Letter 22.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015.                           1:25 p.m.

Provo  Utah

My Dear Ohen;

Today I’m sending you a photograph of a breakfast I ate in Little Rock, Arkansas, way back in 2005. Back then I always had a hearty appetite for breakfast, and, since I was on the road with the circus and had to eat all my meals out, I also appreciated that breakfast was always the cheapest meal of the day. There’s always some dinky roadside café that can make scrambled eggs with cheese and home fries with toast on the side and a cup of hot chocolate. I think I paid $2.95 for this meal. I never left a tip, either. If I liked the food and the waitress was pleasant I would leave a couple of complimentary circus passes as my tip.

Hey, I wonder if you will get this letter before I see you on Thursday evening? I’m mailing it today, so that gives the post office 2 days to take it from Provo to Orem. I’ll have to ask you Christmas Eve if you got this letter yet.

The next photograph is of KICD Radio, in Spencer, Iowa – where I worked as the News Director back in 2004, I think it was.

The whole state of Iowa is like someone’s big back yard – full of lawns and shade trees and ponds (which Iowans like to call lakes – but growing up in Minnesota I KNOW how big lakes should be, and that they should be full of fish and frogs and turtles and you should barely be able to see the other side of the lake; they don’t have any lakes like that in Iowa!)

I remember I rented half of a house in Spencer, from the city government, which owned the house and was planning on tearing it down but kept postponing it because the city council couldn’t decide what to put up in its’ place. I paid $125.00 a month for it. The only furniture I had was a big screen TV, a recliner, and a bed. I was hardly ever there. I had to get up at 3 every morning to drive down to the station to get a newscast ready for 6 a.m.

They turned off the traffic lights after midnight in Spencer, and the lights still weren’t turned on when I drove there in the morning, so I just drove straight on through on the main highway to get to work. I always passed a cop car parked at Main and Central on my way to work, and after a few weeks they would always wave at me and run their red & blue light to say ‘hello’ as I passed by.

This last photo is of the weekend flea market they had at City Park in Spencer during the summer. In the picture you will notice three birdhouses . . . made out of cowboy boots. They were a big seller, very popular with homeowners. You could see them festooned on the elm trees and weeping willows that spread over the front lawns on Main Street. I never saw any birds actually using them, and to this day I wonder if a bird would really want to build a nest in a stinky old cowboy boot that probably smelled like cow pies.

Perhaps you’ll grow up to make birdhouses out of old cereal boxes – but I’d rather see you grow up to be a ping pong world champion.

Yer pal,  tt