“People have a way of telling you what they think you wanna hear — anytime I don’t know something and I ask somebody, I usually know less about it after I ask them.” — Bob Dylan

Life.

Forever (or what it seems like) I’ve been working on a book about Vietnam — mostly about Vietnam.

I begin by seeing a school bus slowly pulling up in front of our quad. There we were loaded into the bus and transported to Honolulu where we secretly boarded a troop ship, for a 5,000-mile cruise to Vietnam. General Libscomb referred to us as “Jungle Warriors.” I think that was in question.

I spent a challenging time last Tuesday talking to someone who may be willing to sell the book with my help. That’s not what I hoped for. Talking to this woman was not an easy thing. While we talked on the phone Mello and Fred spent most of their time barking at kids passing by, which is the usual case.

There are other elements in the book that includes Jim Kramer and I dropping out of college before the last summer session to hitchhike to where “Parrish,” I believe was the title, in the southeast. Instead we went west to the Oregon coast. Our destination was Hawaii. Cousin Ed transported us to Albert Lea, where we began our journey.

I think it was later that same summer that Cousin Ed, Max, Keith and I drove to California in  Lucky’s car. We made it to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Tijuana.

Mello is about to go to Rochester to discover another way to manage a dog. In the meantime Fred will be lost, but so far he has been dozing.

In other news, you have probably felt a drop in the temperatures and the loss of daylight. I’ve taken Mello and Fred out to the leaf collection area. Today there was a dog running around the leaf piles that created a pile of barking.