Good conversation with lovely, lively and interesting people around a dinner table must be one of the most soul-satisfying aspects of our human herd existence. But, as always, the opposite is just as true.
I still carry the scars of such soul-destroying events from my childhood. Case in point: the Van Aswegens. A family of unreal strangeness that used to waylay us every Sunday after church. Problem was that Pa was chief elder and had to stay on
