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his fans. This fan had been more determined than the rest.
    The sun was high and my room bright. I looked around. The Beech-Nut Gum clock was keeping reasonable time on the wall over my dresser. The pillow which said, “God Bless Our Happy Home,” sat in the corner of the sofa, and my table and two chairs sat near the window overlooking the backyard and the garage where Mrs. Plaut, from time to time, tinkered with the Model A Mr. Plaut had left to her when he died.
    The day was still going fine. I took off my denim jacket, loosened my tie, and thought seriously about calling Doc Hodgdon for a game or two of handball at the YMCA. I put the groceries away in my small refrigerator and the little cupboard above it, poured myself a glass of milk, and sat down to dunk away the Hydrox cookies. If I couldn’t have Carmen for a few days, and my ex-wife Anne wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, I could at least eat myself fat.
    Mrs. Plaut’s chapter lay before me on the table. I hadn’t looked at it since she had given it to me a week before. I read the opening paragraphs:
Granny Teller first met the peddler on August the 16th in the year 1836 two days after the fact of Grandfather Teller’s demise from an overindulgence in foods of a spiced nature which we now know will eat away your guts. She was need I say despondent but she had the farm to run and Ohio was remote and my mother and her brothers young. Actually Uncle Bike was not really young at that juncture, but he acted as if part of the mind was bent like a young elm branch with too many possums calling it home. Uncle Bike was oft called an Idiot, but that was unkind and possibly not even true.
To the peddler for I am sure, gentle reader, you are curious about this curious encounter. My mother told me he came on August 16 of the year given above as I have related and that his name was Lute McLain and that he wore a gray stovepipe hat which was most inappropriate for the weather in August and Ohio at any time. Granny Teller was in no mood or economic state to purchase the time of day, but Lute McLain was determined and a Baptist to boot or so he confessed. He tried pins, dry goods, crackers, even a Jews harp which much appealed to Uncle Bike but not Granny Teller.
“Well,” Lute McLain said according to my mother. “I have nothing else but my son out in the wagon. He works hard, has little intellect, and is decent enough to look at.” My mother looked at the wagon in front of the house and there sat a boy who looked no brighter than Bike but his nose was certainly not mashed and he had his teeth.
“No thank you,” Granny Teller said according to my mother. “I’ve already got one of those.” She meant my Uncle Bike.
“I meant, Dear Lady, that my son Buff might make a suitable husband,” said Mr. Lute McLain.
“My daughter is too young,” Granny Teller said.
“But, Dear Lady, you are in your prime and have just lost your husband.”
“I am fifty and one,” said Granny Teller.
“Buff is eighteen,” said Lute McLain. “And you can have him for twenty dollars gold.”
“You have sold your son,” said Granny Teller.
They were wed three weeks later when Preacher Willins from Dayton came through on his rounds. True to Lute McLain’s word Buff was stupid and worked hard. Granny Teller always said he was a bargain. It was only three years later that Buff admitted that he was not the son of Lute McLain but an itinerant, a runaway who McLain had picked up in Virginia and promised to find a wife and good home.
Ten years later when Granny Teller died happy, Buff, whose name was Plaut, married my mother and later became my father. I do not remember him well since he expired in an argument with a Sioux Indian name of Sidney Worth in Kansas City when I was eleven, but my mother assured me and my sister and my brother often that our father was not nearly as dense as he had been sold to be.
    There was more. I finished my cookies and milk, being careful not to get Mrs.