About this time in 1965, I arrived at the huge depot pictured above on my way to Northwestern University to begin a master’s degree in journalism. I was burdened down with heavy luggage, so the subway to Evanston wasn’t an option. I needed to transfer to yet another rail line.

According the diary I kept, I ran out of time that first day. An entry reads, “The rail station was all shut down, but there were 50 sailors from the Naval Training Station sleeping in the waiting room. I joined them.”

In the morning, I took an early commuter train to Evanston and stored my bags at the station. Among the stuff in my steamer trunk was an ancient Smith Corona typewriter. I liked to think it was like the one Ernest Hemingway used.

I was intercepted just outside the university’s housing office by a gregarious older guy who asked, “Need a room?” After a brief conversation, I was in his car headed to retrieve my luggage and drive to his house on Colfax Street not far from the campus.

The rent was $50 a month. My landlord was Lester Welty, a retired insurance agent whose wife I later learned had died not long before. He told me he had chosen to sell life insurance as a career instead of becoming a Methodist preacher.

It seemed a better way of helping people over the long run, he explained.

Les gave me lots of advice during my stay in his home, some of which I later regretted not taking.

Thus began the most formative adventure of my life.

Can it really be a half century since those days?