LETTERS FROM HOME: SEARCHING FOR WORDS ALONG THE KATY TRAIL

April 25, 1996

Dear Ken,

Thanks for the letter. We received a card from Melina at about the same time. She was in New York for a visit but has left Columbia and Colorado for Eugene, Ore., her new temporary home while she figures out her next move.

Freeloading with her amour, free-lancing for the Register-Guard. Says Oregon's a healing place. No phone number or address was included, so I guess she's incommunicado for now.

DC and I were just in Columbia, a town filled with ghosts for me. Ford's Theatre, my home away from home long ago, is gone, replaced by a bar where frat boys play drinking games and make hooting noises. Shakespeare's Pizza and the Heidelberg, which completed a student's world back then, are still in business, though in one case for better and in the other for worse.

I almost expected to turn a corner and see an old girlfriend. A bit frightening because after 20 years I still wouldn't know what to say. Maybe so long is all that's left sometimes.

In some way, keeping these memories unresolved also keeps them alive, and in some way that drains life from the present.

The present in Columbia seems full of life. There's a new journalism building, plenty of coffee houses. And right downtown, hard by the stores that sold loafers and sport coats to SOMEBODY through the '60s, is an establishment that deals in natural foods, books about shamans and goddesses, otherworldly music. Felt like California.

DC and I and her brother Paul, who lives in Columbia, rode our bikes on the Katy Trail. Bluffs above, pastures below, sparkly gravel beneath your wheels. A bicycle trail is supposed to be in the works in Cape Girardeau, too. A good sign of civilization.

Also went to a winery, ordinarily another good sign, that overlooks the Missouri River. But it was no quiet place to sip and drink in heaven and earth. SRO with students toasting in the sun. DC suggests that's because it only takes one I.D. to buy a bottle of wine.

Saw a bizarrely beautiful movie called "Fargo." I'd tell you about it but it's another of those cases where I don't know what to say. The movie has the ability both charm and repulse.

Usually one of those reactions cancels out the other. Not in "Fargo."

Numerous people mention how much they miss you, so I relay to them your thriving circumstances and your drolleries about St. Joe.

Joni has organized a "Random Acts of Kindness Week" and more than 60 businesses and organizations have signed up. We're also sponsoring a meatloaf contest. Supposedly there's an art to making a proud meatloaf. Heck, all you need is lots of ketchup.

Jo's looking forward to the end of school but I don't think the French class took. "Bonjour monsieur," she says when she passes my desk. One semester, two words. Maybe she just doesn't have anything to say.

Sandy gives me aspirin and asks after Hank and Lucy, our dogs. John, Jeff and I play golf at least twice a week. We're serious enough to give each other playing tips, always prefaced by the words, "I don't have any business telling anybody how to play golf, but..."

We also sympathize operatically when the 3-footers rim the cup.

It's a good game that considers the opposition worthy of encouragement and comfort, no? Come play sometime.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.