Trying my best to figure out who this next letter is from. I think it says "Mary" - another lost Mary, this one a high school classmate and best friend. The only thing that makes me think it isn't her, is that Mary was left handed, and had one of those handwritings that slants left, and is very nearly impossible to read. This one slants right. All the same, I think it is her. I can't think of anyone else living in Chicago in 1963 who would be writing to me. She had moved up there, and was going to school somewhere (Loyola???). She had a tiny apartment up on the "Gold Coast". I visited her there once - it was practically an attic, but in a very tony neighborhood. This Mary was sent off to a private school in the east for her senior year, and returned with the first Joan Baez and Bob Dylan records I ever heard. I remember all of us gathering at her house to listen to them. The last I saw of her in Chicago, she was drinking quite a bit. Her childhood hero was Audie Murphy. I heard she was a ski instructor in Colorado, but that was at least 20 years ago, if not more. Someone else I wish I could find.

Hard to know what to write about this one - do want to protect his privacy, and not shout old times all over the net. So I suppose all I can say, is that it a story about honesty and integrity - honesty and integrity regretted, but honesty and integrity all the same. I know sometimes, when I have resisted similar opportunities to get away with something - taking something that no one will miss, or at least, which could not be traced to me - I have felt as if perhaps I just wasn't brave or political or savvy enough. Was my honesty and integrity more a part of chickening out of the possibility of getting caught? Or did I honestly believe that I should not take something I had not paid for. Even if it belonged to some huge faceless organization (corporations, the army, whatever). I actually did do it once, and immediately got caught. I shoplifted a package of No-Doz. I was tired of explaining to my boyfriend why I thought I should pay for things, (he took stuff all the time, as a protest against the corporations, he said - I know, I know - it's stupid. I even thought so at the time, but I couldn't argue against it without being labeled hopelessly bourgeois and I wasn't strong enough for that) and I didn't have any money, and didn't want to ask him for any and get a lecture - it's a long, boring story. Suffice it to say, do not commit crimes you aren't any good at. I still don't like thinking about it. I don't think I would like thinking about it, even if I didn't get caught. I have broken other laws, but no others that involved stealilng. If my children were starving, I know that then I would steal food without a qualm. But for myself??? I don't know.

September 21, 1960. A letter from Ft. Knox, Kentucky, where he is in basic training. Kennedy is President. We are, I believe, about a month away from the Cuban Missile Crisis (if I remember correctly, from looking it up just a minute ago, which I probably don't). An fellow trainee has just been to see a new movie, Advise and Consent, and according to my informant, completely misses the homosexual angle. Just simply has no idea whatsoever. And he liked the movie. I owe my interest in music to this man, although he was not a rock and roll fan. He introduced me to jazz, and he says here he is known as the guy who likes "that Mozart shit." If he were here, I would remind him that yesterday was Mozart's birthday. I know that because it says so on my Grateful Dead calendar. :) I don't remember seeing A&C when it came out. I do remember reading the book. I got the homosexual angle.