News from Theo: He's gone crazy at last, shooting at what he imagines to be menacing deer. He can't see them, but he can hear them, or at least he tells me that his dog, which is not really his but belongs to his neighbor who left it with him while they attend to a dying family member in France, has been howling and whimpering at the deer smells. So Theo took out the .22 and fired a few warning shots at the deer, or more accurately for their benefit. Which may have worked, it's hard to say. It it have the effect of frightening the dog to such a degree that it crawled under the car and won't come out.

I also heard from Perry, who, after riding around for about seven years in a Toyota Corolla that he inherited from his aunt, had mechanical trouble. It was in Bayonne. The car had like 134,000 miles when he got it, and he has managed to drive it all this time with no trouble, but something finally happened where oil was leaking out the engine block near the filter. Luckily, he was able to roll into a parking lot of a Kmart when it died. Like a boyscout, he quickly fashioned a new oil filter out of a can of beans and a plastic bag, and refilled the oil and was off and running. Unfortunately, his set up only held for a mile or so, until he was in the middle of a giant highway, where the car stalled. He then called a tow truck, which came *3 hours later) and got the car hooked up. Only the driver, who had been in Bayonne his whole life, had never driven in the city, so was reluctant to tow perry home, to Brooklyn. Also, the tow truck driver had just learned to drive stick that day, and the tow truck was stick. So perry had to give him a driving lesson, and another 2.5 hours later he was back in Brooklyn, with a broken car and a high towing bill.