The main person I corresponded with was Jack Neff.

Jack was a painter, a couple of years older than me, from Delray Beach. We grew up fishing and playing playground sports, in season. Football, basketball, baseball. Plus roller skating, flying kites, shooting marbles.

We didn't play varsity football, for example, but knew the kids who did.

He was in the Army, stationed at Fort Knox. He was a PFC, and worked on radios in tanks. He had been drafted.

One weekend I visited him in Louisville. Found the company he was in, the CQ, in the dayroom, had him notified that he had a visitor. We had a cup of coffee.

He said later on, when the EM Club opened, we could have a beer.

I said, "No thanks, I have to get back. I'm on a three-day pass. If I don't leave now, I'll be AWOL."

He thought that was funny, that I would hitch-hike 1,000 miles, each way, to visit him for 15 minutes, but of course the trip was the thing, not the visit.