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12

The following day was Saturday and I spent most of it getting the house ready for the arrival of Willie and Bab the next day. Also I moved back home again from Perk's bachelor quarters and very happy to do so. However, Perk and I had dinner together and then went to the movies as sort of a farewell outing. We saw a German film at the Palace (I can't even remember where the Palace was located--maybe Parade Street), "The Merry Wives of Vienna," all in German. It had some stunning girls and it was very artistically done, but not understanding a word of the apparently clever dialogue, I was pretty well lost. And thus ended my month of bachelor living with Perk. I wonder if he was as glad to get it over with as I. But Perk and I continued to be friends for many years and had a lot of good times together. He never got over his occasional orneriness and I think this may have been responsible for his eventually getting transferred back to Schenectady after which we drifted apart almost completely. But there will be more in my diaries about Perk as time goes on. He had a priceless sense of humor, which was maybe the thing that attracted me to him the most of all, as well as his appreciation of fine things, particularly good music.

A good example of Perk's humor was his story about his thesis just before graduation from RPI. A Prof. Butler had been assigned to Perk to help guide him in selecting a suitable subject for his thesis and Perk informed the professor that he proposed to write it on the design of a railway motor. The professor replied, "Oh, you don't want to write a thesis about [[underline]] that. [[/underline]] Why, there are hundreds of [[underline]] clerks [[/underline]] over there at the GE who design all kinds of motors. Anybody can design a motor. You want to write on a research subject." And then Perk would snort in derision just as he usually did after telling about anything that he considered ludicrous. And after the snort he's say, "Why, that....." letting his voice trail off to silence as though he couldn't think of any term suitable for the person being referred to.

On Sunday morning, February 28th, Willie and Bab arrived back in Erie and what a joyful reunion we all had! I was positive that Bab was the dearest thing ever seen around the town of Erie ever, and Willie was looking simply great and weighing 137, practically unbelievable. I was thoroughly convinced that Babbie was the most beautiful child I'd ever seen and that it would be impossible for her to appear anywhere without people turning to gaze at her--and she was that way and people did turn to gaze at her because I can still remember it. I was very grateful to the dear, good Lord for her and I prayed that the new baby might be as lovely. That afternoon we took Bab to the zoo to see the "elphum" and the baby kangaroo. How great it was to have them back again. It was one of the happiest moments of my life--my diary leaves no doubt as to that. And so we resumed our life together in anticipation of the arrival of Little Brother.