But even such depradations as the "back country" Stone Raids could not keep George supplied with stones enough...      

     Now my tale grows clouded again - for the events I am about to relate - actually happened a few years later - after I had at last left the Rhines and struck out anew in Life. So, in fact, had Chuck - having at last parted company with Maggie (both of 'em!) and kids and all. But of these affairs you will learn in due course. For now - back to the stones...

     In some way, during these lacunae in my memory - George had become "affiliated" with a monument maker's widow. I really don't know just what the arrangements were here or how or anything like that. But this widow owned a cemetery (part of which was Jewish, as you will infer) and - best of all - she owned a great big pile of tombstones and tombstone blanks! Who said a woman's crowning glory is her hair? It's her... tombstones!

     And George and some of his new generation of "hands" had been carting these back to Ridgefield. Here, they were used to fill in gaps in the West Point marble slab floor - and others were built into exterior walls, foundations and steps into sunken gardens and what all which George was slowly building into the resurrected house and grounds. One prize was a beautiful dark-green stone Cross of David kind of geometric figure in three-dimensions - on a pedestal - and this stood now in Ruthie's garden for all to see...

     Best of all - a small, unfinished stone - a child's tombstone (did he recover?), stood casually askew on the mantle in the front room (it was not permanently mortared in as were so many of its fellows). On the stone, lightly chiseled in was the top line of an epitaph... "Poor Little Willie...." Then it ended - perhaps as abruptly as poor little Willie himself - who knows? Just "Poor Little Willie..." and that was all. George much admired this simple stone, and often in these latter days when our get-togethers had become more and more infrequent - he would talk about it and speculate upon it and its meaning - if any.

     It remains to say, that in the course of events, Chuck eventually moved in himself with the monument widow and he inherited his own stash of stones separate from Pop's! About this time - which has really gone past the end of our main tale - Chuck, embracing the now popular drug culture and back-to-nature styles of the '60's had bought some land of his own over in Duchess County, New York on a remote hillside. Here he was single-handedly going to build a vast home using the widow's stones, and modeled after the notions of Frank Lloyd Wright who was an idol of his, and to whom he introduced me in my Philistine days....

     Gentle reader, I must ask your indulgence... the floodgate of memories has opened (perhaps for the final time) and a torrent has surged afresh. I know not what to do otherwise than record these events here just as they come to mind all mixed up and jostling one the other even though they interrupt our earlier tale. If you will bide with me for a bit - we will see them through and by so relating them, perhaps forever lay them to rest, thus allowing us ultimately to return to our main track.