Oh, boy! Here I am. 42 years ago. September 1962. A card I sent to my wonderful fiancee'. Just a silly little thing - something about an anniversary with some blue fluff still attached to the hat of a smiling little top-hatted guy on the front. I'll dispense with the fluffy love stuff. We all know what happened to that. But here I am, in all my 1962 glory - and I like her, and miss her.

"Lovely day! I just love studying and people and life and you and just everything. For the first time in my life I feel as if I'm really learning! And I love it. Gee do I wish I could talk to you. Where did all the intelligentsia around here go? I can't find anyone to share my enthusiam. Come back soon!"

And that was me (I still can't get over it). I feel like singing "The Way We Were." No, no. Too sappy. But I'm glad there was this time in my life. I'm glad to find evidence of it. I still get enthusiastic from time to time. And I still have trouble finding someone to share my enthusiasm.

Another letter from home. Dad sends money. Sister Joan and Mary Ann send brownies. Old fashioned brownies. The envelope is from the Anchor Step Company, 4483 West Main, Wycles Corner, Decatur, Illinois. My dad's business. Concrete steps and septic tanks. I used to work there in the summers. I had a crush on the various riff raff who worked for him. Don't know what I've always found so damned attractive about underemployed mechanics.

Much as my dad and I didn't get along (probably more about that later, if it comes up), one thing I always admired him for. His plant manager was a black man. Dad was rock-ribbed Republican. I was once taken to see Dwight Eisenhower at the Illinois State Fair, and sat on my dad's shoulders while he shook Ike's hand. Dad was totally anti-union, and I think there were some dust-ups about that with the hired help over the years. But he hired whom he liked, and used them for their best abilities as he saw them. I didn't have a crush on the plant manager. He was an "older" man, with a wife and lots of kids. My dad later hired his wife to help my mother clean house. My mother used to clean the house before she got there, so she wouldn't think mom was a slob. I think they became friends of a sort. As much as they could become in the late 1950's.

Okay. Here's a letter from the Big-Little Sister Program Chairman, reminding me that I have volunteered to be a Big Sister to an incoming freshman, and informing me of her address and that I am to write to her three times over the summer. She gives me dates by which each of the three letters is due. I am to write to her, regardless of whether the little twip writes back to me or not. There is even a form, outlining the contents of the three letter. Couldn't be easier. Whaddya wanna bet I didn't do it? Or at least, not letters two and three. I wonder what I will find in this folder as I plough on through. Answers from my benighted little sister? Clues as to whether or not I followed through or folded on yet another promise?

In the second letter, I am to describe campus traditions: Evergreen Walk, Kissing rock, greeting everyone, campus serenades, work day, homecominig. Suggested clothing includes formals, campus clothes, raincoat, sportswear, etc. I don't remember any of the traditions. Too many other traditions have intervened.

Jesus Christ on a bicycle! Who the hell was I in 1962? At what point did I lead anyone on to thinking I was thinking of a career in the church? The only thing I can think of is that perhaps, at some Luther League conference or other (yes, I went to those - was state secretary of Luther League one year in my teens, sometime around the same time I was reading Ayn Rand) I must have signed an interest slip, or talked some bull or other to somebody. I did have a social conscience - naive and ignorant as can be, but my intentions...anyway, perhaps I mouthed off about intentions or something, and made someone somewhere think I might be interested in becoming a Lutheran Church deaconess. Sort of like a nun.

My mother forwards a letter from them: "You seemed to have a keen desire to find yourself through such a church-related career....But now we are not so sure. For some time we have heard nothing from you, and so we wonder if you have lost the vision. Have you gone into some other type of work? Or been married?" Ye jippities! Well, sweetie, if you or any of your descendants are reading this, by this time I had lost my virginity, both smoked and drank, and considered myself a hard-bitten atheist. Of course, later in life I morphed into a Deadhead pagan. I'm sorry I didn't write.

Mom herself writes: "The snowflakes are dancing today here. Our weather has been so lovely - and now it will be nice to have snow when we prepare for Christmas. Our house looks quite festive already. We entertained the Sunday School teachers here last nite, so we did some decorating. It's nice and clean today and dressed up looking - which is nice when it's snowing outside."

And folks wonder why I get all nostalgic for snow when it turns December! I bet the house smelled of ginger and vanilla.