My Dear Cousin - Pennsylvania

30th April 2021

My Dear Cousin,

It looks like I lost your interest in less than a page of history. Well, a bit of a tangent will do us no harm. Indeed, I do remember my mother taking us all by car from one coast to the other to see her family. This was a thing I very much looked forward to, (Pickle) said he hated it but he said he hated everything about mom, and my old man echoed that sentiment.

You first would remember a brown Oldsmobile wagon that was later replaced with a blue Ford Torus. Mom, having a love of history and adventure, would have us stop along the way to see things like Mount Rushmore or a Civil War reenactment, or do things like white water rafting. Mom packed a lot of life into her short time on this earth.

As for Pennsylvania, for the most part I remember Franny’s house, her jarhead son, and they had a pool. I can only remember going to your father’s place once. That was the time I pretended to have a duck in my shirt. Why I did that I still don’t know. I have an over active imagination. Just yesterday a short film I wrote came out on YouTube featuring an eggplant talking to two mice.

I know I went on a paper rout with one of the older children in Pennsylvania and we played with firecrackers. There was an old Monopoly set that I pretended the money was some kind of article in insurance policies, and I arranged it in little piles from best coverage to worst.

I’m sure you remember that I would save the fast food wrappers. They were made of Styrofoam at the time, and I would slowly break them apart. As a kid I found toys in strange places. I used fox tail grass and seed pods in my play, and to me they were spaceships and fighter craft.

I do think of traveling from time to time, but at the moment I have no one I can trust with my animals. You could say I have a lot of things to work on in my life. I have so much to see finished. Every day I wake up and go to the computer and work and I just keep working and working, but there is always more work to be done.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal