as a manager of his own store, though not of a temperament to start one up, only superbly execute the merchandising plan of another as part of a grander scheme, playing a part in the drama, not the star but some sparkling subaltern, a Laertes or a Horatio. Hamlet was a succession of general managers who rose through the ranks and often departed the Fields' enterprise for Macy's, Bon Wit Teller, The Emporium, The May Company, or I. Magnin. They moved on, but he and his peers remained, and continued slaving under a series of human dynamos of various names, temperaments, and creeds.

His final promotion came in his late forties and it was to Home Furnishings Manager, two whole floors under his command and both of them good resellers of fine furniture and what went along with them—lamps, rugs, fixtures, accessories. It was commonly known among managers that it was the best paying and most greatly sought-after job in the store, just behind that of General Merchandise Manager, and the Chosen One was almost always brought in from the outside, just as this splendid person always went outside the parent company's domain when he left the position, whatever the reason.

It was also known among his peers and bosses that this was the end of the line. He had risen, in the words of the president of Frederick and Nelson, Bill Street, who was also a vice-president of Marshall Field and Company, and a corporate director, as far as he was going to go. He was, in fact, in Street's opinion, about one step higher than his worth. Words that sting, words that reduced a life's endeavor to that of a highly paid functionary, not much more important than that of a younger man recently elevated to buyer, a man just starting out and whose future might be infinite but his prospects only average. A buyer among two hundred buyers in a store that employed more than two thousand and had recently expanded from its own flagship store to one, two, three others. All managers were wholly subordinated to the main store and took their orders from there. Like it or leave. But beware. We fire people here. It was the fate that awaited dissidents or those who missed the message of the tealeaves and the Tarot cards and were not recipients of the annual bonus and salary hike.

Did he hear them correctly? Yes, he did. It was not necessary to explain it all again. Street was busy. Yes, the General Merchandise Manager knew of the decision; he had helped to formulate it. Don't feel bad. You are one of our top executives. Not everybody rises to general, let alone general-of-the-army. There is a need for lieutenant colonels, too. His salary—ten times what it had been when reported by Saraleigh to Cousin Harry Burns—was fat in everybody's book, for this was 1965, a piping time of peace, with prosperity only moderate and unemployment a little lower than we'd like to see it but high enough to get rid of the labor problem and the excessive mobility that keeps nibbling into profits.

It was a different time. The era of the merchandisers, those experts at the retail craft and trade, had been transformed into the era of the accountants, and now everything was the bottom line. The problem was not just not getting stuck with excessive inventories and astronomical payroll costs, it was profits, profits alone that mattered. "Service, Integrity, Quality" were the catchwords of a time that was past, an interesting motto, a curious code, an artifact.

So what if customers dwindled and were kept waiting at vacant counters until a royal

salesperson deigned to arrive and haughtily inquire, "Yes?" What if inventories were kept low and sales were not sales but artfully arranged promotions of items never intended to be sold at "list" prices? Change with the times, or . . . ? Or die. It was pure Darwin. Natural selection was at work in the marketplace, not just in field biology.

The other alternative was to elect early retirement. It never occurred to him or his peers, many of whom were in the same foundering boat. There were inducements. But he who had worked all of his useful life wanted to continue to slave unto the grave. Well, perhaps just short of it. To keep working until his health failed, then, and his health was good, robust. He had missed about two days work in thirty years. The old horse had many a mile left in it.

Retire or be dismissed. This put a different slant on it. They'd fire him, after thirty years of unblinking servitude? You'd better believe it. And so he retired early. Who wanted to be where he was not wanted, in the company of accountants, not merchandisers? He had friends who were being eased out, too; they looked at each other with the visages of combat soldiers, eyes pinched, faces pales, brows furrowed. One by one they faced their choices. Or rather choice, there being only one available. The general merchandise manager said, "I'm sorry, Ed. This isn't my idea. In fact, I'm leaving myself. Keep clam about it, will you? Talk about the glory years of retailing—we knew what it was, didn't we? And it was really something. Best of luck, goodbye."

The bitterness of Edmund's last twenty years of retirement was impossible to imagine for someone who did not observe it first hand and know it to be its polar opposite of the enthusiasm and zest that followed him out of Hillsdale College and into that first apartment on Yates, no family yet to hound or bolster him. He was a mensch and kept it hidden, but as he aged there would be inevitable outbursts of anger. He stopped shopping at Frederick's, in spite of the discount the store gave to retired employees, and began going to its rival store, the Bon Marche. He made invidious comparisons. Often. He wrote angry letters to the new general manager, who didn't know him except as a name, and to the new president. He consented to visit the store only to find some general fault which he knew better than to remark upon to a harried sales clerk but remarked on, all the same.

Once I saw him on his hospital bed after a transurethral resectioning operation for his prostate. We were chatting cheerfully about his going home in another day and I would take him back to Exeter House and his wife, my mother. His mind was fine, fairly sharp, though he had some long-time memory lapses, or rather his memory of certain events differed from mine and I was not yet willing to acknowledge the fault could be mine. His short-term memory indicated no loss of function or control. The phone rang. It was his fellow retired merchandising manager, Tom Lukonvic, calling to ask how he was. Instantly they were into it, expanding their long catalog of grievances about the store and how it had deteriorated. His face reddened, his mouth grew grim and set, I heard a tone I had never heard before, not in our long association—all my life, that is. It was bitter, snarling.

I left with a sideways motion, shuffling off. I waved over my departing shoulder, as his eyes kept fixed on me, trying to hold me there but not wanting to give up on the subject, either. I understood; this was too good, too sickly satisfying, to terminate early. Both knew of what the other so tellingly spoke. I heard rage. I heard a life's devotion reduced to coals. I waved. He waved back. And then I walked out of the room.

Edmund lived about a year after this and then came the August day of the sidewalk slump, under the shady canopy of the urban canyon, and the death that followed in the early morning hours of the next day. Dead, he remains with me as a daily presence, and so my love persist. (Or is that redundant to say?)

* * *

It is my story now. We moved to Highland Park in 1939. It is a bedroom community of Chicago and lies to the North, in the direction of Wisconsin, which is not far off. I was nine. Not ostensibly in charge except when Edmund was away on a buying trip in June, I was nonetheless developing a will of my own and a little personality to go along with it. Much of both were spiteful.

A train ran through our backyard. Imagine that. A train of my own and not a toy that was always sloughing off its tracks. The yard was deep and there was the wide right-of-way of the railroad, and a fence in between, probably theirs, under which a boy might slip and be admitted to the grand no-man's land of what lay outside his proper world and was therefore forbidden and delicious.

It became one of my favorite places to play, just right for a boy from the seamy streets of South Chicago. (When I rode the Empire Builder into Chicago in 1950 with Edmund, on our way to New York City, I could see from the train running through this section near the Avalon Theater, my old cablecar favorite, that the neighborhood was almost entirely black.) But this was different, a relative wilderness. Imagine the sight of such vast open spaces as the railroad provided as an extension of my backyard. It was grand. I would slip beneath the fence and have before me a jungle of tall grasses and standing water down from the embankment that held the tracks. Train traffic was frequent enough that I and my friends often had to clear the siding and drop into the grasses to avoid being shaved when, say, the Silver Chief flashed by.

There were trains that stopped at Highland Park, almost all of them commuters, thick in the morning and evening but sparse during the heart of the day. Then there were the trains that never slowed down, not even at crossings, depending on their whistles and bells and clanging signal lights to halt all vehicular traffic. You disobeyed these signs at risk of your paltry life. Likewise we kids playing on the generous right-of-way as though it were our own were warned and made cognizant of the danger of having our bodies divided into many small, soft parts. Yet it was fun to crowd delightfully close, and feel the warm wind generated by first the engine (often there were two) and then the chain of passenger or freight cars as they whizzed by, clinking and clanking behind the sleek engine or engines.

The sound was so loud that no communication was possible except by a kind of original spontaneous sign language all the while the train was present, and some of those trains were freights nearly a mile long. So the induced silence—our unspoken portion of the metal roar—was equally long.

The monster we all admired most was the Silver Chief. It had a special streamlined engine which proclaimed its identity, and many of the cars trailing it were painted a matching silver aluminum. It shone white in the sun. We could see passengers in the dining car calmly regarding us from over their plates. How lucky they were to be going somewhere, not be locked in this present. Yet from their looks they were bored and unaware of how fortunate they and their circumstances were. Since the train never slowed for the commuter station at Highland Park, we only saw it in high motion and there was no opportunity to board and inspect it at close range. Compared to it, my father's commuter train was a pallid and tame pretender of a train. We looked at it and all the others with contempt.

Tall grass there, yes, and water that stood in puddles for days and weeks, out of season, and provided habitat for small amphibians such as newts, snakes, tadpoles, and frogs. Field mice and gophers probed and poked and bounded through there, a forest of brown and green blades, and we usually lost our prey when it seemingly turned invisible and disappeared into the jungle density. Cats hunted there, but I never saw any dogs. Dogs were not bold enough.

Nine now, my imagination was ripe, but limited by the narrow scope of my life. I was a habitué of comic books, the usual Superman and Batman fare, but drawn more particularly to villains, such as The Joker, and every deck of my parents's playing cards was robbed of this character, which did no harm, for they only played occasional bridge, and a joker (or Joker) is useless there. The Joker became my calling card and it began to pop up in unusual places and at odd moments as a sign that I had been there.

I made myself a little costume, I suppose with Mimi's help, and carried it about with me in a wicker picnic basket, clouding the minds of all who saw me coming so that they would be unable to behold me changing into tights and cape, not to mention my leftover Halloween mask that would allow the clever-eyed to detect my true identity.

One can go on and on about this sort of thing, one's particular masquerade, but it has been done before, and a footnote reference, say, to Jack Kerouac and Dr. Sax might do as well. In fact, one boy's life is so much the same as another, even from different modern times, so as to comprise a Universal Boy's Soul, indistinguishable from the next, all of us rolled up into a single ball of wax, out of which we poke like the flotsam picked up in the process of rolling up a large snowball suitable for the base of a snowman.

All one, but at the moment so unique and surprising to each of us living our particular life that it could not be possible that all across America boys and girls at a certain age might be doing the same thing. I mean, how could it occur to them, when I just made up the whole enterprize this morning? How could thousands of neighborhoods be clogged with serious-faced boys and girls sporting small suitcases in which are transported for each's nefarious purposes disguises, masks, calling cards, toy guns, rubber knives, special shoes that will give flight, snacks for long afternoons away from warm kitchens, an adventure book to read, and of course various assorted comics, some with their covers ripped off to indicate that they had been sold at reduced rates because they were outdated; a great buy, incidentally.

You carried an old Batman Comic with you not because you might forget who you were (Robin, Bat, The Joker, Penguin?) but because life was dull and you might find yourself somewhere with nothing to read, a fate worse than going to the dentist. It was possible to stop almost anywhere, crouch in the tall grass of a vacant field or railroad right-of-way, and plunge your nose into some pages and occupy yourself happily for an hour or more. The sun would sink in the sky and it would become time for dinner, all in a few wink of old pages slow to turn.

As I say, its all been done before, more cleverly, but each has its real-time antecedent and lacks much originality, and it is one balloon on which I will not sink my teeth, for it contains for a writer a hidden bang!, and his cheeks will sting from the slap of exploding rubber. I have been there, thanks. If you don't like Dr. Sax—with its connotation of reed instrument and the sex from playing doctor—there is something wrong with you and you will not like my wan imitation, the one I forbid myself to deliver, both for fear of failure but also from fear of only partial success. And yet I'd love to! Half a loaf is not always better than none.

Half a loaf is half a loaf, an economy measure.

It seemed I always had a magazine route and I cannot think of it as being my idea, so I must hang it and its many entrepreneurial repetitions on Edmund, who encouraged me right up to the point of extending physical force.

Yes, he would spank me, for if you don't you spoil the child, and everybody knows that the only thing worse than a spoiled child is spoiled milk or meat, and your nose will announce it to all the world. So again I set out with my white canvas bag (this one with The Post logo on it) to induce neighbors and strangers alike to buy my magazines, please, and because it was a time of magazine dominion of the land and wild proliferation people did buy them, and I had money in the pockets of my shorts for movies and candy bars and whatever. (Probably more comic books, my mainstay, for now I owned a trove.)

* * *

Our house was a rather nice stucco affair at 717 Wedgewood Drive, with steep, pointed gables and great brick fireplace running rather oddly up the center of the front, like a nose on a face, and an upstairs front window looking our from each side of the chimney like a glum, frowning visage, but only to somebody who would stand facing it, squinting through eyes crossed or uncrossed but in both instances nearly closed, and then it would flower into a gingerbread house of compressed design, with perhaps a leering expression, and when you opened your eyes again it was simply a house, with no attitude, no special arrangement of parts, none that you could make a case for, anyway. The peaked roof met the rest of the house at right angles and bisected it, and was steeply pitched, too, as if designed for a large family of gnomes, undoubtedly, but all it had to hold was us citified Arnolds, Mimi, Edmund, Bobby, and Dicky.

I appropriated a cat somewhere. Oh, yes, it came calling at my bedroom window, way upstairs and alongside a tree put there for expressly this purpose, I suppose, a soft meow, but one repeated so often and quietly that it was worse than a bark. I sprung from my bed, gathered it in (cats know you will do this and it is why they mew so), carried it past my sleeping parents's bedroom, its door latched, to the staircase and hence down to the kitchen, where I gave it some milk in a saucer. Thus it was mine.

I mean, the cat knew I'd do this and it is why it meowed so at my dawn window. I was simply obeying the superior will of a cat, but did not know this yet, for I'd had no experience with the beasts and was but nine years old. It was a tabby, a kitten, a child cat born with all the adult knowledge of the species and soon able to find occasions to apply it. A cat seemingly without bones, all soft yielding body, fur and fat, pert ears, tiny nose, needle teeth but each so small as to be in itself harmless, yet so many of them that they could quickly shred whatever you had.

Fearless. Such a cat a few weeks old is fearless, yet has a quick instinct for crouch and run, dodge and hide. It is not so much to protect them as to amuse them with the multiple aspects of danger. And young cats die, are killed; it is why there are so many of them. You need a large number of the species for an individual to grow into adulthood and reproduce. Yet there never seems to be a lack.

The kitten accepted the milk and I accepted the cat and my mother had not yet her great cat fear and guardedly permitted me to continue to keep it; that is, she accepted it, too. But she did not like it. As for myself, unexperienced with small animals, I did for the cat what the cat informed me a cat needed done, mostly feeding and watering it and letting it out the door whenever it wanted to go, which was often and sometimes in the night. At night it used my open window, coming and going at will, and when it was cold, the cat, it would snuggled up to me and my bed, and I would thrill that any living thing would love me so, I who so badly needed it.

The cat grew and one day surprised us by cornering a gopher in a corner of the garage. The cat played with it a while, then killed it slow, dismembered it, ate some, and left the rest in a bloody puddle for my mother to discover. Soon we had a dog, a black Cocker Spaniel puppy, the one you will remember I buried one wet December night in the park along Magnolia Boulevard, in part to protect my brother from the horrible sight thereof. The cat went to a place called Orphans of the Storm. Nice name, they found many unwanted pets homes, I am sure, and the rest they gasses and cremated. (This process I learned about at first-hand a few years later when I became a Boy Scout and had to earn my Animal Care Merit Badge, which largely consisted of having and tending some dog or cat, and seeing what happened to them at the Humane Society if they didn't find good homes.)

Cat gone, dog stayed. I measure out my life in dogs, I've said, both before and after I measured it out in women. Dogs are a constant. Cats are, too, but dogs are more constant. They actually like you.

We brought him home from the kennel freshly weaned but not housebroke. He was slow in learning this aspect of family life. I remember picking him up under what corresponds to the armpits and carrying him extended from one place to another; he rewarded me by shitting all over my legs. In all fairness to him I should add that he was changing from one kind of diet to another and his tiny bowels were upset for weeks, usually on the new livingroom carpet. But this one time he got me.

We all learn. It is what life is about. (And when you've learned all you can, you die, taking it with you into the air or ground.) I learned not to carry dogs, especially puppies, especially new puppies recently weaned, under the shoulders, all strung out like babies. Cats won't stand for it, either. They'll scratch you for trying. And I think my cat (whose name I can't remember) probably scratched one of us. I would guess my mother, about the time of the gopher episode, but I doubt whether she ever got close enough for that decisive action.

I have an early picture of Blacky, as I named him, with that flaming imagination I was already evidencing in many matters, and he is standing with my brother, Dicky, who is now cute in place of me, whereas I am into Early Ugly. Funny how it comes with an age. Dicky is attired in snowsuit, galoshes, variegated mittens, and earmuffs. Blacky is leaping up on him, ears trailing, stub tail extended, presumable to hump him, a trick he never got tired of and abandoned only in old age, when his hind shanks would no longer support him. Dicky is fending him off admirably, his eyes fixed on the camera, only a mild suggestion of the characteristic perplexity and disapproval and chronic disgust I was to long associate with him yet evident.

There is snow on the ground. My mother has labeled the picture "Winter 1940" in lightly pressed ink. In the background is the garage in which my cat engaged in mortal combat with the gopher. No, excuse me, it is the neighbor's garage, and ours is nearly out of sight next to it, only the edge of its steeply pitched roof visible. But from what I can see of it triggers the whole backyard into blooming again.

There are several more pictures from that winter. My father must have taken them, for we are all well centered and the horizon line runs exactly parallel to the bottom of the print. In one I am wearing the earmuffs, which must be fraternal, and I am standing alongside a terrible snowman which Dicky and I have just finished building, and do not have enough of a sense of social responsibility to disown. I am wearing knickers—my first long pants were months away—and my legs are bare above my shoes and socks. I have on some sort of dark jacket. Little Dicky is well bundled up, he being at that age where it is still possible to control him, while I am not. Posing proudly for my father and his folding Kodak, I am puffing out my chest like a banty rooster, tucking in my chin, preparatory to crowing. I am sure the pose is all of my doing. It shows a fair familiarity with archetypes, perhaps obtained from all that spurious reading. I am the conquering hero, who must be hailed.

We had Christmas, that year, big surprise, in a family that would rather commit mass suicide than miss even one Christmas together, and there is a snap of the presents under a tree fairly dripping with excess ornamentation, most of it silver tinsel. It hangs limp as seaweed. I remember the great angel that is presently and for all time bent to the right, pressed tight against the ceiling and bowed by it. In the window is hung again a synthetic wreath with electric candle disguised to look like a real one. I remember it well. Always we put this awful thing in the window, wherever we lived, proclaiming to the world of the street that we were serious about Christmas.

The unopened presents are all gathered round the base of the tree. This is Christmas Immaculate. This is the Christmas of Dreams, Bereft of the Chaos of Children. It is the last thing accomplished before their midnight bedtime and the peal at dawn that will raise them up early from their bed to follow in our wake to the base of the tree and the scatter of wrapping paper and the manifestation of young greed.

In short, your ordinary Christmas.

What can I make out, after more than fifty years? Even with the aid of a high-powered magnifier, very little. A lot of mysterious packages wrapped in bright paper, nice, practical gifts from my father and the store for each of us, often clothes for the school year but occasionally little learning items and sometimes downright toys, with no utilitarian value. A toy truck made for scooting around on the floor. A small work bench, probably for me, perhaps with its own set of workable miniature tools in another box, out of which I could construct nothing recognizable or in any way useable, and soon to be abandoned, rightly so. A ball, small, for Dicky. A pulltoy for him, too, with a stuffed bear on top that plays a horn and goes up and down as the wheels turn, and a little song issues forth, tinnily. Another pulltoy with a long handle that makes a loud clatter, like cedar kindling going up in a blaze. Twin wall lamps, one for each of Edmund's boys, with a nautical motif, the main part of the lamp shaped like a ship's steering wheel, the light veering up and out and capped by a little shade with two spring wires to make it adhere to the bare bulb. (I have mine still, and note that it is good to read by. Nothing in our family is ever lost, only misplaced, and nothing still with some vague use is ever thrown away, upon fear of damnation.)

There remain from that first winter in Highland Park a few more snaps over which I pore like a detective on his first case. Near Christmas, the city has received its first substantial snow. Dicky is at the sidewalk wielding a snowshovel he can barely lift; I think it was my job to shovel off all the walks while my father was at work, but I rarely finished the job. Across the street I can see a woman doing the same thing, working away with a great scoop of a shovel, the snow banked high, and make out the two houses opposite ours, my only clue to them and what they looked like. And suddenly I am in one of them again, the large structure directly facing ours, with its upstairs bedrooms and a panoply of four small windows facing the street.

They had girls, daughters, for I remember no boys, one of the girls named Janet, and we went to a fair and rode on the mechanized swings together, and were flung far out and wide, around and around, until the machine slowed and we were all allowed to descend to the ordinary horizontal and climb off. She was sick with appendicitis, or was it her sister, or some relative I can't recall? ("Don't swallow watermelon seeds or they'll descend and collect in your gut and you'll get sick and die.") A missing brother? No? Anyway, she used to join me, Janet did, in my neighborhood escapades as the Flash (no, I didn't flash her or the neighborhood) or The Shadow or Captain Midnight or, that perennial favorite of many, The Joker. I think she had a little traveling kit, too, and we transformed ourselves together, and surprised and terrorized exactly nobody.

Next to it a smaller house, set well back, the snow still not shoveled away, about which I remember nothing, one of many such losses.

And finally from that first of only two Christmases spent in Highland Park a cleverly posed lie perpetrated by my parents on whomever would accept it at face value of Dicky and myself in our pajamas (mine striped, his not) lying in front of the fireplace, wreathes and candlesticks on the mantle, stockings hung, the black-mesh screen in front of the gaping hole in which no fire is burning, lying flat on the rug, looking longingly up for Santa to descend. Artfully posed, somebody's idea of what Christmas ought to be like and never was. Edmund's? How we must have disappointed him.

Oh, come on. The picture is patent fraud, a joke. Even at nine I didn't believe that Christmas nonsense, and had probably indoctrinated my little brother in the truth of the matter, thereby shattering his little dream and making him turn to religion for sustenance. Everything has its up side.

* * *

I mention how the sight of even the edge of an old garage rooftop from fifty years ago can summons up explosions of memory. I had better explain not how but what.

Wedgewood Drive. It ran in front of our house, heading towards town, and came to a stop not far past where we lived. To the left was the grade school and playground; to the right, the arterial swooped under the Silver Chief's overpass and rose on the far side to drift left, and whence in its particulars I can't exactly say, that all having faded from recall. But it led to the business section of Highland Park I am certain. It was there I went on Saturday afternoons to attend movie matinees that sometimes were three features long. When they were not, they had serials that lured us back. And there were ice cream stores, bicycle repair shops, drugstores with sodas, milkshakes, and malts, plus their magazine and comic book rack.

I can't really understand the great appeal of comics, only acknowledge it. They were our world, exclusive; that must be it, or a large part of it. It was the world of wonder. Creatures that patently could not be true or existent reigned and our imaginations responded. We gathered it all in, these legendary superhuman creatures, muscled, able to fly through the air or swim underwater for leagues, men (plus Wonder Woman) with sinewy muscles bulging under their clinging vestments. They would emit grunts of incomprehension, my favorite of which was, "What the?!" The single exclamation and coupled question were signs of masculine restraint. And wonder. Usually they were uttered in the plural, the exact number of marks used indicating the degree of astonishment the super what's-it felt and to which we should respond accordingly.

Again there is endless precedence and no need for me to restate the obvious (except it being great fun). There were idiosyncratic comics that met our glazed eye and were passed on by without more than an idle glance—Biblical ones, Loony Toons, even the Disney ones that Dave Willock might have drawn. We wanted the larger-than-life figures, the heroes, the men of steel or plastic, men who could reshape themselves to the environment and conquer it briefly, if only for this issue.

There were always beauties in the background, curvaceous creatures lurking, subordinated, to be sure, but nonetheless there, there for the having, or so it seemed to my and our budding interest in the other sex. They sent a burning and perplexing thrill down our spines and into our loins. We didn't exactly know why or enjoy the sensation. Girls—women—made us nervous, uncomfortable in their presence. But we didn't truly like the world of other boys and men who were most unlike our fathers.

I mean, how could you make a comic book hero out of some guy who rode the commuter train into Chicago each morning, set-faced, mentally committed if not eager, and who returned home each night weary if not downright beat? Well, you couldn't and there was no point in trying. True, we might grow up to be much like Dad, but in the meanwhile there were the comic book figures to emulate. Our quantitative heroes.

Did I say emulate? I didn't really mean it. We knew we couldn't be men of superhuman strength and apelike agility. We only wanted to pretend to be like them and copy their manner of dress and mystery.

For our own lives were meager enough. They were mediocre, pitiable. We were, after all, kids, kids in the 8-11- year-old class, and we were victims of every adult we came across, namely parents, but also older brothers and big kids and, especially, that grim authority figure, Teacher.

A teacher could not be emulated, either. I mean, who would want to? They were for the most part older than our parents, meaner, uglier. Teachers were angry all the time. They carried an eternal chip on their burdened shoulders and were always daring you to knock it off. One word or one look coming from the wrong direction would do it, every time.

A teacher parsed you a sentence, then you were supposed to do it back. Impossible. Lines ran across the blackboard and bracketed themselves into twos and threes, indicating subordinated parts of sentences, such as adjectives and adverbs, two words that sounded very much alike but behaved differently. An adverb could modify an adjective, but not the other way around. And what was modification, anyhow? What did it mean? Exactly.

Ordinarily a noun couldn't act as a verb, but sometimes it did. Less likely was it that a verb could turn itself inside out, with a great wrenching of the letters that comprised it, and become a noun. Rarely, rarely, and only Shakespeare had better try to do it, for we mortals lacked the genius and style and grace to modify a part of speech and get away with it. Enough it was already would be to tell a preposition from a conjunction, a simple sentence from one that was complex, and it was possible for a sentence if it was long enough to be both compound and complex at the same time. Wonder of wonders.

It was enough to make a dog's head swim, a boy to sit up on his hind quarters and beg with folded paws for mercy.

Science, though, was interesting, up to a point. It contained numbers and secret compounds and physical forces at work in nature. The great mystery of the universe. You couldn't escape it. The starry skies, for instance, the oceans rolling, geology moving and shifting its vast plates. Simply wonderful, but you couldn't go around letting the others know you liked something and found it worth your attention. We were the forerunners of cool and had not yet a name for what we deeply felt to be detachment to all things institutional. We wanted to be ourselves purely.

A boy is trapped in school; likewise a girl, only girls were markedly different and did not feel the steel bars closing in, the ceiling collapsing from above just as the floor began to rise to meet it. Batman had been caught in just such a trap and had escaped it, as we could not. If a boy could only make himself invisible like Claude Raines, not only could he escape whatever threatened to make him just like everybody else but he could have fun getting even with them, the enemy, the entire adult world. He'd kick them in the butt from behind, and they would whirl around and learn that nobody was there, the room empty, or the dark street shining its sole yellow bulb overhead, alone. And when they began to relax and think they'd imagined the whole thing, why, you'd kick them in the butt again.

There was no end to it.

Invisible would be wonderful to be. You could spy on adults (including teachers) just when they thought they were alone, alone with each other, and learn what it was they really did, for it couldn't be true that they did what other boys said adults did (even teachers), for that would be too much, too unbelievable. It made more sense to believe that Lois Lane was too blind or dumb to see that Superman was Clark Kent without his glasses than that men put their thing into girls's bottoms and this caused a baby to spring out, nine months later.

The thought made you get all tingly. You both wanted to get that way and you didn't.

I became aware of a girl named—speaking of disbelief—Winogene Sturgis. I remember nothing about her except her name and that I was in love with her from afar for a whole year. In the manner of other girls with whom I was in love, they were either unaware of me or, if aware, contemptuous. I might draw myself to their attention through some untoward act, but only briefly and in a manner that would continually confirm what a fool I was. For no young girl—no matter how much she might desire it—will acknowledge herself worthy of a boy's attention. She knows herself to be awkward, ugly, inferior to the others, shy (accordingly). Unlovable.

In short, much like a boy, but different, too, and capable of greater hauteur.

In winter we needed a sled; I had one. In all the other months, a bicycle is what took us wherever we had to go. Mine was a Schwinn. It was either red and white or red and silver. It had no gearshift. One speed took us there. Though it had a kick-down stand, we rarely used it and left our bikes lying on their sides on the cement or packed earth where we had dismounted. It was rather like a trusted steed that was ground-reined and didn't need to be tethered. And of course we had no chains and padlocks. Yes, occasionally somebody lost his bike, but not often, not often enough to require locking them up, always. A different world from this today. Often a missing bike came trailing back into view after a few days absence, not unlike a tom cat. Where had it gone?

This being a Big Ten State, with its state universities and private ones like Purdue and Notre Dame, everybody played football. The lessons taught me by John McGraw (not to mention Danny Farrell) stood me good stead when I left Chicago. You could not say I was brawny. Nor would tough be the word. Yet I played. We all played hard. It was not to be thought that we would not.

Not being large, I nonetheless played guard and center. Weird. I can't remember who the coach was, or any particulars about his ineptitude or what he did for a living, if anything. He was a teacher, doubtless. Each grade-school level fielded a team. Everybody played, or at least suited up. Some got to play more than others. It is a rule of life. Sometimes teams were chosen up by sturdy boys appointed captains. There is a great deal of infamy in how boys get chosen. It is said for their skills, skills alone. If this is so, my skill level wasn't high enough. But then I'm certain I told nobody I wanted to play center or guard. Or tackle, either. End, quarterback, running back. That was it.

Wanting to achieve the degree of invisibility of Claude Raines in, say, the precinct police station, I came pretty close. I wasn't always chosen last for the team but often enough to make book on. And I and we all had suitable little uniforms, with helmets and pads. They are what kept our little bones from getting broken.

Helmets had no face masks. If you wore glasses, as I did, you took them off and secreted them somewhere. If there was no place suitable, you put them in your pocket (shirt was best) and tried to take care of how you hit and got hit, and how you fell to the ground, for football was mostly about falling to the ground, with the ball or without it.

And the glasses were always getting bent or broken.

Let us talk for a moment about nose bleeds.

It is possible to take a direct hit on the nose and not bleed. Yes, it is true. The nose has to be hit from the correct angle, and there are many of these. Coming up from below with somebody's shoulder will usually do it. Also, an elbow or a knee is practically guaranteed. There is a kind of glancing forearm blow that is excellent, with the bone of the lower arm raking across the face and, of course, the nose of your opponent. How wonderful it is to see the look of alarm, the hands flying to the face, the momentary wait when no blood shows, the disbelief, then the triumph when at last the blood begins to flow. Of course when it happens to you, you can't see all of this; you can only see its reflection in the face of the one who has done it to you, and his great personal satisfaction.

O, to make somebody bleed from the nose—what power. What a triumph over ordinary life. An elbow is fine, or a strategically placed knee to the face. Or the ground might cause it, but you would cause the person's contact with the ground. You were responsible for it. There would follow the look of stupefaction. Then the boy would touch the back of his hand to his nose and bring it quickly away in order to look at it. The first time there might not be any blood there. But he knew the damage was done, the nose was stinging, smashed, flattened, beginning to pain him incredibly. The second pass with the hand would bring the telltale trace of red. Not much to start with, soon the nose would be gushing. And—if you had done it, intentionally or otherwise—there would follow the wave of pride. You weren't exactly invincible, but you knew you had the power to do physical harm. Thank goodness.

If it happened to you, and it did, once or twice, memorably, it was not so thrilling. A surge of adrenaline would shoot through your bloodstream and, of course, there was the pain; not inconsiderable. Then the telltale sign, followed by the smear, then the gush. Soon blood was flowing in incredible profusion. You did not know how badly you were hurt. You suspected a broken nose—the bridge. And then so much blood—all of it yours. You tried to catch it somehow, turn the tide, stem the flow, but there was nothing at hand but your hand. Your hand(s) were richly incarnadined. My God, there was blood everywhere, and all of it was yours. You felt giddy, a little bit faint. At the same time there was a superhuman thrill. How alive you were. How alive you would remain, provided that you didn't bleed to death.

And somebody would proffer a handkerchief, a hanky that that somebody's mom had made him not leave home without, perhaps fearing just such an event. It would be passed over and you would gratefully press it to said sore nostril and it would immediately become proudly incarnadined, too. Soon it would be a red badge of courage, or something approximating that. A boy held a carnation to his face; it was the flower that bled, not the boy. And his face was streaked with abundant red. Often it trailed off onto his shirt front—his little numbered sweatshirt jersey.

But the bleeding always slowed and stopped at about the point you feared it never would end and you would have to be rushed to the hospital with a tourniquet around your neck. The injured nostril would be closed by handkerchief pressure and the nostril sides become as if glued there, skin to skin, and the blood would begin to dry (coagulate, it was called) and adhere into some positive pasty substance almost like library paste, and there would only be a modicum of leaking. You had best then keep your fingers away from your nose (impossible!) so as not to start the bleeding again, but you kept touching it, picking at it, that dried black-red substance, causing a tiny fissure and trickle to begin again, until you pressed it tightly closed.

Some people saw a bleeder as a moral weakness. If you were tough enough, sufficiently resolute, it wouldn't have happened to you. It would have passed on by you and found a home with somebody else. So you were somewhat shunned, while at the same time you were oddly honored, and the blood and red rag were your signs of surviving battle. You sat on the bench, if there was a bench, and you kept your little helmetless head slightly tipped back. Some of the blood always ran down your throat and made you queasy. You kept hawking it up and spitting it away, leaving a red clod on the bare, packed earth. Your sign.

Bob was here. Just look on the ground.

Normally you did not earn a bleeder but only bumps and scrapes. You kept going out from the huddle and lining up, and invariably the guy opposite you whom you were to block or who was to block you was a giant. He would look at you with a grin, and you knew what the grin would mean: he was going to smear you. Smear was the word we all used to describe how he would strike you to the ground and mop up the ground with you. He would leave you a smear on the too-too solid earth of the football field in back of the school or, in our case, just across the street from it, the same street by the way that was intersected by Wedgewood Drive. When said street turned the other way, it ran under the viaduct that carried the Super Chief across, grabbed a left, and headed for the heart of town.

Some shoes had cleats, mine did not. Ordinary high-topped tennis shoes, usually black, were what we wore, and in mud (of which there was usually a lot) they slipped around, so it sometimes seemed you were not playing football but instead some clever new form of ice hockey. Cleats held and additionally were good for stepping on people with. Those who had them, that is. I had a helmet; we all had helmets, or else Coach wouldn't let us even sit on the bench. This voided the potential thrill of hearing your last name called out, him saying, "Arnold, go in there at right tackle."

And you (if only in your mind) would argue back, "But I've never played tackle position before, I'm too puny, look at that monster opposite, don't ask me, please." And the reason would be because the guy who previously played right tackle had got smeared and perhaps had a bleeder, to boot. And the monster was waiting with a big grin to do the same thing to you.

You went in. I mean, after all, this was your chance for glory, however unlikely and far off that might seem. It was your wan hope.

More to my liking was going out for a pass. In the huddle, the quarterback would say, "Everybody go deep." It was because the team was behind and desperate. There was no such thing as tackle-eligible plays, tight ends, wide receivers, flanker backs. It was everybody with feet go deep. Consequently there was nobody left to block and most times the quarterback had to run for his life to avoid getting smeared. All ten of us were streaking down the field, looking back over our shoulders, hoping he would throw it to each of us. But he never did. Smeared instead.

There was glory solely from running out for a pass. That alone. The center ran, the guards dashed, the ends (which I properly was) sprinted, the half-backs flew out, the tackles trudged. The quarterback would crank back his arm and let fly in the general direction of the goal posts, and all would vie to be underneath the ball when it came down. And most often there were so many of us and them that the ball fell flatly to the ground, incomplete. Which was much better than getting the luck of the draw and having it come to you and then dropping it.

You could get a bloody nose from the ball, as well. But then it was—if only slightly—a badge of honor. Honor if you held on to it, that is.

We were, remember, only nine or ten. But this was also the home of Big Ten Football, and each of us was a potential All-American, at least in his mind, for the winnowing process had not started yet and none of us had been caught up in the filter.

Still, I had a pretty good idea I was not cut out to be a great athlete. You did not have to be acutely perceptive to notice certain characteristics, or lack thereof. My size was not extraordinary. Nor my coordination, which was good enough for most things if not put to too tough a test. And I did not take inordinate delight in smearing somebody or, in spite of what I may have just said, causing my opponent to gain a bleeder. Best try to excel in some other sport.

Baseball, for instance. In spring in the teeming Middle West (which is only the Central States writ a different way), the attention of all boys turns to baseball. So I took my stint at bat and in the field, and found that I was even worse at baseball than football, my crossed eyes providing no depth of field in a sport that required quite a lot of it. I caught balls on my forehead, chest, belly, and groin, especially hot grounders. And I got my nose bloodied at least once and my wire-rimmed glasses badly bent out of shape.

But baseball was ordinarily played by boys much older than I, boys in high school, and there was no league for us by grade, as there was with football. And we commonly disdained what is erroneously called softball, for a softball is hard, hard enough anyway when it hits you on its ruthless flightpath. But there is a slight cushion, I must admit. With hardball there is none.

So when high school baseball games were played, Highland Park taking on Winnetka or some such comparable city and school, adults and kids alike filled the grandstand. My father pointed out to me the entrepreneurial opportunities that such crowds provided, and I am sure that if Gramps had heard about the opportunity, he would have written me a special letter, being at that time head of Metropolitan Business College and only just beginning to turn his attention to that emerging field, realestate (as he spelled it) speculation, in which he not only lost his shirt but his pants, shoes, hat, tie, jacket, and eventually the family home.

I bought bottled cold drinks in case lots and sold them next to the grandstands at baseball games. I remember Coke and orange pop. Ne-hi and Nesbit. What I used for money to buy the cases with I cannot remember; probably I got an advance against profits from the assistant buyer in the fur salon, namely Edmund, which was deducted from whatever my take turned out to be before I was allowed to wander off with my profits in the direction of the comicbook store.

I remember the ice I bought, for who would want a soft drink that was as warm as the day, which was torrid? The bottles had to be kept surrounded with ice chipped into fist-sized chunks with a pick. But ice was cheap. And Edmund was right: people would buy cold drinks on a hot day. It was a sure thing. A boy could not fail here. There was a built-in guarantee of sales. So I made some money.

I also had another magazine route—the same old magazines. Everybody read The Post, Colliers not so much, and these were the heyday of Look and Life. It was magazine time in America. I remember a Halloween evening, running a fever, going my rounds, feeling worse and worse, and finally getting violently sick to my stomach, but missing my little beige magazine bag skillfully or luckily, and pressing on with my task. I spent the first couple of days in November lying in bed, listening to radio and reading. Outside the first good storm of winter raged.

All common enough events, of course, and a series of happenings indistinguishable in content from those of others, most notably Jack Kerouac's, told in turgid prose, which I love all the same. The point is our differences lie in minutiae, and we were all true boys together in pre-war America. No war was gathering on the horizon, etc. And in those laggard days in which only more school loomed ahead and posed no special hazard or threat. Nine years old became ten, and time hung heavily. Only one activity would fill the hulking time.

Reading.

* * *

I shall always owe a huge debt to comicbooks, one perhaps overly acknowledged here. So be it. I had a hidden place in which to retreat in the house on Wedgewood Drive and it was the attic. It was one of those lofts accessible by means of a pull-down ladder carefully counterbalanced so that it took only a tug of a chain (for which I had to jump to catch its ring, not being yet tall enough to snare it with one finger while standing flatfooted) and which then let descend a section of ceiling backed by the ladder which was doubled back on itself for purposes of compression. I would grab the ladder by the foot, so to speak, and tug, and the ladder would extend and rebalance itself and come gently to a rest on the floor of the second-storey hallway. Then I would mount the stairs and, at the top, if I so chose, and I often did, cause the ladder to come up on itself and return to its original balance point, which would permit it and the section of lowered ceiling to which it was attached to rise slowly and gracefully, that is, close, and I would be deliciously alone. As alone as Proust with a book.

I knew nothing of Proust, of course, only my comicbook heroes and some few out of real books, those with minimal pictures. For Christmas Gramps and Saraleigh would always disappointingly send me a book or books. And so would my Aunt Ruth. Invariably would be handed out to me one of those heavy, flat parcels that could be nothing else.

The Robinsons were popular and I always associated those cursed with this name (Edward G.; Here's to you, Mrs.; Jackie at first base) in a shipwrecked condition. The Swiss family got stuck on its isle and behaved in an admirable fashion, each pulling on his or her tiny oar and their survival collectively accomplished, while the solitary Robinson stayed alive until rescued largely through the efforts of a black who lucked into his life on the last day of the workweek. These two books (and, come to think of it, most of the others that came from my paternal grandparents) were copiously illustrated in color. If your imagination failed you, and mine never did, it would be goosed or supplemented by an artist's interpretation of what words failed to say. And I, and most of us, speaking for all children, everywhere, were grateful.

Text aside, these books were sparsely illustrated comicbooks, but more modestly conceived and better and more lavishly illustrated. Fortunately, you did not have to put the text aside or else submit to reading balloon data coming out of the characters's mouths or from little supplementary boxes at the bottom of the page. The colors paled along side what the progression of words evoked. To read about a great adventure and see it reduced to a single wan illustration was, well, an anticlimax. Yet illustration had its place. Turning the page, you'd come upon that single meaningful footprint in the sand and immediately have its synecdochical message driven home.

"No longer alone."

I had cardboard cartons full of comics, hundreds of them, obtained by purchase or by trading, and probably I swiped a few of them, I don't know, but don't remember acquiring any in this quick and easy manner. Up in the attic by its single dormer window emitting slant light of a golden nature, I would read my young life away, or rather read until the next meal was announced on the table by my mom. And I think it is this way, too with all boys, everywhere, and they covet loneliness and privacy to an absolute degree and will not flourish without it; hence, when my own son was born and growing up, I argued the case for comics and any other trash books he might want with his mother, a librarian, who believed that they were the antithesis of becoming a reader and loving good books, until I bullied her into not acting on her beliefs and allowing me supremacy in this and similar matters.

For I had once been a boy and she had not. (I am a boy still, in many of my ways.) Such knowledge is born in attics and basements (my son is a basement person), and is tucked away until well germinated and called upon to flower and prosper. It is important knowledge to be had, without which a boy and perhaps a girl as well is doomed to emerge ungerminated, unformed, incomplete, unable to bloom into maturity. Also, a boy raised at nine or ten years so long in an attic will take naturally and well to the garret, which is basic training to a writer. To retire each day to brood and write and not emerge again until a certain volume of work is accomplished is as natural, say, as a frog to climb up on its lily pad and spend the day flicking its tongue out at bluebottle flies and mosquito larvae.

I cannot remember a book that was not illustrated, thereby producing an ambiguity only apparent to me now, at sixty. If books and their component, words, were so vital, how come, Ace, all the comicbook-like colored pictures are necessary? Answer me that. For won't the word alone, the word in aweful conjunction with its neighbors, produce by itself the mystery and power to imitate life? Of something more satisfying than life? Wonder, joy, hope, love? Of course it will. Then why send me more of what I am already inured of and immune to—little four-color replicas drawn from somebody else's imagination?

For they will always be inferior to what I can conjure up for myself.

Gramps, bless him, and Saraleigh, the brains behind the pair, wanted to provide the right environment. Books were truly important, though they are no fun. Who says? They did. It was implicit in their gifts. Books are hard work, the Puritan ethic made manifest. Deadly. Don't be caught laughing. Learning is a serious matter. It should not be made light of. It is properly the property of the pious.

I suppose what lay behind this attitude was the Goddam Bible. It is unreadable, Gang. What is a parable but writing that is intentionally obscure? You can brood on it for days and not emerge from your tunnel with any more idea of what is meant than you started out with. Translated, misunderstood, interpreted, argued over, translated again, redefined, explicated, improved upon, distorted, reinterpreted, explained, guessed at, hoped for, pronounced from on high, denounced from down low, misquoted, misapplied, the Bible remains an intentional source of mystery. If it requires so much work, surely reading and understanding can't be any fun.

Fun? What's supposed to be fun? Well, nothing, much.

Life is not fun, learning is not fun. The future contains little that will be amusing. In fact, in some languages here is no word for fun, only for silliness, and the verb "to have fun" translates to be surrounded by foolish and stupid people. If that best of all books, the Bible, contains no fun, then why should any other inferior book? It simply can't, by definition.

I was given books in hope I would suffer through them and learn something. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, translated from the early middle English of Mallory, was a moral tale that exemplified dutiful perseverance. In my copy anyway, were no knights and squires happening on fair maiden along a country path and having their way with them—singly, serially, sequentially, or in tandem. Knights went off on manful steeds, each bearing about 150 pounds of armor, plus shield, sword, and bow, and did battle with dark, sinister persons shaped much like them but of weaker moral purpose. The bad guys did not have God on their side, as did Arthur, even God in a mystical, legendary sense, sans Bible, a Druid god, a god out of the Old Testament in most of his ornery ways, a god who punished severely and rewarded sparsely. A god very much like Dad.

Where meaning was unclear, writers for little lads filled in the ambiguity with little lessons. St. George, after all, was a Christian saint, while the dragon was the manifestation of the Devil, or at least the world of untamed nature. Out there evil was lurking, just this side of the railroad tracks and on the other side of Edmund's fence. Sometimes The Joker or The Invisible Man or The Shadow lurked there, too. I both believed it and disbelieved it, or in them. They had a reality for me which nothing real could provide.

I think at age nine, going on ten, a normal boy is quite mad. He is beginning to get hormonal injections into his bloodstream but is not yet dominated by them. They make him moody, odd. Girls are far off and mysterious but not very interesting yet. The sight of a curved breast in a mature woman may provide a momentary twinge that is almost like pain, but it is fleeting. Much competes for his sensibilities and attention. True, his penis will stand peculiarly at attention and remain rigid for long periods, and he will think this a singular affliction, one not ever experienced in the long history of mankind, but who is he to confide his secret to, unimportant as it is? Not his mother, who has breasts, and is therefore the enemy or at least in the enemy camp. And not his father, either, surely not Edmund of the Office, remote, austere, demanding, the Superego (whatever that is) to his Ego, not yet Id, with whom no unmanly subject can be approached, let alone discussed.

Unmanly? What is more manly than a hardon? Yes, but it is still unmanly, undiscussable, in the world of men, which includes sports, entrepreneurial activities, and work. Life's work. There is no room for talk about a stiff prick.

"Have you decided yet, Bob, what you want to be?"

Oh, God. Maybe a journalist? For the word then and now, Writer, is in nobody's serious vocabulary and is not comprehended, while Journalist is somebody who goes to an office at a newspaper each day and writes down what is happening around town on a typewriter and, later, it is published the same day in the newspaper and we are all the wiser for what he (or she) tells us.

There is Life Magazine that Gramps in his letters to Edmund keeps referring to as a laudable compendium of thought and wisdom, with pictures as a bonus, so many excellent and defining pictures that as with the Robinsons you hardly have to read a word but simply submit yourself to it and the collective data will pass into your bloodstream by means of some fierce journalistic osmosis. The citizen in a democracy, or Republic, will keep abreast of civics, so as to be able to exercise his privilege (not right) of voting wisely and this best of all possible forms of governance will prosper through the collective intelligence of its citizens. Hence such magazines are not only lucrative for its publishers and hired journalists but the mainstay, the very foundation, of America and the citizens who maintain it through their sacred vote.

I mean, we were raised on bull shit of this kind; it came with our mother's milk, which usually had a bovine source, if the truth be known and spoken. It was not a time of protest; there had never been a general revolt up until the Torrid Sixties. Only outlaws protested or went against the collective will of the people, which was formidable. It would grind dissent into a fine powder. "Government for the people and by the people" was a serious precept, requiring constant vigilance. We fought wars over it.

Besides, the Japs and Nazis were poised. For precisely what, nobody knew. Oh, some say Roosevelt did, all the while, but even today most people will agree that such treacherous behavior is not possible in a man elected President by all the voting adults of a great country like America.

By the time of the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor on the infamous Sunday in early December, 1941, Edmund had already been offered the job of Fur Buyer in the ancillary store in Seattle. It had been 14 years since he went to work for Fields and promotions were something to be seized. Who knew when the next might stumble along? The house he bought less than two years previously in Highland Park was put up for sale. It was in a desirable location and a buyer soon came along with an offer. Edmund lost a little money on the deal, having had the mortgage such a short while, but he would recoup it shortly with his big salary increase. In his mind he was already packing his bags, and ours.

The train we rode West in January, 1942, was the Milwaukee Road. We were at war; invasion seemed imminent. Were the evil Nips Japs just waiting for us to land in Seattle, I wondered? The train pulled out of Union Station for the three-day, two-night journey to the Pacific Northwest. I remember the trip vividly, fifty years later.

Newly turned sixty-four, I walked my old neighborhood on that cool day in December, keenly alert to what met my eye and camera, for I was fresh from the doctor's office and his pronouncement that in three-week's time I must undergo a mild, exploratory operation (as he deemed it) looking for an explanation of why I had visible blood in my stool. This had alarmed me for months, but I was of the kind to suffer instead of promptly seeking an answer. In short, I hoped the blood would stop appearing and I could go on with my life without any more ordeal than what was nagging me. Also, recently, I was feeling pretty good, and I was fully engaged in a long writing project, namely, this. But the blood kept appearing and I could no longer put off seeing the doctor.

The days ticked by in their quick, relentless fashion at year's end. Soon Christmas was upon us, then New Year's Eve and Day. The last week—my final week, as I termed it—clicked by, too, and I soon came to the dreaded moment when I must stop eating entirely and purge myself of whatever I had swallowed over the past couple of days. To do this I had to ingest three tablespoons of some awful stuff called fleet-phosphosoda in half a glass of water and . . . wait. Half an hour passed, forty-five minutes. Then I ran for the john and exploded backwards.

I continued to explode in similar fashion every half hour for the next four.

Meanwhile my diet consisted of water, apple juice, lime Jello, and a couple liters of Gatorade, which I held in reserve like an ordinary athlete. The morning of the operation I rose early, three hours before my colon would be invaded by the flexible scope, and drank some more of the fleet-phosphosoda. Yuck. ("Listen," they told me later, "it could have been worse. Up until lately, you would have had to drink a gallon of colyte. Tastes about the same." "Nobody can drink a gallon of that stuff," I proclaimed. They smiled; it was what everybody did. There was no choice but drown.)

It is a fairly common procedure, but if you've never been through it it is not yet common to you and it holds its demons. I am a very private person—the boy from the Highland Park attic, with the pull-up ladder leading to my loft—and dislike greatly being subjected to medical practices, especially ones where my body is invaded.

Funny but twenty years ago as the editor of an obscure engineering journal called The Trend in Engineering, I had published an article in that new field, bioengineering, by a physician and a professor of electrical engineering about a new instrument, the endoscope, and its applications. A flexible nylon tube was inserted in a patient's body cavity, from either the mouth or the rectum, and on a column of gas preceding it a fiberoptic sensor viewed stomach or colon, up or down, as it proceeded on an exploratory journey through the human body. Messages would be flashed back to a television monitor, from which color Polaroid pictures might be taken of what was being observed; also, a wire noose could be inserted in the probe to snare polyps or other growths, as could a laser for burning away untoward material of a smaller nature. Also, biopsies could be performed while all this invasion was going on. Incredible. What a breakthrough. Instead of destructive surgery into the body cavity through skin and nerves and muscle, good medicine could be practiced by using the body's own apertures as entry points.

Ironies of irony, I was now going to be subjected to what I edited, rewrote, and published.

Barely finished shitting a volume of bubbly water into the toilet bowl for the last time, I drove my wife and me to the out-patient clinic of Group Health Hospital five miles away. I was told to take a magazine and be patient; my wife went off to run some errands. As always, about the point where you stop turning the stupid pages and find an article of some interest and substance, a person comes forward and crooks a finger at you. You are to come with them to whatever uncertain fate beckons.

I was led to a large room which was to be both the preparatory room and the one dedicated to my recovery, if there was to be any and I was not to be immediately wheeled off to refrigeration and the morgue. Sure, I exaggerate, but I was frightened. I was scared shitless, you might say, along with chemical aid. But they were very nice to me in what they called Prep.

On one bed lay a woman who was clearly dying. I hoped she had had her operation, such as it were, and was not being readied for one, for she was receiving oxygen (or something) through a nose clip, while a drip IV (I was soon to become much more familiar with this object) hung overhead from a pole and disgorged its contents microscopically into a vein.

I waved. Instead of politely waving back with her free hand she looked forlornly ahead and gave me absolutely no expression. Unfriendly people here.

I was led to a bed of my own, or rather a gurney with raisable arms as on a child's bed which would prevent me from tumbling out or escaping. A pad lay on the center where soon my butt would go and I presumed it was to sop up blood and whatever other liquids I had left in my body cavity. Apropos of this a nurse asked me if I'd care to take an enema, since my last explosion had not, I admitted, come out gin clear, and I declined, and when she would not go away with the bottle she held out to me I was led to believe I had no choice in the matter.

I retired to the little boys' (which was also the little girls') and applied the plastic squeeze tube to my rear end, enduring the familiar short wait for the anticipated explosion. I was not kept on hold for long.

Back to what is loosely called my bed, I was bid undress and put all my personal items in a handy bin that was attached to the underside of my gurney. This was, I recalled, very much how ancient Egyptians were buried, after of course first being wrapped in miles of cotton bandage. (Was this what was coming up next?) I was given the little blue gown that one puts on backwards and is unable to tie unaided, and causes one to stand pathetically before one's attendant and beg with his eyes for help. It was bound from behind in two places and I was told to lie down and make myself comfortable. Ha. It was like telling a dog to fly.

A nurse in blue darker than mine, and much more fetching, both personally and as to garb, explained to me what would be done next. A tiny sharp needle was plunged into the back of my left hand and I manfully refrained from either wincing or screaming. It was connected to a shunt and it to a bottle of innocent looking liquid which was my IV. A saline solution or glucose, I guessed; inert in itself but the medium through which many, many drugs could be introduced in speedy fashion and therein regulated with a little plastic, throwaway valve that looked hardly up to the task.

I was next wheeled away on my gurney at a rapid rate of speed by my nurse, Laura. She took me, she said, to the room where the work would be done on my interior posterior. She had an alarmingly disarming way of referring to horrible events in my near future, such as my "medicine" that "would keep me from being uncomfortable." This translated, I knew, into drugs that would keep me from unbearable pain.

But I would be conscious, all the while, she added.

What? Did this have to be, I asked?

"Eighty percent of our patients experience amnesia afterwards," she further explained.

Does this mean, I asked, that they could never remember anything of their previous lives?

She smiled. No, no, no. I would not remember the particulars of the procedure. Never was it called an operation. "Medicine, uncomfortable, procedure"—you didn't have to be a wizard with words to recognize a euphemism, especially when it nudged you from behind.

And this medicine, I whined. What specifically was it?

Demerol, with a kind of tranquilizer thrown in. It was called Versed. Now to me spelled that way indicated a poetic rhyme scheme. The generic name of Versed was midazolam, she said. All this I wrote down, not now but later, for emotional matter must be recalled at a more tranquil time.

I was to be well-Versed, as we say about visiting poets.

I remember hearing about junkies breaking into neighborhood pharmacies in order to steal demerol and, perhaps, Versed, which is kin to Valium—Valium as in "all the brothers were Valium," I recall. (Old dope joke.) Afterwards I realized that a true junky would have to be droolingly insane to inject himself with either substance.

"How did you like your Fleet-phosphosoda party?" she asked me, jocularly, as she made ready for conducting me to my fate.

"So that's what it was," I opined. "You say you people do that for a party?"

She laughed to show she was not totally devoid of wit. Actually, she was a fairly attractive woman of about thirty and, no, I did not wonder what she was wearing under her surgical gown, nor did she wonder I am sure what I was wearing under mine, which was nothing.

"So it didn't much bother you?" she asked, as she started doing something intentionally out of my sight.

"I would wish it on mine enemies," I said, beginning to wonder if it was "enemy," singular, and if it came from the bowels (an appropriate word) of Shakespeare, with that marvelous "mine."

"Roll over on your left side, please," she said. "I am going to start your medicine. It will be very mild at first. I can administer more if you experience any sign of discomfort." That word again. Never, pain.

I saw my surgeon, Dr. Andrew Feld, come into the room, after being summonsed by Nurse Laura over the telephone. How odd, having a telephone in an operating room, I thought. I had seen the TV monitor and a maze of other electronic equipment, and thought of my former friends in bioengineering and thanked them for inventing this low-level invasive procedure that would keep Dr. Feld from having to open up my gut with a knife.

I curled in upon myself, here in the false fetal position I was obliged to assume, and closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep. And that is exactly what I did, as the Demerol and Versed entered my vein. I thought manfully of fighting them both off, as a boy might try to fight off the commencement of a fight that might lead to a bleeder, but decided it was futile, and so gave into the chemicals, and the next thing I knew I was in Recovery, with a fat man wearing a nose tube and a gown just like mine pointed in the direction of the little boys'. He looked like he was dying and, there, was the place he'd like to do it, alone, with nobody watching—solitary and piteous and lightly screaming. I mean, talk about having your bad thoughts.

But first I enjoyed my total sleep and, in the manner of William Langland in Piers Ploughman, had me a curious dream, which I'll now recall.

* * *

"Jump," said God, and I jumped.

It was 1942, the same time of my journey West (which of course is traditionally the journey to death but in my instance was but the start of my small life, my individual span of years, spent mostly in Seattle, as boy and ensuing man, while at the same time I knew all the while of the dream that I was a fully functioning adult male, a soldier again, and we were headed not in the direction of the Rising Sun, that is, toward Seattle, but due East, toward that other enemy, Germany, as part of an early reconnaissance force. We were going into Occupied Territory on an exploratory mission long before the invasion of Normandy, the exact nature of our task nobody knew—or else they had not told us for some frightening military reason that might get revealed later, but not necessarily so. This seemed to me in my dream state very Army-like and convincingly real. The army is forever the army.

The plane was a converted DC-3 or else a C-47 (I could never tell the difference), a craft driven by two props, painted camouflage brown and bile green so as to appear nearly invisible when glimpsed from the side against certain terrain, which can never be found anywhere in the world. I was part of Able Company, First Platoon, First Squad—which is about as high up as you can get on the ladder of non-entities. First division as well. Because I was good at ROTC in college I was picked neither squad leader or assistant squad leader, both of which positions were held by raging illiterates, but obscure eighth man in the formation, a squad member of no consequence or responsibility, a mere grunt. It was the way I liked it. I would go out the door of the aircraft in this order, all of us queuing up in a string and nobody given time to deliberate about what was coming up next, which had been thoroughly rehearsed. Meanwhile, we were enduring ack-ack fire that sounded like twenty millimeter and most of the shells were bursting like black flowers off what would correspond to our starboard bow if we were a ship. Occasionally our plane trembled from a blast, but we were not suffering any damage, I knew. It was only air currents.

We were all scared, of course, which is standard operating procedure, a little bit like going into surgery in how helpless you feel and how little control you have over what others may do to your body while you are unconscious.

At the same time our flight was largely metaphysical. It always is, when your mission is withheld from you and you must guess wildly what it might be from the realm of the impossible and improbable. Germany—it was only a hunch, but it felt like Germany—if anything can be said to feel like a country, which is what I've just said. Others said it as well. Rumors are generally true in the extreme, I've found. We were presently over France, an ally, though occupied by the Nazis, and so didn't count for much in the consolation department.

The engines, both of them, hummed, thank goodness. I would feel safer with four, in a B-17 or a DC-4, converted to a troop transport, as was being done, these days. This smaller craft tended to rock and dip, and several of the men were airsick. The metal floor was slimy with the stuff. Nausea had never been one of my problems before, not until I had experienced Demerol, or whatever the drug was that flooded my veins at the moment.

The Army had given us all drugs, too, you see. It was to ward off the collective miseries and make the flight durable. Or is it endurable? Whatever, we were all lightly drugged, as we floated through the air and neared our destination. Then some enemy fighter planes appeared. Maybe they would kill us and then we wouldn't have to make our drop, our jump, and flit into the night and light in enemy territory in some deep, dark place where there was no hope, no respite.

And then it was on your feet, lock and load, safeties on, field packs on board, dual chutes secured, d-rings hooked onto their lanyard cords, all in patrol and platoon formation, Sgt. Joe Bly at the head of our column, for he was the squad leader, a regular—RA. Steel pots on over plastic helmet liners and chin straps fastened tight, for it wouldn't do to land on your head and have your skull driven into your neck and your brains splattered around your gourd in a most unappetizing fashion, now would it?

There were Messerschmitts 109s around us, Focke-Wulf 190s, as well, and what appeared to be British Spitfires doing them in battle, and wasn't that an American P-47 winging up and away, its cannon blazing? The sky was a veritable Jan's. The heavens of course was dark as sin and the only light spangling it provided by tracers and fire-flashes from ack-ack cannon bursts. Every so often a flare went up and exploded in a cylindrical cone, and then there was abundant light, light in great profusion, and we could see the aerial battle being raged that was both wonderful and hideous, frightening and consoling, as we plunged into the German night and hapless oblivion.

A plane went down, one of ours. Was it a troop transport like this one, filled with GIs like us? Did they evacuate in time with their chutes opening, or did they ride the craft down and die in a speedy burst of black and orange flames? Whatever, in the light that remained only briefly, I could not see anybody evacuate or a single chute bloom in the spring night air. If they were anything like us, there would be 180 dead, a matter that would give any and all of us infinite pause for thought, if we but had time for such silly matters such as thought and hope and love and living.

There was only the thought of death being near.

"Jump," said God, and we jumped, all of us. Field First tapped us one by one heavily on the shoulders and the call was irresistible, which means there was no resisting it. Sgt. Bly went out the hatch with a cry, and then the second slam on the shoulder followed for Gary Prine, who had the bunk next to mine in basic. (Once a unit always a unit.) A half count later, and another slap or slam, and out the door went number three, a guy named Brown, whom we called Badger because of his front teeth, which he had out, so there was no longer any reason for such a nickname for his teeth were now plastic-perfect, but Badger he was, and shall remain, eternal, and out the door with him, with not so much a cry like Bly's but some great intake of breath, as though he believed he would not be able to breathe again all the way down, and this was all the air he would ever get or need, this solitary gasp. Four was Hastings, our road guard, but there are no road guards in God's air, so he had no special duty until on the ground again, which could not be far away, and then there was Toad, a fat boy, a comicbook victim like myself and an inveterate candybar freak, a man with a mind so weak you couldn't call it a mind but some inordinate grey matter of indeterminate mass and fuzziness, a man unable to recognize right from wrong or perceive anything except, say, that he was hungry or sleep or his cock was stiff again and bothering him. Out the door with you, Dogface. Two to go and then it was me, and the count never varied or wavered. Six was some poor sap just transferred in when Ballode went to the infirmary, name of Hoskins, I think, nobody knew him, he was a quiet one, and had much to be quiet about, since he was lacking in the vestiges of personality, but then this was the Army and we were all lacking is some vital quality, or else we wouldn't be here. Seven was Old Red Dog, a Kentuckian who had no fear, he was from Washington Courthouse, maybe in Ohio, maybe Indiana, his last name being Feagan, or Feagans, and he had carried hod before he hoisted an M-1. And then it was me.

"Jump," said God, and I jumped. He slammed me on the shoulder and with this motion bid me good-bye forever, and to the experienced world. God was what we called the Field First, a Guamanian, a name and title too modest for his authority and command, which were absolute. His real name none of us could pronounce, for it was a maze of soft syllables with no associative values. I went spilling out into space. The cold night air of Germany, or wherever, rose to greet me. It smacked of cordite. My tongue tasted brown; could my shit be backing up on me? If so, it would poison my soul, which was reported to be immortal, but if so it didn't really matter, since all of us were for all practical purposes already dead.

Around me bloomed more black flowers of night, shell bursts, rollicking explosions, red and orange and yellow and, of course, black. I hadn't realized before that you can view black on black as a kind of weird color field like a painting by that guy Max Reinhardt—you can pick out the true black of eternal emptiness from the phoney black, say, of an exploding shell that is really a mix of colors, all of them adding up to something pretending to be black but being variations of grey, the very same shades of grey that presumable approximate the difficulty of making moral choices in a free society, none of which we are presently concerned with, ours being the one of totalitarian regimes, both ours and theirs, engaged in mortal combat which we, our troopship, is suppose to rent if not break into smithereens.

I was in what the bards call free-fall, whizzing through the ether turning genial cartwheels and in all other ways amusing myself with my supposed weightlessness and hastening doom. And then about the time I was thinking of triggering my auxiliary chute, or my main number was numb and loath to open, it did open, of its own accord, and my own personal flower of a canopy burst above me and I was whisked up and away with a rude jerk and awakening (not that I was asleep, you understand) and then I was gliding downward in smooth spirals of descent, swinging loosely from right to left, left to right, and able to steer by jerking on my shroud lines, I knew not where. I mean, when you can see nothing, know where nothing in the world is or remains, and are headed ever downward, where is it you want to go? Only to Mama Earth. I'm falling at the rate of, say, seventeen feet a second. Imagine that! Every gross effort of mine, every winch of my arms in any direction appeared a mindless joke, a bit of whimsy, capricious, arbitrary, jocular, purposeless. For it is down you go, down, down, until the hard ground rises to meet and embrace you, and does so crudely, with a shock.

You are back on the planet, somewhere on Earth.

Thank God (or somebody) you missed a tree. Nothing quite like landing in a big leaf maple in the drear of night, your nylon chute caught above you in some bare limbs about twenty-five feet from the ground, your arms and legs tangled in the shroud lines. You hit the deck as from a ten-foot fall offen a ladder. You are buried under the nylon canopy. Life's a mess, and to make it worse something is poking you in the ass—Dr. Feld? You writhe around, twisting, trying to free yourself from the sheet, your shroud. Finally you shake free and emerge from the silken cocoon in full field dress, this larval shard which is you. No butterfly in your short future, Jack.

No living soul is near you, either. You are alone on the planet, but off in the distance you can hear the rumble which is assuredly tanks, not Shermans but (can it be true?) Panzers. Rommel is back from Africa, retreated, theoretically defeated, but with most of his mechanized armory intact. It is only maneuvers, you know, for the Allies have not even geared up for Normandy and are status quod in Britain, which is enduring its nightly bombardment of V-2s at this precise moment. The Axis Powers are snug on their continent (smug in contentment, did I say?), with the battle in Russia progressing nicely and without hint of the massive denouement it will soon become.

Only you, alone, are here. X marks the spot. The question is, Horatio, where in God's Holy World is it? Mark it down on your field map, please. My soul requires a compass, but it only tells me where North is, not where I am. In the absence of any precise authority, one must guess, only this dark oppression refuses to submit its particular knowledge to eyes that cannot see. Sorry. This is the ultimate night, with no light, no hope, no surcease of pain and confusion.

It strikes you, Boobie, that you are being metaphysically reborn or, rather, born for the first time, that other instance being simply preparatory, dress rehearsal, for this, the main event. You are as naked as you were in Mama's womb, before she spit you out from between her legs like a pumpkin seed with that enormous burst of energy that has been likened to a life-giving scream.

You cannot very well walk up to some stranger on the street and ask in your basic English, "Where am I, dude?" as though coming out of anesthetic. Nor can you pose the eternal question in halting German, of which you have none. You are not in no-man's-land but that worse place, the heart of the enemy's homeland. You couldn't buy a friend with all the Deutchmarks in the world. There's a war on, Charlie—don't you know? It's why we ration gas, have no butter, collect tinfoil and string, and in all other ways suffer deprivation of a minor sort. In short, all is lost, especially vous. It is the permanent condition.

So what do you have, what are your net assets? Well, rid of your chute, you have your steel pot, your field jacket and fatigue pants, your full field pack, your weapon, your clips of live rounds, your first-aid kit with its compresses and morphine vial, your Boy Scout compass and matches, your C-rations, a couple of concussion grenades, a sheath knife—in short, everything certain to identify you as the enemy and produce instant incineration. (Or is it incarceration?) Ditch the gear, Dad.

What? Yes, it is better to go forth naked and be unrecognizable as to what you are, namely the Enemy. Or, more practically, to strip down to your BVDs and fatigue pants (which might as well be Reichsmark), and stagger into the next nook of civilization as a tongue-tied member of the human race. That's all—no more, no less. And why, pray tell, do they call it the human race, when nobody is running but everybody is idly standing around?

There were supposedly 120 of you and your number, but where are they now, your comrades? Gone, gone. Where is Sgt. Bly, from whom you are supposed to take your orders, as they come down to him from Platoon? Prine, Badger, the dork who replaced Ballode; where are they? Where is Baker Company, Charlie Company? Are they all smeared, dead with bleeders? Are you the only grunt left on earth, a pariah, a jonah? If so, why did you survive, while all your brothers became instant organic waste? And if this is the case, what are you going to do about it?

Learn Berlitz German in an hour?

You keep your knife, but discard your Garrand and its clips, and you retain your compass and matches, for—who knows?—you might soon start to smoke again, a nasty habit you gave up thirty years ago, but couldn't have been that long for only moments ago were you born. Dream on, little Dogface. Field boots that you bought in the PX because of their steel toes and their side zippers, making you Speedy Pierre in a flash. Brindle brown are they, rather than cordovan, like the gyrenes, with whom the regs prevent you from identifying. And of course your notched dogtags, paired, for sure as shit they will tell the Nazis who you are, a spy, and they will burn your eyes out with their cigarets.

You start out, mufti-clad, in as near to absolute pitch as you are liable to encounter short of sucking yourself up into your asshole and staggering like old Tiresias (or is it Oedipus?) out of the near woods into the opening that contains, apparently, the packed-earth country lane that leads off into the yawning chasm of night, the only illumination provided by starlight filtered through the low-lying clouds like mist. That sum content being next to nothing, measured in lumens.

A dog barks. German Shepherd? No, some smaller beast, with a yip-yip-yip and a piercing howl at the end of it that fades into the soft noise you hear at the end of a pipe that used to carry water. And far off the crackling sound of firecrackers that assuredly signify small-arms fire, Lugers, Mausers, and probably semi-automatic weapons triggered a round at a time.

Are these your comrades engaged in a firefight a quarter mile away? If so, they are doomed, the whole idea being stealth at all counts and passing incognito under the guise of night to where the Underground awaits you. Once there, disguises will be provided to make each and every soldier look like a workman or some tradesman on his way to performing his daily morning tasks. The field uniforms and weapons are mere contingencies, should need arise to fight free and flee the area. A firefight is the court of last resort and a clear sign that you've failed, all is lost, a hail of bullets signifying The End.

You are alone and naked, as it were. The night is mild for late winter. If only you could see. . . . A house appears on your left, all of its windows dark, but upon closer inspection they are simply shuttered in two instances and in the other wearing darkout curtains because of course the nightly bombing raids emanating out of England. Ah, England. The white cliffs of Dover sole possessor of liberty and justice for all. Or some such shit nobody believes. In the foxhole, all are doubters.

On the right a garage, closed, with some old worthless car parked out front, its transmission lying on the ground, one tire flat, a pool of oil glistening half-invisible to the right where you wouldn't dream of entering, not even if the vehicle were enterable anymore, which it isn't. Fifty-gallon drums stacked alongside a cement wall over which ivy has grown and perhaps died during the course of the long winter. A sealbeamed headlight lying on the ground, its wires running behind it like neurons, it perhaps a brain removed and abandoned during some recent surgery gone bad, like mine. And windows, dark, with their narrow panes shining blackly, an even number of them, almost infinite, but two of them broken, one with a jut of ivy. All this not quite seen but sensed by eyes made keen with their pupils expanded to the bursting point, admitting every last lumen left in the world. Which is not many.

Onward, through the dank and dink of dismal night in a foreign land with no language you may call your own and the prospect of quick death at every turn, starpoints ahead, dim glows, and always the faint rattle of innocuous bings and bangs that in reality are muffled gunfire. Yes, a firefight is taking place, and you, the stranger, have no way of telling whether this is something special or the ordinary nightly pop and crackle. Special you think. You'd bet your life, and maybe have.

This used to be a small town, or some shrinking city, first drawn in on itself, then pressed flat by warfare. B-24s liberated it and it was fortressed by B-17s in goose-flight formations, their Vs pointed ever East, as if wedges to be driven into the enemy's nighttime heart. Incendiaries gutted the village (if this is what it was, doubtful now) of its living will and reduced its heart to rubble. Still it lives on. It has the look and feel of a burned-out shellcase, nothing behind what it offers you from out in front. And that thing over there that looks like a soccer ball, playful and innocent—could it be a skull? What else, minus its jawbone, could press its teeth against the dirt with such convincing finality? And where are the bones that were its body?

Passing along quickly now, a file formation numbering one, no road guards out at the crossing, for there is none to be had, no leader, no assistant leader, no BAR man, no languid lieutenant at the flank, cracking wise and sarcastic, pressing you on, baiting you, inflaming your senses to irremediable hate, only yourself, born free, pushing on alone, desperate, not knowing where you are headed, only away. Your compass feeds you lies. Nothing can be trusted or depended on. You have a map they issued you that is largely a joke. But who is there to hear you laughing?

The woods arrive again, comforting somehow, but terrifying too because they portend no consoling humanity to lie ahead, only more deep flora on both sides, the vestiges of civilization disappearing, it meaningless, anyhow. Some of the trees are shattered. There is something about how a shell hits a copse that renders it quick kindling. The trees are jagged remainders, splintered and shorn, well on the way to becoming fuel. The earth around the copse is pocked and ragged. If you needed a foxhole and are too weary to dig one, here's the answer. All you got to do, Boobie, is crawl in a handy hole and pull in the dirt after you. You'd be back in the womb, your whole life stretching out in front of you like a demerol dream, not a minute of it lost to time, instead of standing here where life ends prematurely, either in the air or on the ground.

You want so desperately to be born that your mouth fills with the bile of longing. You consult your compass as if it were a Bible, then disbelieve the parable of time and distance and direction it reveals to you. North must be over this other way. There is magnetic and true. Choose, clown. Which is this? Could North have screwed itself around and be where this stupid needle on a string tells you East is? Say not, but believe otherwise. For if North is not North, then what is it? Tell me, Ace. There are some things beyond knowing, and they lie far beyond the manacle of believing.

Just what we need up ahead, an intersection. Life is one turn after another, half of them in the wrong direction. There is a sign post, green with white lettering, indicating four paths to righteousness, corresponding to the compass points, but some clown with no sense of humor has skewed the sign and twisted it on its stanchion so that its markers point off in every which direction. To make matters worse, all the words are in German. Your presume it is German, but it might as well be Greek, for all you know, and it might as well be spring, too, for this is a mild night in early March, still the winter of the soul, but a soul transitioning into spring, with crocuses popped along the road, there, at the edge of the ditch. See? Only you can't because of the envelope of darkness which is next to absolute.

"Belsen"—is that what it says? Is it some burg, or a guy's name? Plays trumpet? Is there a hidden clue in the formation of the individual letters which, if unraveled, will reveal a great truth in the form of a direction in which to travel that leads to—let us hope at the best—salvation? The slope of that B, with its double loop, bulging like breasts, with a that straightbacked spine keeping them upright. A B—female? All you have to do is have eyes, man. You queer, or something?

The e is repeated, fore and aft, not quite symmetrically but coming close, close being all we may hope to attain on a troubled planet. The l and the s cosset up to each other as with long familiarity, the former masculine, like a penis, the latter a woman turned fetchingly back and forth upon herself, knees to breasts, head to knees, offering her posterior to you, ouch. To penetrate her, as I am being penetrated, anally, at the moment, the l will have to rotate ninety degrees and approach her from the excuse me rear. And there you have it, except for the final letter at the end, an n, which is no more than an s turned on its side after violation and she lifting her head with a vestige of tiny remaining pride.

And there you have it. Belsen. Give me a B, give me an e, give me an l . . . aw, fuck it. You know what I mean. Belsen, the sweetest little town this side of Lima, Ohio. Nobody gets cold there, even in dead winter. (Burn a Jew.) And you can say it is a burg with no population explosion. That would be telling the Godawful truth.

Where else? Well, it is hard to tell, most of the other letters of the sign being mud-splattered and coated with dung or some other official substance undefinable to the superficial critical intelligence. Press on. Where is the Underground, come to meet you? Laugh on, Dunce. Why, under the ground; where else? Where ought they be? Frolicking around the mead on a night with icy breath that has on the end of it a faint fishy smell? Lying inert in the clover? Buggering itself in bombed out Belsen, or balling each and every fair maiden it comes across in its nightly vengeful rage?

And then they materialize, the enemy, not the famed Underground. They converge from four sides, all there is, every compass direction, whichever way it may be, for it doesn't really matter any more, each course being the same, undistinguished and undistinguishable, the arch enemy Nazi, SS, Gestapo, civilians with pitchforks, little uniformed girls on bicycles, men with pails, women with butter churns, dogs with fleas, cats with curved mice hanging from their loose lips. In short I am discovered.

I stand there in my BVDs, khaki, no dog tags (for I am not a dog), no wrist watch, only my stiff knife in my belt, my compass/matchbox container clutched in my hand, extending that hand over my head as a sign of abject supplication.

"Civilian, civilian," I shout, hoping the word is German in origin, or else so universal in its application as to be universally recognizable and so benign of danger that I will be welcomed with roses and wine into the animal vestiges of the human heart, which cannot be denied, regardless of region or creed, race or nationality, in short, into the nooks and crannies of the human spirit, which is constant and imperishable, divine and wonderful, grand and foolish, hopeful and doubting.

In other words, alive. "Alive!" I shout. I am, ever so much! They are pointing home-made weapons at me, glowering, muttering in their foul guttural language what can be no less than threats to my body, my person. The tongs of a pitchfork nudge me in the vicinity of my butt and I cringe, as would you. A cat hisses. A man lifts a pail threateningly. (Imagine, a pail causing your demise—the infamy of it; what would you do, drown in milk?) A girl on a boy's bicycle offers me girl scout cookies, her pudenda in plain view. What is this, an orgy in the making? If so, why do I feel so lost, so utterly without a sense of direction or purpose? No hardon here.

I come spewing forth into the world dripping with slime and blood. Attached to my middle is a long cord that might as well be a snake that has sunk its fangs into my navel. Or is it simply my tangled IV? Who am I, or rather what? Define yourself, clown, or disappear into the void.

The truth is, I am born. But then I am always getting born, over and over again. It is the writer's curse, never each day to begin and end the same person. Always there is the quotidian transformation. You are what you write. Write nothing, you are nothing, it only follows. Many days you are crap. How many initiations are there into this piteous world? Let me see. Counting the ways on the tips of my fingers there is the ordinary dull birth as we commonly know it. Then there is circumcision. The first day at the new school. Cub Scouts, followed by the larger version of same, yclept Boy. And of course the Army, a member of which I was only moments ago, lost in the Yonkers of Germany, trying to puzzle out directions from road signs I can't read because they are written in this foul foreign language. I try to speak it, but my tongue feels brown and tastes bitter.

Nurse Laura is looking down at me with a painted smile. The look is one of professional curiosity.

"How are we?"

Not able to speak for her, or speak at all myself, I'd say we are living shit. That is how "we" are, in my opinion, for that is precisely how I feel. I am clasped in the arms of morphine, or rather its dumb cousin, demerol, the synthetic counterpart or equivalent. Dwarfs have been at work on my head with ballpeen hammers, while Lilliputian cohorts have bound my arms and legs tight with spider webs. A mad laughter is echoing back and forth in my ears. Is it mine?

When Nurse Laura speaks, I hear insane reverberations as though she calls out each syllable into the Grand Tetons and the mountains, in chorus, answer back. I must concentrate on each initial consonant to determine what in the world she is saying. She holds out to me a sort of square picture. A peyote mushroom cloud occupies its most of the center.

"This is your polyp," she says, proud as if having given birth to a kitten. "We snared it, snipped it off, and sent it in for biopsy."

"Is it lifesize?" I gurgle.

"Just about. We shot two on the Polaroid, in case you wanted one."

"What on earth for?"

"Yes, many of our patients feel that way. But if you did want one, it's easier than going back a second time, you must admit."

"Yes, I see what you mean. Tell me, is my wife handy?"

I did not mean, is she good with her hands at performing small tasks, for this I know, but rather is she in the next room, and available to me, for I had been informed I could not leave this place of doom until she is present to drive me home. I have been instructed not to drive, not to operate heavy equipment or machinery, not to drink alcohol, and not to sign any legal papers for at least twenty-four hours. In short, I am not to be my normal self. I am tempted to ask, "Am I free to fuck?" but that is the last thing on my mind. In fact, I am pretty close to swallowing my tongue, not somebody else's.

"Remember where you put your clothes?" she asks cheerfully.

What is this, a test? I hadn't been asked this question by a woman for many years, and it starts to take me back, but I choke off the journey to play more of her game of question-and-answer.

"Under the bed?" I ask coyly.

"Exactly."

Norma comes into the room, looking neither happy nor sad to see me, but her ordinary self, fairly expressionless, which is consoling, for the next to last thing in the world I want (after no sex) is to have to counter a smile with a smile.

"You okay?"

"I've been better. Let's get out of here."

I start to rise, then sag back down again. "Give me a minute," I say.

A blond woman with a nose tube and the look of imminent death about her person cries out for a nurse. One other than my Laura goes to her bedside and they exchange whispers. It is a strange conspiracy I hear, but then women are always indulging in these exchanges and they are not unexpected. Perhaps a man is involved and they are arranging who is to do what to him and in what order.

"Bathroom?" asks the new nurse across the room.

I can virtually see the woman nodding assent, though there is what looks like a shower curtain between us. They are shadows indulging in a tame light show.

Then they appear stage right and proceed to stage left, the tall fair woman practically straddling the nurse and being carried along on her back like a long, limp packsack; together they stagger across my field of vision and disappear from it, but not before I call out, "Hi."

This I still am, I know.

They disappear into the ladies's and close the door behind them. I imagine a Lesbian assignation. That is a bad joke. The patient is simply ridding herself of the little personal something she has left in her body cavity.

I am dressing, having to retrieve my morning's selection of clothing from between my legs, as though performing some rude calisthenic having to do with touching my forehead to my knees while remaining seated. It is difficult, I report, but it can be done. Here are my dear pants, my shirt, my coat sweater, my white Jockey briefs. Unmilitary, they. Now, where are my dog tags? Oh, yes—I remember stopping wearing them forty years ago.

My head swims. Bile rises on my black tongue. Out and away is my need. I rise to liquid feet, with legs (mainly knees) to match. We move off toward the elevators. Norma, normally calm and ruthlessly efficient, can't remember the floor of the parking garage she left the car on. Or, for that matter, the floor which we are presently on, which is Two. My mind is clear but light. While she attempts to puzzle this out, I behold out the window a world that is newly transformed. How pretty it is.

The same sun spangles the pavement, true, as when I went into the hospital, but is has undergone a modification of its former sparkle and now issues forth startlingly brilliant, a veritable supernova. Miracle cars move down wondrous streets at an astonishing pace, slow and smooth as satin sheets. People occupy the sidewalks and interiors of cars as though believing that they belong there and no supernatural being is pulling their strings and breathing through their mouths. It is an ordinary day at the end of the workweek, a Friday of the psyche, one early in January, in the year of the Lord (if you choose to call him that) 1995. Sounds like a price, I know—$19.95.

A bargain at K-Mart, at any price.. One of their famed Blue-Light Specials. Well, every day is.

* * *

"Benign!" screams the sun, splashing in the living room window. "Benign!" rasps the Stellar's Jay at the birdfeeder on the deck. "Benign" tweets the Dark-Eyed Junco (sometimes called the Oregon Junco) perched on the rail above the five jays that dominate the scene and are about ten times the body weight of each tiny Junco. I place the telephone receiver on the cradle and smile.

A week has passed, spent productively, but at the back of my mind is always the vague uncertainty of what the lab might find. Dr. Feld has noted on my standard going-home form that he will phone me at my home about noon an exact week after he invaded my rectum with his cruel tool—an act which may extend my life far into the future as reward for this violation. It will be during his lunch hour, and he will pluck from his pile of reports mine and, lifting the phone, dial my number. That report is from the lab and will either announce my doom or its reprieve. Has my number come up in the Vast Lottery of Death's Wheel, or has it been staved off for a while longer?

Because he is a precise man, a scientist, the product of—hey, don't demean it—a general studies program at Harvard which led to a medical degree from Emory, I call him Emory, disliking titles, probably because I have none of my own, unless wants to call me Master (because of my Masters Degree) or Corporal, which is self-explanatory, in light of what precedes this section. And even though we have met about one and one-half times, the second time being when I was passing out from my narcotic even before he, eh-hem, penetrated me, I feel I can, er, presume this familiarity, since no other man has known me in such a way, or so thoroughly.

"The report came back from the lab," he begins, "with a description of your large polyp, which is of the class (unintelligible) and of the (unintelligible) type, and so forth."

"Benign or not? Neoplasm or not?" I interrupt.

He continues, "It was of the pre-cancerous kind (unintelligible)," plus more of the same mumbo-jumbo.

"So it isn't cancerous?" Gasp, sigh.

"No."

"Go on, I'm sorry." Sorry, I mean, for interrupting him, but I feared this most interesting and illustrative lecture on the kind of items that might be found growing in the fecund greenhouse of my bowel might go on and on before he, shall we say, gave me grace, or cut to the chase, and so forth, and I was most impatient to learn not the general situation but the specific.

We chat on and on about sigma bends, siting, how smaller polyps are in effect zapped by electricity in the colonoscope and made to disintegrate into tiny shards and fragments no larger than cosmic dust, so that even if he wanted to (and he didn't) none of it could be retrieved, let alone biopsied, though there was no worry because of their smallness. Generally polyps like mine, and those unlike mine, are a long time in growing to adulthood, which takes ten or a dozen years, and some prove cancerous, some not, just as some are asymptomatic, which means there is no pain or discomfort (that wonderful euphemism again) and therefore not easy to detect without his magic scope.

"You mean, I had that thing growing up my ass for maybe ten years?"

"You could have."

"And it was the cause of the, er, discomfort (see, I can do it, too) I was suffering?"

"Not necessarily. Remember, I said many were asymptomatic."

"Right, right. But it could have been the source of the visible blood in my turds?"

"Oh yes. It was. And how are you feeling now?"

"Not much discomfort (note the ease with which I use the word) lately or, for that matter, about six weeks before you did me with your little endoscope."

"And no blood?"

"No. But thanks for asking."

"Good."

And there we were. Even before I put the phone down, the sun began its splashy business on the glass again, the birds their affirmative rasp and tweet. In fact, everything that grew or rose immobile outside my window now shone with vigor and brightness. Imagine the world notched up several degrees on its scale of values and magnified by blinding light and you will have a fractional notion of what I experienced that moment and for the days to follow, but soon it was back to bland normality and the daily grind of a writer, which is to write, make the pages pile up. The productive life that he loves.

Bouts of radiation and chemotherapy did not lie ahead, with days of disaccommodation and retching misery to follow which would prevent me from writing less well than I could expect to do. No excuse, no alibi, no respite, either.

Exactly the way I wanted it. Thank God, or Whomever.