[...] One of the quirks of human memory is that the most vivid, detailed recall doesn't usually concern the things that are most germane. The as it were forest. [...]
[...] the whole thing looked haphazardly jerry-rigged and chaotic, and one figured that there couldn't possibly be this many newly arrived and/or reassigned transfers to the REC as a typical daily thing, or else the disembarkation and check-in system would be much more permanent-looking and streaml…
[...] The employee beside me now looked, peripherally, as though he'd been mechanically raised out of a body of water, which made the pretense of my not noticing the incredible sweating even more creepy and farcical. [...]
A further irony: During an April 1987 tornado outside De Kalb, a detached portion of one of these FARM SAFETY billboards whirled in and for all practical purposes decapitated a soybean farmer--that was pretty much it for the 4-H sign.
[...] the point is that I journeyed to Peoria on whatever particular day in May from my family's home in Philo, to which my brief return had been shall we say untriumphant, and where certain members of my family had more or less been looking at their watches impatiently the whole brief time I was h…
