Brian,

I read Romeo & Juliet sitting in a woods in a grove of Hemlocks next to 
a stream. I felt really bad when the tall Hemlock in our side yard here 
on LI died.

Comic books: as a kid we did not have a whole lot of books in the house. 
I have made up for that. My stepfather worked as a machinist for a while 
and once the machines were set up there were long hours of sitting and 
waiting for them to spit out their little goodies. As a result the crew 
bought and read comic books. My stepfather would bring them home. So we 
had piles and piles of comic books. At the school library I was well 
known for burning my way through the shelves, but at home it was Classic 
Comics that introduced me to 'literature.' I remember my Born Again 
(Methodist) side of a grandmother used to get upset that we were reading 
those filthy comics and destroying our brains. I also very clearly 
remember her telling me about how she was visited by three devils in the 
night... little guys not unlike an ET-abduction scene. She also slapped 
me around one time for reading Freud in the back pews during church 
service. And -- our bathroom had two doors on it you could never tell 
what was going on and she slapped me around for walking in on her one 
day. You have to be cautious what you read, and where.

Though we did not have many books we did have the Marquis de Sade hidden 
in a bed table drawer. It was kept next to the Smith & Wesson 9 mm 
pistol. That was very strange reading.

As to connecting girl friends with books. I had this one girl friend 
that I won't go into the details right here other than the elder mason I 
worked for asked me why she walked like a cowboy. She got my head so 
screwed around I did not know what direction I was going in. I bought 
one of Jung's collected works, a Bollingen series, read it, then bought 
all of his collected works and read at least one more. The others I 
admit that I only looked at the pictures. I still have them, they are 
laying around in a pile here somewhere (large books on top of small ones 
and small ones on top of large) like life savers in case I need to read 
them in a hurry.

One day my mother figured we were grown up and she threw out all of our 
comic books.

][<

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