“He’s the spitting image of Jimmy!” cried my uncle Allen.

The “Jimmy” he was referring to was me, “Jimmy” being what everyone in my family called me. Still do. What’s left of them, that is. At least those that are still talking to me.

The “he” was Dennis Heberling, a fellow Richland inhabitant, three years my senior (in the same high school class as my uncle Reed, as a matter of fact).

When we lived on West Main Street in the early 60s, Dennis lived just up the hill and around the corner on Chestnut Street, and he happened to be our paper boy, meaning the fellow who delivered the Lebanon Daily News.

It was probably while Dennis was performing his paper boy duties that Allen caught sight of him and initially mistook him for yours truly.

Allen was not the only person to see a resemblance. 

Years later, sometime in the early 70s I guess it would have been, I happened to be in Reading, which is where Dennis was currently living, and someone told me that I looked just like Dennis. Which is how I learned that that’s where Dennis was living.

Dennis had a cousin David, who lived in Myerstown, and who was in my class at Elco. He was not the spitting image of anyone as far as I recall.

Actually, I don’t really see much of a resemblance between Dennis and me.

Do you?