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Dear Jack "guggenheim" Conroy

  Too damn bad I missed you.  I haven't forgotten you by any means and if I looked under my blotter I'd probably find 4 or 6 letters that I started and never finished.  I've gotten reports on you from various emissaries including Jean Hough and that screwball  you sent my way about 5 years ago and others.
  I've been wondering what the hell you were doing after completing that monumental mail order encyclopedia but I never expected you to showup in the flesh pots at Saratoga - is it women, horses or gambling?
  I can't steal too much time for this letter so I will have to talk fast.  I'd dearly love to spend sometime with you before you disappear again.
  Mary and I busted up about four years ago and I managed to salvage very little of the fruits of my 25 years labor in this dung pit.  But I do own the title  on what was once a schoolhouse in Barrytown NY near Red Hook.  About ½ mile from the RR station.  It's going to be quite a place and it almost is now.
  I'd like to have you hole up there as long as you can.  The key is at the neighbors next door, a gal by the name of Chamberlain and you can make yourself to home until I show up.
  My plans for the next month are a bit confused at the moment.  Sept 1st I go to a crypt convention in R.I. and should show up in Barrytown for a couple days about Sept 6th and thence perhaps to Indiana until about the 16th.
  I also maintain a one room apartment at 338 East 53rd St in Manhattan.  The telephone is Eldorado 5 0278 and if you had looked a little closer at the phone book you would have found me listed under my own moniker.
  Let's see if we can't get together for an old fashioned  visit.  The only times I've seen you in the last 25 yers I've had to compete with the entire communist party and I would like to get thoroughly reacquainted.

Salute Ye Surde

handwritten note in left margin I am damn seldom there except between the hours of 1 AM and 8 AM Sundays to Fridays.