My Uncle Jim and Aunt Toots

When I was a young child, my parents lived next-door to Jim and Toots in a house that Jim had built. My uncle and aunt were childless and became like a second set of parents to me. When they were in their early forties, they moved to Ft. Myers, Florida, and I spent several wonderful summers there when I was still a kid and have continued to visit periodically (but not often enough) ever since.

"When Uncle Bob (or Ted or Ray) promised to send a shooting star over the house to mark a young listener's birthday, the young listener, who had hung out the window for an hour without seeing the star, questioned not Uncle Bob (or Ted or Ray), but his own eyesight." VINCENT CANBY

JIM, TOOTS, and BRIDGET

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, / When fond recollection presents them to view." SAMUEL WOODWORTH from THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET

UNCLE JIM: looking pretty good for 78

JIM, MY MOM, and TOOTS

TOOTS also looking pretty good for 78

Right: TOOTS and JIM signing my "stump," a tree part that I used to use as an autograph book for anyone who visited my apartment.

Left: UNCLE JIM, ME, and my son, ETHAN, playing poker.

"...O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again; Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes -- I float on the Okeechobee -- I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests; I see the parrots in the woods -- I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;..." WALT WHITMAN from LEAVES OF GRASS

POSTSCRIPT "A man's wife has more power over him than the state has." RALPH WALDO EMERSON

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