It’s been forty something years since I last saw Mr. & Mrs. Billy. It seems like a whole other life. It actually was. Back in those days, Bob and Bert were almost twenty years younger than I am now. They seemed like such grownups. Mr. Billy was a little gruff with me, but who could blame him for that? He was the father of four girls and a boy and by they time I arrived on the scene with his youngest daughter, he’d already seen it all and seemed resolved to the futility of trying to herd the flighty goldfish of teenaged minds. We had an understanding he and I. I pretended to not be up to anything, and he pretended to not know that he knew that I was.     Mrs. Billy, “Ma Billy” was a pure delight. With me, she was always cheerful, always welcoming, always patient, always interested. She loved including people into her fold, not only just people, but my enormous Irish Setter Gilbey was welcome too. He was as welcome in the Billy household as Christmas morning. I remember being invited to dinner one time, (which wasn’t unusual, Ma Billy loved feeding everybody), for what, in my hazy memory, was her birthday or somebody’s birthday anyway, because there was this huge birthday cake as I recall. Anyway, we were all finishing up dinner in the dining room when we heard from the kitchen Ma exclaim “Oh My Goodness!” and we all rushed in to see Gilbey, his huge paws on the kitchen table, and his head buried in the cake, frosting up to his eyebrows. Ma Billy laughed the hardest of us all. She was so good-natured, such a lovely lady, such a generous soul.      As I said, it’s been over forty years since I enjoyed the warmth and generosity of the Billy household. Today I miss them all and those days as if it were yesterday.      Godspeed Ma and Pa Billy. You lived good lives, raised good kids and made it all look easy. My heartfelt sympathies to the Billy family for the loss of your loved ones and my deepest gratitude for allowing me to be a part of it over forty years ago.                                                                                                                                                                  Tom Sniffen.