Homecoming for Tex: Chapter VII of When the Dogwood Blooms

Homecoming for Tex, Chapter VII of When the Dogwood Blooms, brings the odyssey of the protagonist, Raymond Burns Herbert, full circle, when he returns with his wife Natania to his old prep school in Lake Forest, on the North Shore of Chicago, where Ray and his older brother went from San Antonio when their parents separated half a century before. It provides five related vignettes that might stand on their own, beginning with a ride Ray and his brothers provided to a girl from Tarzan's garage, in Italy, Texas, to Fayetteville, North Carolina, whom Ray's aunt warned was a "woman of the highway" that the Bible warned against. The next story is about understanding daylight savings time, perhaps, according to his supervisor at the Travis County General Hospital, where Ray worked as an insurance clerk for a few months. Ray's wife Natania said the title of the third story, "Two Jews Boys and a Monkey", was just too good not to use, even if she was Jewish, like the two titular brothers from Long Island that Ray met in Miami. The fourth story "The Second Most Self-Serving Statement" was about how sorry his team lead felt for him when he was laid from a job in Wilmington, NC. The last story is about Raymond's long delayed and painfully nostalgic trip back to his old prep school.