I was standing on a back patio which belonged to my next-door neighbor – a door of my house gave onto the patio. I was carrying a small gray plastic record player. I had earlier borrowed the record player from a table on my neighbor's patio, intending to listen to a record which contained songs by Gene Autry on one side and songs by various other singers on the other side. But my neighbor was now throwing a party on his patio, and I needed to return the record player to him.

Ray (Bones) Barboni (the character played by Dennis Farina in the movie Get Shorty) was among the guests at the party on the patio. As I headed toward the table where I intended to deposit the record player, I saw my neighbor sitting at the table. But he stood up and walked away without even seeing me. I reached the table and set the record player down. I thought of simply leaving the record player unhooked; but then I decided to hook it up. I plugged in two wires and headed back to my house. Not until I had walked back into my house through the sliding glass doors on the back did I realize I had forgotten to hook up the speaker wires, which had been jumbled in a tangle; but someone else could figure out how to hook up the speakers.

My mother and my grandmother Mabel were inside. My grandmother was ready to leave, and I said good-bye to her. My father arrived. He had being doing some work on the back of the house, which almost seemed like a mansion. He intended to add a large room onto the rear of the house, and also add a room on the second floor, over the back porch. However, my father had a tendency to start projects and drag out their completion.

When he walked in, I was looking at a bureau; he asked me why I was looking at the bureau and I told him I was just interested in how it was constructed and that I might want to build one myself. Or I might want to make a chair, or a bed. I next began looking at the headboard of a bed, which had a floral design carved in it. I imagined what it would be like to use a tool to carve out the design in the headboard. I thought about the four-post bed which I owned and the intricate designs on it. Could I could complete a job like that? What kind of tools would I use? I asked my father if a "router" was the name of the tool which was used to make square edges. He said yes. As I looked at the way the edge of the headboard was rounded, I asked my father what kind of took was used to round off the edge. If I knew the names of the tools – such as "lathe" and "router," I could buy them all and have them here ready to use when I needed them. My brother-in-law would be familiar with all these tools.

I wondered how I would describe wood-working tools if I were to dream about them. I thought about the way I had described my house in my dreams.