Dear Marion,

From dull stretches of legal composition, my mind insists
on straying to topics of our current correspondence, where 
it discovers items, from tidbits to portentous anecdotes, that
previously fell though the ever widening mesh of the sieve of
my memory.

The most picturesque of the nicknames with which my parents decorated
their rural milieu, they gave to the village-store proprietor, one
Thomas Lee Waters, universally known as T.L., and until my parents
arrived on the scene, the head of the only Democratic voting family
in the Konnarock valley, from Bear Tree Gap to Fairwood. As a reward
in patronage, the Roosevelt administration had installed him in 1933
as the Konnarock postmaster. I don't know when or how he acquired
the decommissioned railroad station which now, on the first floor,
housed a rather large store-room in which the Waters sold groceries and
from where, whichever family member was on duty, could slip effortlessly
into the adjacent, much smaller room that was the postoffice.
On October 10, 1946, I submitted to my English A instructor, who
was making valiant efforts to teach me how to write, an essay
"Forgotten Men" in which I described T.L. in his store, and noted
that his hands reminded me of the claws of a vulture. After my
parents had read my essay, they invariably referred to T.L. as
Der Geier. (the vulture).

Far more meaningful to my mind is the story that my father enjoyed
telling, and he told it repeatedly, during the final years of his life.
When I recite it in German, I hear the sound of my father's voice.
"Jakobchen war ein kleiner einfaeltiger Jude, den die Katholiken von
der Richtigkeit ihres Glaubens ueberzeugt hatten. Obgleich Jakobchen 
zum Katholizismus uebergetreten war, blieb es ihm beschwerlich sich
mit den neuen Diaetvorschriften abzufinden. Eines Freitagabends
ueberraschte ihn beim Verzehren einer Gans, ein unerwarteter Besuch
seines neuen Seelsorgers. "Aber Jakobchen," sagte der Priester.
"Du darfst das nicht. Du darfst am Freitag kein Gefluegel essen."
Darauf antwortete Jakobchen: "Du warst ein Jud', du warst ein Jud',
bist jetzt ein Christ, bist jetzt ein Christ. Du warst 'ne Gans,
Du warst 'ne Gans, bist jetzt 'n Fisch, bist jetzt 'n Fisch."

It's not to impugn your German, but it's for the benefit of a friend
who might want to read over my shoulder, and for the pleasure of
verbal acrobatics that I translate:

Jake was a simple little Jew whom the Catholics had persuaded of
the virtues of their faith, and who had been converted. He was,
however, experiencing some difficulties with the new dietary rules.
One Friday evening, while enjoying the meat of a goose for his supper,
Jake had a surprise visit from his priest, who reprimanded him:
"But Jake, I told you, you mustn't have meat on Fridays. How
could you do this?" Jake, however, was unembarrassed.
"No more a Jew, no more a Jew, a Christian now, a Christian now.
A goose no more, a goose no more, you're now a fish, you're now a fish."

I see the impish expression on my father's face each time he told
the story. It should put to rest, though unfortunately posthumously,
once and for all, Fritz's and Margot's concerns both about my father's
"conversion" and about his purported lugubriousness and lack of humor.
It may also point to the source of my own irreverence.

Jochen