Columbia, 3-2-'59.
It was a perfect flight! We saw no clouds from Portland to Denver, and only a few luminous and peaceful ones from there to Kansas City. Not a bump all the way! Old Jed was very much with us up the Snake and right across the middle of Bear Lake. Hilda and Gail were waiting for us at the gate. We had a dinner with all the trimmings at a rather swank joint outside of K. C. (Robin wasn't hungry, but by way of being a
good fellow he consented to eat what looked like half a hen, French fried, with all the accessories.) We reached home at 10 o' clock. Yo-Yo met me on her hind legs, full of arfs at joy. When I picked her up she bit my nose and pulled my hair, and kissed me all over the face. Sunday morning went out to Skryim to see my new granddaughter! My saddle mary e, Beverly's Dream, had her colt while I was gone — a bright chestnut with white stockings and a star in the forehead! And
it's a filly! Her
daddy is Shell Crest Silver, a tall, perfectly formed gray stallion, and her mama is related to almost everybody who is anybody in the snooty world of American Saddle horses. The little girl is tall, long-necked, short-backed — a sweetheart! Her mama made a mean face at me and showed her teeth, so I couldn't pet my new granddaughter. The next time I go out it will be different; but just now the miracle is too recent, and there's no admission
even for me!
Everyone here is well, and they all want me to send warm greetings to you. Old Sig has a special feeling for you, Bower, since he has gone through the same ordeal.
This is home, and all are dear, from Yo-Yo and the horses on up; but I am homesick! Isn't that silly? I really am homesick, and I don't want to be. I love to think of the gauzy rain on "the green with which that breathing land is green", and the sweet spirit that lives there. And I know the sweet
nut. I have written for permission to enter when we go there. I must stand in that room again and remember Mrs. Lulu Lobb. (You know about her coming to Mona in a dream in 1941 just after I'd finished the Cycle!) I wish you could be with me in that room. I can't tell you what I feel deep down in me when I think of being again in that
room after 70 years. Surely she did remember me, and come to me through Mona. It was all quite unmistakable. And if she remembered, could she not know that I had come back to think of her and thank her for being so beautiful and so good and so everything an adoring boy can feel in a fine woman? ( And I'm that boy yet). I want you to stand there with me a little while where my seat used to stand.
I hope we can visit these places in K. C. — all fairly close together — take photos and make some tape records of memories. This sort of thing can give you atmosphere. Lynn Hall expressed surprise that I knew all the places so well, and could drive directly to them. I do, apparently, have a vivid memory. Maybe that explains
the character of the descriptions in the Cycle.
I'll be seeing you soon, dear people! Love to each and arfs to Stewart, who, like myself, is still young enough to understand the four-legged languages.
John N.
This pen is very bad. I've misplaced the other.
