Ever since I left home, I always asked about Ollie when I came back. It wasn’t that it was at the forefront of my mind, or that I had it on any obligatory list of things to do “after you’ve finished asking about Eileen and Alice, Uncle Jack and Aunt Libby.”

It’s just that a certain smell might hit my memory and send me back to the breakfast nook on Jackson Avenue, or a certain photograph in Mom’s wallet might have a pile of leaves in the foreground that Mikey and Ollie raked together, or I might hear a reference to the Spanish-American War, and suddenly conjure up an image of Ollie leading the troops over a hill on the way to San Juan or El Paso or wherever the Spanish-American War was fought.

When one or another of these things happened, I’d feel a sudden rush Ollie-ness, and have to know that he was well, who he is married to now (one of his wives was a police-woman), if he was happy (I’d accept anybody’s word on that), and if my father ever got to see him so that they could not-talk to each other in that way they had which made me think they liked and respected each other very, very much.