LETTERS FROM HOME: COMMUNING WITH THE GHOSTS OF HAPPY HOLLOW

Nov. 9, 2000

Dear Leslie,

As a young boy I often visited cousins who lived in a brick house a block and a half north of our home now on Lorimier Street. Sometimes we would explore the hillside behind their house. They called it Happy Hollow. We had some fun there picking around in the dump that had grown up, wading in water and climbing the grape vines.

None of us knew the name was handed down from the days when the Shawnee and Delaware Indians camped nearby on a flat area now called Indian Park. They came to visit and trade with Cape Girardeau's founder, Don Louis Lorimier, whose Red House was located just east.

A spring ran out at the west end of the land, at a point now called Fountain Street. The legend was that anyone who drank from the spring would return to Happy Hollow.

Last weekend, DC yelled to me that people were singing in the park next door. We walked over to find a vigil had magically materialized for the young man who was shot and killed there a few weeks ago. Fiery ministers called on the community to unite against violence to make sure he hadn't died in vain. About a hundred of us held hands, sang "Amazing Grace" and were encouraged to take communion with someone we didn't know. That was too easy to do.

One of the ministers mentioned that this was the place where Indians once camped and held councils. One of the churches represented at the vigil held its first meeting in a tent at Indian Park decades ago. This is sacred ground, the minister said.

This is the place where the City of Cape Girardeau was born.

Afterward, DC was in tears. She'd been praying for a sign that it is going to be OK for us to stay.

Aside from that lingering question, we have a normal life here.

The weather has turned cool and wet in mid-fall. We're still waking up an hour too early from daylight saving time. DC makes it pay, takes Hank and Lucy for an extra long walk, gets reacquainted with her Kathy Smith workout tape, checks over her income tax returns from the past five years.

I roll over. The bed feels too good to move more. When I awake again, Hank is wedged against my shoulder, and Lucy's weight has pinned one of my legs beneath the covers. He intently watches me return to consciousness. She could be looking at the betas cruise in the tank but is too enigmatic to know.

The coolness has an opposite effect on them than on me. They are friskier, even more eager to terrorize squirrels. I accommodate them but make sure the Chinese bells on the back door knob warn all Happy Hollow they are coming.

All of us find ways to return, if only for a few moments, to the Happy Hollows of our youth. To say we were carefree then is not accurate. Our cares only seem more weighty now that we supposedly know more of life and death.

One day my cousin, Danny, and I were caught playing with matches behind a house nearby. I'd burned a finger but was more upset that my angry parents weren't about to let me sleep over with my cousins to sip from martini glasses we filled with vinegar because at least we knew people made faces when they drank.

The water in Happy Hollow must have come from the spring the Indians drank from. I must have drunk from it, too.

Love, Sam