As an almost-charter member of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club I greet you.  (The album is fabulous, by the way.)  I will attempt in this letter to give you grounds to say in your next that this was the longest you have ever gotten.  I will also do my mightiest to let you say (with only one pair of fingers crossed) that you have never enjoyed a letter more.  I hope you don't have a verbose, crazy girlfriend.

Notice the name of the record that is in its second week as the super summer psychedelicatessen's silver dollar survey sound number one.  The new survey came out today, and "Windy" has made it three in a row.  I hate to say I told you so, but I did predict it.  Have you changed your mind about the song since that night at Bethel?

[a cartoon about summer session]  It's not really all that bad.  Biology (at 7:00, lab, and 8:00, lecture) is too early in the morning to be uncomfortable, and Chemistry, from 9:00-12:30, is in the brand new, air-conditioned science and engineering building.

There are only three people in the biology lab.  They split the lecture section into two lab sections and almost everybody (15 people) is in the other one.  The teacher has a Ph.D., is a nice guy and will be able to give us individual attention by the bunches.  There are eight people in the chemistry class.  The teacher has a Ph.D., is not a nice guy, and will also be able to keep track of all of us.  His quizzes are something else.  He passes out 5x7 note cards at the beginning of the class period.  Then during his lecture sometime he'll put a question or a problem on the board.  We work the problem or answer the question on the cards and hand them in.  He's pretty sure no one will daydream in class.

Miss Kathy Day, a girl from across the street, just had a birthday.  Overflowing with the joy of being five, she came over, climbed up on my lap (uninvited, even) and told me all about it.  She got "a two-piece swimming suit, and up here it sticks out."

A couple of nights later David Weigel (age 7) came over and asked if "Chuck could come out."  It really didn't take much coaxing from my mom ("It took courage to come and ask, you know.") to get me to change my mind about being busy.  It turned out that he and two of the Day girls wanted "horsey-back rides."  I smiled and said, "Once around the house each."  Three kids would be no problem at all.  But when I rounded the corner to the back of the house, I heard a chorus of "Chuck's here" and noticed the five kids that were playing back there.  They followed me around to the front of the house and got in line.  By the time I had run around the house eight times ("Horses don't walk.") I hardly had enough energy left to stagger home.  But every kid in the neighborhood loves me.

I spent one evening last week at a girl's house in a town about 25 miles away.  On the way home I had to change a flat tire alone, at midnight on a country road, without a flashlight.  Try it sometime.  The headlights light up the 300 yards in front of the car, but shed absolutely no light on the left rear tire.

The first Monday night I was home I went with 11 other guys and 3 cases of 16 oz. Schlitz to a cabin on the Mississippi.  When everybody had sufficiently fired up, we went skinny-dipping in the river, just off a sand bar.  I didn't have anything to drink, but I did go swimming, since I was sure my parents couldn't smell that on my breath.  Try to picture 12 college freshmen, half of them drunk and all of them nude, running football plays (without a football) in thigh-high water.  It was a blast.

I didn't drink anything that night, but I wasn't quite so lucky over the weekend.  Saturday morning another kid (Les) and I hitchhiked to Madison.  We spent most of the day wandering around the town buying records, clothes, posters, buttons and a playmate garter [enclosed].  The stores are cool, but the bars are fabulous.  The KK (Kollege Klub) sells more beer than any other tavern in the U.S., and almost all of it to college students.  I had half a pitcher (a quart) there and 6 more bottles at a friend's apartment.  Then Les and I went to a girl's apartment and spent the night there.  It sounds bad, but nothing immoral went on.  I got sick twice, but was within striking distance of a john both times.  It was the first time I've been drunk, and I'm almost sure it'll be the last.  I needed something like that to convince me that drinking isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Fifteen minutes after I got my I.D. last September I had downed my first legal beer and it felt great to be a big boy at last.  But no one cared any more (except my parents) and that took all the thrill out of it.  I think I'm almost beyond temptation now.  But you can count on my not telling too many people that, even at Bethel, for fear of being thought "different."  Next year I'll still whip out my I.D. and flash it proudly every time somebody mentions drinking.  [ws 18, mn and many others 21]

But the big problem right now is that nothing seems to be going on in town that doesn't involve drinking.  All of my friends drink--often and hard.  Even the kids who were always sober when it came time to decide who should drive home have acquired a taste for the devil's brew.  The class of '66 seems likely to break all the records for consumption of liquids, but I don't want to get drawn into the 40-proof stream.  But no problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from, so I guess that's what I'll do.

The summer and fall after we moved to Platteville I was writing to a girl in West St. Paul.  Her mother sent me twenty five-cent stamps and a thank you note for getting her acquainted with her mailman.  She had to pay overdue postage on almost every letter I sent.  I had one of the first ones weighed at the post office and had to put three stamps on it.  After that I just put one stamp on and hoped they'd sneak through.  They never did.  One of those letters reached the rather astounding length of 25 pages--on typewriter-size paper.

I've spent most of my spare time in the last couple of weeks reading.  There's a whole world full of books that I haven't read, but I went back and started The Lord of the Rings again.  I'm 2/3 of the way through it (3rd time) and I like it even better.  There's never a feeling that he's trying to moralize, never an unbelievable scene, never a psychological letdown; just eye-straining, page-turning, attention- absorbing, midnight-oil-burning joy.  The characters are so beautiful that you ache to meet them, and so real that they step out of the pages and you feel that you have met them.  If anyone had dreams for sale, I'd order enough nights in Middle Earth to fill my threescore years and ten.  When I came close to the end of the books the first time through I slowed to a snail's pace, savoring every word.  It must've taken me several minutes to work up the courage to turn that last page, the page I knew would end the adventure for me.  I wanted it to go on forever.  I have never enjoyed a book more, and I've read quite a few.

The next page is perhaps too emotionalized an approach to the problem, but I wanted you to see the picture [Little Rock Central High School, middle-aged white woman seething at a black high school girl's back, face filled with hate].  Nothing is quite so pleasing to the eye as the pretty face of a Southern Belle.

You might've guessed from the fact that I haven't mentioned your letter that everything before this was written before I got it.  The first nineteen pages were put together [this has been illustrated] last Friday afternoon.  I say "put together" because my little pile of materials started growing a few days after I got home.  I got your letter today, but I don't think I'll say anything about it quite yet anyway, except to mention that the first thing I thought of after you had "damply" taken your leave was a remark made by Sam Gamgee (a hobbit) when he awoke from a sleep he fell into thinking he would never wake up:  "'How do I feel?' he cried.  'Well, I don't know how to say it.  I feel, I feel--he waved his arms in the air--I feel like spring after winter, and sun on leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!'"

I'll get back to your letter a little later, and if I feel up to it I'll attempt something moving--and if that's not possible, something merely touching--but right now I'll use the fact that that quotation is at the top of the page to once again talk about The Lord of the Rings.  I finished it a couple of nights ago.  It's 1700 pages long--and much too short.  I felt when I finished the book that if I let my guard down for even a second the tears would roll.  The feeling didn't last long, but it was there, for the first time in several years.  I've never cried at a movie, and the last book to move me that deeply was The Robe--in eighth grade.  The Lord of the Flies came close, when Ralph "wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy," but I couldn't count it.

I'm waiting for the day Tolkien's next book comes out.  I'll buy it on sight (hang the cost) and drop everything else until I finish it.

I'm waiting for the day my first child becomes old enough to be introduced to Bilbo Baggins and thirteen dwarves.  (I'll spare you their names this time.)

And I'm already looking forward to the day I start my fourth journey to Middle Earth.

'Nuff said.

Putting Middle Earth behind me, I looked for something else to do with the long afternoons (there are no lakes).  Chemistry and Biology appeal as little to me now as Intermediate German did last year.  So I "rediscovered" the poetry of Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, and e.e. cummings.  Why those three?  I dunno.
 

Emily:

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth.

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

A.E.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

e.e.

if everything happens that can't be done
(and everything's righter
 than books
 could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
 skip
 around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
 than books
 don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
 which
 around we come who)
one's everyanything so
so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
 than books
 tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
 up
 around again fly)
forever was never 'til now

now I love you and you love me
(and books are shutter
 than books
 can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
 each
 around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
 than books
 might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a grin
 leap
 alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

Incomprehensible?  It takes quite a while and quite a few poems to get used to his style.

Four more pages and this tablet gives up the ghost, so I'd better attempt to close this in a style appropriate for a self-appointed (and most probably self-deceived) speaker in the tongues of men and of angels.

Yes, Sal, you did convince me.  You do realize, of course, that you had a much smaller chance of failing than even David Weigel asking the neighborhood's big brother to "come out and play."

Almost nothing, Sal, is irrelevant.  Observe:

I had no chance to hear your voice, much less see your face, as you told of Rod's plans to "end up with" you, so I'm not sure just how you reacted or what you think of guys who plan much too far ahead much too soon, but I can identify with the poor boy.  Hold on, girl; don't give up yet.  I mean that I've probably decided in one of the deeper deeps of my subconscious that if you fulfill your potential and I fulfill mine we'll eventually fall in love with each other and live happily ever after in a state of perpetual bliss.  Without something like that I wouldn't have been as persistent as I was.  But if I made that decision it was only a subconscious one.  If the thought ever crossed my mind I'm sure I'd dismiss it with a smile and a, "Chuck, you've got the most important part of your education to get through and the greatest part of your world to discover.  So count to ten and then decide whether you even want to think about the day you'll be tied down."  By the time I got to ten my smile would be broader and I'd be fully in control of my senses again.

So for the time being I won't get serious about anyone, and I might even try to take out more than twenty next year, but I doubt it.  It was fun, but I've gotten tired of first dates, tired of the inept probing for mutual interests, the earth-bound conversations that never seem to rise above triteness, the frustration of should-I-or-shouldn't-I? and everything else that goes with them.  First dates aren't all that way, but they too often put me in that mood.  It's too early to settle down, but that doesn't mean I don't want to get emotionally involved.  I want the kind of date that makes me feel as if I were in a song.  I want to kick the highest leaf off the tallest tree between a good night kiss and the car.  I want to get home and sleep on the top bunk because I'd have to hold myself down on the bed if I slept any closer to the floor.  I want to burn the corners off my soul by touching it to someone else's.

Idealistic?  Too much to hope for?  The whole paragraph a little overdone?  Maybe so, but I won't change it now.  Suffice it to say that being far from anything resembling monogamy won't push me into monotony.  It sufficeth not.  There must be more method in my madness than to make Rod relevant.  The point is that you, lovely lady, have the power to do those strange and wonderful things to me.  You can put me at kite height.  Thanks for the letter you wrote and the letters you will write.  Thanks for good times past and good times future.  Thank you, Miss Robertson, for being you.

How to sign it?  I'm afraid "damply" won't do.  How's this?:
 

Yours, with an unbelievably sincere wish that every chicken that comes into your life will have small but graspable bones and pounds upon pounds of meat, and a further wish that you'll write soon.