“You truly make a difference spreading the good news and digging deep into the facts and records enlightening people like myself who would never have known. I thank you for what you do. Please don’t stop.” - Mike Conlon This book may have the word purgatory in its title, but it isn’t a religious book. It’s a romp through more than sixty years in the life of a guy with a Ph.D in Space Physics who has bumbled through a lot of misadventures with his wife and six children, and who has been very lucky with things that he knows very little about. This book serves up happy memories that might have been too silly, embarrassing, controversial, or overly dramatic for an earlier book. For example, why our errant hero (that’s me) was called into his high school principal’s office just to be told not to go to college at Notre Dame, but he did it anyway; an embarrassing moment during his honeymoon; how he designed physics projects for his classes at Louisa High School of a type that you would never find in a physics book; how his 5 and 9 year old grandchildren composed epic poetry and made black-and-tans for the grownups at the beach;; how he started giving Adult Education talks at his parish church and discovered how much controversy he would find when he gave a talk about purgatory and posted it on You Tube; and other things. The first book in this Louisa Trilogy (“Nobody Here Wears Ostrich Leather Books”) is about how our errant hero took his fresh Ph.D in Space Physics, worked several years at NASA Headquarters, then purchased a cattle farm and feed lot in Louisa, Virginia. There, he raised a family with a wonderful wife and six children while being a part-time Visiting Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia. In rapid succession thereafter, he developed real estate subdivisions, built a country club and golf course, and charged headlong into a few other things that he knew nothing about. There were helpers along the way, boy scouts, poor folks and rich folks, and also three bouts with cancer from which he escaped. It felt like a miracle. The second book (“Outrageous Tales of Old Louisa”), unlike the other two books which are autobiographies, is a set of Tall Tales and lies about Louisa. Our errant hero made up these stories in an effort to create a little faux history about a place which didn’t have enough real history to be fully satisfying. Nothing but barefaced lies woven into real history. A break from the real biography of books one and three. If What Thoreau said is true (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”), then this second book was a pause for noisy escape. So here is book number three. If you didn’t read the first two, don’t worry: each book stands on its own. But please, read them all if you can! “These stories are real and anecdotal to his life and include stories about how his principal attempted to persuade him not to attend Notre Dame, physics projects you won’t find in a textbook, and an arm wrestling tournament he organized as a college student. The video about purgatory on his (You Tube) channel has reached over 34,000 views … and many … who spoke their mind and disagreed with him. ‘Gosh, I’d like to give another talk with that kind of controversy,’ Kavanagh said. ‘I thought that was great fun.’” - Mitchell Sasser , editor, The Central Virginian (January 4, 2023) "These stories are real and anecdotal to his life, and include stories about how his principal attempted to persuade him not to attend Notre Dame, physics projects you won't find in a textbook, and an arm wrestling tournament he organized as a college student. The video about purgatory on his (You Tube) channel has reached over 34,000 views ... and many ... spoke their mind and disagreed with him. 'Gosh, I'd like to give another talk with that kind of controversy,' Kavanagh said. 'I thought that was great fun.'" - Mitchell Sasser , editor, The Central Virginian (January 4, 2023) "While I am home bound from recent surgery, I could think of no better way to spend my time than with my friend Larry Kavanagh. It brought back so many wonderful memories of his and Judy's adventures." - Betty Moody