Ok, this is much better. It is before Thanksgiving - still looking forward to Louisville - not so much the dark side.

A cultural note: It's 1962. We were not married, but we were planning to spend the weekend together in a hotel. In 1962, unless you were in a dive of some sort, this is hard to do. The letter is full of all kinds of ruses and strategems for getting away with it. From registering under a false single name (I picked "Laura Wyndham" of all things. I don't know why I didn't turn out to be a romance writer! But "Barbara Bates - which was my maiden name - simply wasn't my cup of tea. As a small child, in my father's grocery store in Badger, Iowa, before he took up making concrete steps in Decatur, Illinois, I used to steal dates from the barrel[yes, there was a date barrel - this was the 40's] and there was a little chant that went around the local kiddom - "Barbara Bates is full of dates." - Finally - that confession is out in the open! Oh, the humiliation!)

Anyway - it's either Laura Wyndham - obviously a refugee from some remote castle in England somewhere - or I register under his name and we say we're married. I go into this thing about different identities or realities for three pages of detail. At some point I mention that I used to work in a motel, so "I know what the personnel notice." I don't remember working in a motel.

I'm looking forward to turning 20 in "three months and 13 days," but apparently still feel 18. "Gee, honey, you're 22. You seem so old."

Today he'd look like a puppy.