It's been exactly 3 months since my last post. I think it's difficult for me to write this one. It's a letter from my older brother Vincent.

Monday Sept. 17, 1979

Terri (he misspelled my name),

Thanks for the birthday note, it was great hearing from you. I'm sitting in a classroom now waiting for my economics class to start. My courses are tough but I should do alright. I have an economics course, two engineering courses and a geology course. The only thing I've had so far is a quiz in one of my engineering courses and I got 19 out of twenty. Not bad, huh! Now if the rest of the term goes that good I'll be all set.

Two weeks ago I went racing near Rochester. We left Saturday morning and came back Sunday night. There were two days of racing, 25 cent beers and a band Saturday night and a chicken barbeque Sunday. There were 44 cars in my class and had had to win in round 1 Saturday night to be able to run Sunday. I ended up taking seventh place. If I had one [won] once more I would have been in the money. But considering it's only my second time out I'm not complaining a bit. All is all it was a pretty good weekend even tough it got cold camping out Saturday night. Class is about to start so I'll have to finish this after.

Well, class is over. We had a guest speaker who told us about Farm Cooperatives. It was pretty interesting. I'm in Alice's room now, we're just sitting around shooting the bull. I have a quiz fifth period and I'm done for the day.

I hope everything is going okay for ya. I know you'll do alright. Keep playing the piano. It'll help make things easier till you get more settled. I miss ya.

Love ya
Vincent

No prospects on a girl yet but I'm keeping my chin up.

Vince got a degree in landscape engineering. After he died, my sister told me he had wanted to go to a different type of school to study wood working or something like that. My mom pushed him to go to college instead, but it was never his thing. Mom never understood Vincent; he was too much of a free spirit for her. I saw a photo at his memorial service that an old friend had of him in the early 80's. He was sitting on the deck of an old house in torn jeans with a cigarette and the dogs. I felt like I was looking at my brother for the first time. I never understood him either. It's only now, years after his death, that I see how we could have been good friends.