I had been talking with a friendly portly woman (probably in her late 40s). She had shown me something which looked like a poster, on hard paper, about 60 centimeters wide and about 30 centimeters high. On the right two/thirds of the poster was writing; but on the left was a picture of the Planters Peanut figure, Mr. Peanut, wearing his top hat and holding his cane. The woman was trying to sell the piece and had offered it to me for $80. I had declined and had handed the poster back to the woman.

But then I thought again about the poster – perhaps I hadn't looked at it closely enough. It occurred to me that I hadn't actually seen a picture of Mr. Peanut, but a picture of Howdy Doody. I also wondered if I had been mistaken about what I had seen. Had I seen a picture of the figure, or had a small statue of the figure actually accompanied the poster? If it had been Howdy Doody, and if a statue had been with the poster, I might be interested in buying it. I asked the woman to let me see the poster again and she handed it to me.

Once I again had the poster in my hand, I saw that it actually did have a picture of Howdy Doody. I was a bit disappointed to see that there was no statue, only a clear picture of Howdy Doody, with his freckled face, red shirt and blue overalls on the left side of the poster. I thought Howdy Doody had originally been created in 1934, and I believed this poster dated from 1936. The central question was whether the poster was an original or a reproduction. I eyed the edges of the paper, looking for signs of wear, examining so closely that I seemed to be using a magnifying glass. Seeing the wear, I thought the poster was an original, but I couldn't be absolutely sure. I finally told the woman I would give her $60 for the poster. But she wanted $80 and I was unwilling to go any higher. Finally I laid the poster aside. I didn't have time to concentrate on it any longer since I was right in the middle of doing something.

I needed to get busy because I was in the process of moving. I was at the House in Patriot. Although I hadn't been living in the House, I had stored some of my possessions here, and I was now moving them out. My father and my mother were also there, and they were also moving some of their things from the House.

At first it had seemed that all my things had been in the front living room of the House. But then I saw that all my things had already been moved outside and were sitting on the lawn. My father's and my mother's belongings were sitting on another section of the lawn, and my parents were busily loading their things onto a number of pickup trucks and other vehicles parked there. It looked as if my father were doing more supervising than actually loading himself.

I only had a few large pieces of furniture – a couch and a bed. I also had a dark brown, three-drawer dresser which might have had a mirror on it. Seeing a number of small items sitting around on the ground, and realizing that the drawers of the dresser were empty, I decided to load up the drawers with some of the small items. I picked up a cardboard box containing a puzzle. The box had no top, only a piece of clear cellophane across its top. I opened the bottom drawer of the dresser to put the puzzle there. Some pieces of a Mickey Mouse puzzle were already lying on the bottom of the drawer. As I started to put the box with the puzzle in the drawer, pieces began falling out of the box, falling all around me into the grass and mixing with other things. The cellophane wasn't holding in the pieces. I didn't want to pick up the pieces which had fallen out and I thought about just throwing the puzzle away. But instead I just threw the box into the bottom drawer. I wasn't going to worry about it right now.

Looking around, I found another large cardboard box full of things. I began taking things out of the cardboard box and putting them in a dresser drawer. But suddenly I realized how foolish this was. The stuff in the cardboard box was already packed and there was no reason to be taking it back out. I put the stuff back in the cardboard box.

I began to realize that my father and my mother had already packed up almost all their things. I was surprised at how fast they had loaded their belongings and I began to be concerned that there might not be room for my things. I began carrying my things over to the section where their things had been sitting before so I would be closer to the trucks. To get there I had to go down a slight slope of about one meter in a depression in the yard, and back up the other side. On one trip I picked up my large beige armchair which was sitting in the yard. When I did so I noticed that the right front leg of the armchair was scuffed and broken. I had always liked that particular armchair and was sorry to see that it had been broken. I thought perhaps some of my step-cousins had broken the chair.

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