to Mr. and Mrs. A. Henderson, 7016 Stewart Av Chicago 21 Illinois from 5726 - 28th Av N.E. Seattle 5 Wa: Thursday Evening Dec 9 - 1954 My dear Alec and Evalyn: It just seems away too long since I wrote you'uns, and the only excuse I can give is that at the end of the day at the Lab, I'm fairly well tired. There's respite too at that, but the afternoon from 2:30 till 4:30 is usually heavy on the making of deliveries of work completed. But Robert has been having it much heavier than I in as much as he has been doing a lot of late work at night and getting down to the Lab at 6-30. I get along with the walking pretty well but occasionally I get reminded of the coon story where his *plenty* was *"nuthin."* He had "plenty o' nuthin' and nuthin' is plenty fo' me." I rather think I wrote you about that and maybe it was you who told me about it in the first place. However the application of it is that occasionally I get somewhat surfeited with walking, but usually rest up pretty well. I havent written to Jim or Mary about Bess [their sister, AKA "Beesh"] recently, but her memory seems to be failing very rapidly. Here is one instance quite recently: I had been working in the garden a pretty long day -- I think two weeks ago this coming Saturday, and as I sat down to dinner and Bess was bringing some things on, she looked over to me and said "Wheres Tom." I paid no attention to the first remark, but she repeated by saying "He's been out in the garden all day and where is he now." Then I said to her "Well, who am I supposed to be" and she looked quizzically at me a moment and then said "Oh, I thought I was speaking to his father." And yet Father has been gone 38 years. And just last night when I came in along about 5-30 or 5.45, she said "Have you had dinner"? Now I was arriving home at the usual time and ordinarily she has something done at least toward dinner, and I called her attention to my arrival about the usual time, but she hadnt even started to do anything toward it, so I just told her to go and sit down and I would prepare my own dinner, which I did, but why her mind seems these days to have real spells of being about blank, I dont know. Nearly always she is in the same draggled dress when I get in at night that she put on in the morning and her hair not properly done up -- just indeed looking unkempt when I get home, careless and untidy looking. I dont see how you can reply or take any notice of this in a regular letter, but if in the few lines your hands permit you to write you could send it to the Lab at 428 Medical Dental Bldg, Seattle. Maybe these things are just temporary aberrations but they dont -- sound right. Well old boy, if you can run off a few lines, again soon I'll be glad to know how you are both keeping. Always much love Tom