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  • Good morning, Hank; it's Friday. I got up around 8:00, went downstairs to pick up the

  • camera, and then the Yeti and I drove east, past the kind of endless corn fields that

  • could make one wonder whether corn monoculture might one day lead to a zombie apocalypse,

  • and then we arrived in Knightstown, Indiana. We were there to help two Swedish architects

  • purchase a tree, which I realize sounds like code for a drug deal or high-stakes international

  • diplomacy, but... yeah, that's the fascinating life of the museum curator's husband.

  • Anyway, I got bored after a while and decided to walk across the street to the huge Knightstown

  • cemetery. I love cemeteries; for one thing, they contain a lot of names, which is very

  • helpful for a writer. Hannah J. Leisure; and Fred and Blonda Stickler; and Minnie Hooker;

  • and Mary McFall; and Ephraim Confare; and Walter Manlove; and Waitsell Cary, the founder

  • of Knightstown. I also love cemeteries because they contain so many stories you get to imagine:

  • The union dead, the first marriage of Knightstown.

  • And the more you look, the more narratives you find coming out of tombstones. There are

  • the straightforward ones like the sadness of losing a child, the amazingness of being

  • married for 61 years; but also the complicated ones like... wait, who was the dude in that

  • 61-year marriage? Valva or Mona? Where they Knightstown's first single-sex marriage? Probably

  • not, but I hope so! And while we're on the topic of stories that get weirder the more

  • you think about them, what's the deal with Walter Manlove's wife?

  • Knightstown is a small place, and like a lot of towns in the Midwest, it's shrinking. I

  • drove over to the downtown, with its '57 Chevys and old-fashioned ice cream joints and ducks

  • wearing headscarves, Red's Hot Tanning and a closed bookstore and a place called "Bittersweet

  • Memories," where I bought this for Henry's room because it seems to me like literally

  • the best advice you can give a child... and also an adult.

  • It's easy to feel nostalgic in Knightstown, with its paint-chipped gazebo and "I don't

  • believe in ghosts but that mansion is definitely haunted"-mansions, but Knightstown has a present

  • and a future as well as its past, which is something that people tend to forget about

  • small towns in America. Someday, that little girl will decide if she wants to be part of

  • this town's future, or if she wants to indulge in the great American pastime of lighting

  • out for the territories. But we don't yet know what she'll decide, or what it'll mean

  • for Knightstown.

  • Thinking about that made me think about Walter Manlove's wife, Gussie. She was 28 when her

  • husband died, and I could imagine her picking out that headstone, committing right then

  • and there to being buried next to her husband. But she didn't yet know her future, Hank.

  • Maybe she survived to 113 and outlived the century she'd committed herself to. Maybe

  • she forgot to pay for the plot next to him. Or, more likely, maybe she had a life that

  • the 28-year-old widow couldn't have imagined. Maybe she married someone else and built a

  • life, and although haunted by her unkept promise, chose to be buried with her new spouse.

  • Hank, I think that's why, in the end, all we can really do is be kind to each other.

  • We don't know what's aheadfor us, or for our places. After all, Hank, nothing is

  • etched in stone... well, until it is.

  • I'll see you on Monday.

Good morning, Hank; it's Friday. I got up around 8:00, went downstairs to pick up the

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