In 1967 a five-cent stamp mailed a letter. The postal service was running a “Fight TB” campaign. Most letters were handwritten in ink, in the cursive everyone learned then. A few were typed. Some of the typewriters were crying for a new ribbon. Those who typed their letters sometimes also typed addresses on the envelopes. Richard substituted quips like “Lafayette, I have come” for his name in the upper left corner, followed by his address. You could do that: feed your envelope into the typewriter, roll it into place.
A few forwarded letters
Stevie had a knack for closing a letter, a gift for the strong finish at the tail end of her sheet of stationery. “Now that you know I’m still alive to read, I hope you’ll find time to prove you’re still alive to write. Love, Stevie.” We were 22, knew how to use parallel construction to good effect and were shamelessly melodramatic.
Charlie’s letters were on lined yellow legal sheets, in pencil. He hadn’t a clue how to properly fold the sheets into an envelope. Neither did several others: sheets of 81/2 x 11 paper, meant to be folded in thirds for No. 10 envelopes, were smashed haphazardly into envelopes half that size, page two on top, page one between page three and four and none of them numbered. Oh, yes: four-page letters were common.
Nobody dated their letters. Thank God for postmarks. When my brother was in Nam there were no postmarks: the letters were free. But that’s not until 1969.
“Crikey,” Don exclaims. “The electricity has gone out of my typewriter. Vile machine.” This last scrawled in ink. What appear to be blood drops on the page are not mentioned. Perhaps I added them. He addressed his letters to “Pat-Louise,” that name on my birth certificate that he steadfastly maintained should be my nom de plume. I rarely heeded good advice.
A number of letters have been forwarded: although we corresponded regularly, people had trouble keeping up with my multitude of addresses. The liquor store apartment was 21st Street. The apartment with Tanya, N Street, one of Sacramento’s downtown alphabet addresses. I lived in California a little over a year and had two more addresses after those, besides the times I stayed at my boyfriend’s apartment because he had a pool.
A letter from Bev says “it’s 3 a.m. and I just tried to call you. You don’t ever stay home, do you?” June postmark. I suppose I was waitressing at the jazz club, closed at 2 a.m., left by 2:30 or so, went to afterhours jam sessions or breakfast. I was never home by 3 a.m.
I’ve only read a few of my mother’s letters. They ignite my ingrained guilt. I’m putting them off. She wrote in ink, in perfectly legible cursive on stationary matched to the envelopes, dated her letters and folded them properly. Of course she did.
What can I say? LOVE it!!
My mother wrote to me in the margins of the small town weekly newspaper after she and Dad had finished it; rolled it in an inside-out envelope she salvaged from some other correspondence. Master recycling, post depression and long before current recycling efforts. I occasionally addressed my letters to “Mom and Dad, Muenster, Texas” and they received them with no problem, as I was the only person from the small town sending letters from Colorado.
Teresa, what a wonderful story! Post depression habits: my mother saved and reused paper grocery bags as package wrappings, washed out and reused plastic bags when those started being used, but her letters were almost always on those little pads of stationery paper you could buy at Woolworth’s. I hope you saved a few of those letters in newspaper margins.
Oh, this is stunning, Pat-Louise! I wish I had more old letters and could offer them as gifts half as nicely as you have in this post. Bravo!
Lovely memories, Pat. Like so many of us, I have file cabinets full of correspondence. There are letters dated in the late 1960s from cousin Paul who was a Jesuit living in British Honduras (“outside Corinth”). Post cards from nephew Ryan when he was in Nepal. He had the tiniest, perfect printing that could easily have transcribed “War and Peace” onto one card, or so it seemed. Then there are the great aunts, Irish maids, one in Denver and one in Pueblo. They had developed their own short-hand, and they wrote in every conceivable space on the sheets of paper as most people did in the late 1800s. Thank heavens we were taught cursive … so much detailed history would have been lost, had we not.
Splendid and tantalizing correspondence, Marilyn! Thanks so much for posting about it.
I sent a Christmas message of sorts to a close friend who moved out of the country to San Miguel de Allende. It finally got there, and Brad said it was the first piece of mail he had received in the year he has lived there. I guess Mexicans are not big on junk mail, which is mostly what the USPS is in the business of delivering, now that nobody writes letters to anybody these days.
Snail mail, Gregg, much like landline phones, seems to exist these days mainly for junk and robocalls, ads and scams.