At Fred’s Landing

I dreamed of my friend Aldo Carrasco (d. 1986) last night. I was in our living room, calling him on our landline to say that I’d mailed a transistor radio to him and that Elaine and I would be in New York on Friday, and New Jersey on Saturday. Aldo said that he had to work ten hours and would be up for doing something after that. I sounded like my twenty-something self on the phone. Aldo sounded like his twenty-something self — in other words, like himself. The conversation was short and ordinary, one friend giving another a heads up and making plans.

What prompted the dream, I think: watching The Honeymooners episode “The Worry Wart” last night (first aired April 7, 1956). One of Aldo’s letters included a Honeymooners trivia quiz with something from that episode: the cost of a vacation at Fred’s Landing. Answer: $42. I knew it then and know it now, but I know it now as something in one of Aldo’s letters. There’s no forgetting.

A related post
Letters from Aldo