"It was in the cold waters of this lake that I was unwillingly and forcibly taught to swim when they dumped me out of a boat, and it was out of her waters that I helped those same brothers on many occasions take up a gill net full of gleaming salmon trout. There are memories of beautiful nights around a campfire on her shores, of boat rides in the motor launch which we built ourselves in a workshop that stood where my own home now stands."

"From this same window I see the pond where I sailed toy boats in summer and skated in winter. By the side of the pond is a spring that now supplies me with cold water - the same spring that kept an open hole in the ice of the pond, and into which we fell on occasion when we skated too close. Beyond the pond I can see my own green fields - the same fields that as a boy I plowed and harrowed for my father with a team of horses, and from which we gathered the hay and grain that helped to feed, clothe and pay for my education and that of my six brothers and sisters."

"Looking across the road I can see the house which my grandfather built and where we spent all our childhood days until we spread our wings and scattered to the four corners of the earth."

"On a Sunday morning across the peace and quiet of the intervening miles, I can hear the church bell calling the people to worship. It is the same church which my grandfather helped to build and the same bell that called him to worship so many years ago. I may sit in the same pew which he occupied every Sunday and hear a sermon preached from the same pulpit."

"These are all fond memories, but perhaps the real appeal in all these things is that in this world of rapid change here are some familiar things that have endured with little change over the years. A sense of security is born of this daily association with the objects and scenes which have resisted the onslaught of time and progress. However, we do not live in memories alone but in the present as well."

"Here in Lodi I may live without pretense among those people who have known me and my family for years. Pretense is useless before the eyes of people who know all there is to know about you, and your father, and by hearsay about your father's father. Here you may travel the tree lined roads and call each man by his name, or walk the streets of the tiny town and have each child or grown up call you by your first name."

"Here the postmaster may carry a parcel post package across the street and place it in your parked car so that you won't have to wait until tomorrow to get it. Here the butcher knows how thick you like your steaks cut. Here you may serve yourself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove in the hotel kitchen at almost any time of day or night, and cut yourself a piece of blueberry pie to go with it if the cook has gone home. If you forget to pay for it on your way out, or if you have no money in your pocket, you may pay for it the next time you drop in for another cup of coffee."

"Where in all the world can you have such happy memories, or know and be known by so many people, or have your physical and spiritual needs so adequately ministered to, or be trusted so implicity?"

"There may be as many answers as there are people on earth, but for me there is only one place - my own hometown of Lodi, and that is why I love it."