There was something in the water of Ketchum, Idaho.

I've been sending some of the cleaner ramblings to my mother. She usually responds within a day or two with some feedback, tells me she prints them out and keeps them in a folder. It's the least I can do to let her know her son's not totally given up on himself.

Something tells me that it's inspired her to read. Last week she e-mailed me with "an interesting tidbit on Papa [Hemingway]" that she'd recently read, as if she's always had her nose in a book like her progeny. The article said that he was once challenged to tell a story in only six words. He came back swingin' with "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Quite the statement indeed, Ernie, like a more concise version of those damn "Hills Like White Elephants" that another important woman in my life once made me read.

"How good was that?" my mother asked at the end of her informative e-mail.

So good that we both cringed a little on either side of our monitors, though for different reasons.

For a man crazy enough to write standing up at eight in the morning with a cocktail next to his typewriter, he sure knew how to lay down a line. Do they bottle that stuff?