Prepared for an unfr

for a long time was not disappointed. Late in the year we

tackled the informal essay. Mr Fleagle distributed a home

work sheet offering us a choice of topics. None was quite so jav

simple-minded as "What I Did on My Summer Vacation,

but most seemed to be almost as dull. I took the list home

and did nothing until the night before the essay was due. Ly.

ing on the sofa, I finally faced up to the unwelcome task, took

the list out of my notebook, and scanned it. The topic on

which my eye stopped was "The Art of Eating Spaghetti."

This title produced an extraordinary sequence of men-

tal images. Vivid memories came flooding back of a night in

Belleville when all of us were seated around the supper table

Uncle Allen, my mother, Uncle Charlie, Doris, Uncle Hal

and Aunt Pat served spaghetti for supper. Spaghetti was

still a little known foreign dish in those days. Neither Doris

nor I had ever eaten spaghetti, and none

of the adults had

enough experience to be good at it. All the good humor of

Uncle Allen's house reawoke in my mind as I recalled the

laughing arguments we had that night about the socially re

spectable method for moving spaghetti from plate to mouth