What Jerry said about getting to know one's father, posthumously, took me back 27 years. It was the first time I made it back to my mothers' place in Minnesota, after the emergency trip there to his deathbed. She had turned in before me, and I happened to open the old bookcase-desk. I found a small bundle of letters I had never seen. My father had written them to her, in the late 1920's, when he was working out of state for a few months. I don't know if they were officially engaged yet, but it was apparent from the letters that they might as well have been. My father was not a humorless man, but he very, very seldom expressed his feelings. I sat down with the letters, and met a young man freely expressing romantic longing, and throwing in a kind of silly humor I had never heard from him. It took a bit for the tears to subside.
                         Dean