I want all you regulars to be on your best behavior today. I’ve invited newspaper readers to drop in and catch up on the history between Gene and Mary Lou, from the beach. If you are dropping in for the first time, this backstory, originally published in 1997, started repeating here Wednesday. You can see it all to date by scrolling down to the Aug. 13 entry. A new episode will be posted each morning. I hope you enjoy it.

Speaking of Mary Lou’s history in Arlo and Janis, I told you last week that she’s appeared on four separate occasions, not including the sequence currently running in newspapers. Three of them are obvious, all at the beach when Gene’s family returns on vacation. She appeared another time, in the cold months, when she telephones Gene out of the blue. Chronologically, it was her second appearance and the first time it was revealed her father owns the motel; that’s how she gets the telephone number. Until that point, Gene had assumed she was a summer love, lost forever. It was also hinted in that short series that her home life is not exactly perfect at that point.