The LAST Letter from California

If I have found them all and have them in the right order, it appears I may have just transcribed the last letter Grandpa wrote to Grandma from California.  True to his word, the letter dated Oct. 15, 1927, indicated he would be leaving for Iowa taking the Southern route.  Looking ahead, the next letters are dated in April of 1928 when Grandpa had a job in Iowa working on a highway crew.

I must admit I'm a bit disappointed.  I have so many questions about what happened when Grandpa got back to Iowa.  Also, it is known within the family that Grandpa worked for a tomato canning factory when he lived out in California.  I was really hoping he would've written about that in his letters at some point.  I guess him just saying he "got work" was all the more he was going to say about that in his letters.

• How long did it actually take him to get home?
• Did he end up helping with the corn harvest in Iowa that fall?
• Was his reunion with Grandma all he was hoping for?

Grandma's last letter to Grandpa in California was dated Oct. 9.  In it she revealed she had started a night class at the Central Iowa Business College.  She also answered a question Grandpa had apparently asked about what she wanted him to bring her back from California...

"Well, you can bring anything and everything from a toothpick to a fur coat, including a keen sheik, if that is satisfactory with you.  If not, bring one of Henry Ford's 'best.'  If you can't pick anything within those limits, I will be S.O.L."

I also noticed quite a bit more in this letter from Grandma that she was maybe trying to impress Grandpa with her advanced vocabulary using words like:  compulsory, arbitration, conciliation, and habitual.  Unfortunately, she wouldn't use them in quite the right context making her come off as not very smart after all.  One particularly disjointed sentence went like this...

"I will remark about the 'burning love.'  You might be burning but I don't think it is that kind of love, so you had better connect a detachment."

I don't remember Grandma talking very much as I was growing up.  Perhaps she was told at some point that what she was saying didn't make any sense, and so she just didn't speak her mind very often.

However, her frequent times of silence could have had something to do with another part of this last letter...

"I am still that same girl always saying something crazy if there is anyone around to say it to.  One of the girls (you know the one I mean) at work acts so inhuman sometimes toward her guy.  If I were him, I would show her a few things.  The way she acts reminds me of the way I do and I think to myself that I am going to try to get rid of those crazy habits and not be so silly.  I might be a little more cultured in that respect when you get back and still you probably won't see any difference.  It remains to be proved and seen."

NaNoWriMo Day 25 - My Thots for Today...

"Something funny happened tonite so thot I would start another letter and keep writing a little at a time until I get one from you which should be tomorrow or next day.  Well, I went uptown this evening to get a magazine to read.  I saw a pair of scales, it was one of these fortune telling kind and I put it at 'What work am I most suited for,' and dropped in a penny.  The hand came up & said 'Raising a Family.'  I don't see how I'm to do it all alone tho do you?"

While Grandpa clearly had an excellent grasp of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling, there were some words in all his letters consistently spelled incorrectly.  That being said, I feel like they were actually abbreviations he used rather than misspellings...

• thought = "thot"
• tonight = "tonite"
• though = "tho"
• through = "thru"

Besides the climate change from Iowa to California being favorable, I think Grandpa really appreciated and enjoyed all the fresh produce.  His letters often mentioned fruit...

"I just got thru eating a pear.  They're just getting ripe, and my dressing table is covered with pears & peaches, prunes & plums."

Definitely explains why he and grandma had several fruit trees on their acreage throughout my growing up years.

TOTAL WORD COUNT TO DATE = 34,688

NaNoWriMo - More than a Labor of Love

I really don't think I'm imagining the sensitivity I seem to have to the black mold from the letters.  After shuffling through the stack yesterday morning, my throat was raw from the effects...but oh, the finds!!  Letters from Harold, Marvin, and Walt...oh, my!  The question is, do I use them?  Are they relevant enough to the story to further risking my health to sort and transcribe?  The letters from Grandma's girlfriends (Velma, Nadyne, and Inez) are also in the stack and could shed more light on the subject depending on how much Grandma wrote to them about her love interests.

The letters from Harold were from the fall of 1924...grandma would've been starting her junior year in high school.  While I only found five letters from Harold (and he didn't have the best grasp of grammar, spelling, and punctuation), there were a couple of sentences that seriously cracked me up:

"This town sure is the snails antennae for excitement.  All a guy can do is drink and fight or else stick up the bank, and I don't believe they'd wake up then enough to make it interesting."

There were a number of letters from Marvin who seemed to be just as enamored of Grandma as Grandpa was, and the time frame of those letters overlapped with the correspondence between Grandma and Grandpa.  Was Grandma working on securing a "second" in the event Grandpa didn't return from California?  What if Grandpa hadn't returned from California?  I wouldn't be here blogging about it, that's for certain!

Then there was the summer of 1926 after Grandma graduated from high school that she spent with family in North Carolina.  I found several letters written back and forth between Grandpa in Iowa to Grandma in North Carolina.

The letter from Walt in the fall of 1928 is the puzzler, though.  By then, Grandma and Grandpa had come through some of their insecurities and trust issues and seemed to have formed a more solid bond.  So who was Walt? And why did I only find one letter from him?  I haven't read the letter, but I absolutely fell in love with his penmanship...it's just oozing scholarly romanticism.

TOTAL WORD COUNT = 22,705

Grandpa with Nadyne

NaNoWriMo Day 8, 9, & 10 - One, Two--Skip a Few; Three, Four--Missed Some More

I may have missed updating the blog a few days, but I did get some transcribing done in and around taking care of some family things.  Had a couple of tense letters from Grandpa, but things seem to be on the mend (for now).

Their words and phrases seemed to obfuscate their intentions.  So many things left unsaid in their letters makes me wish I could ask them now to fill in the blanks.  Grandpa indicates he wishes he could leave Calif sooner, and Grandma alludes to the circumstances surrounding Grandpa's need to leave Iowa in the first place.  I asked Mom if she was aware of any reason other than the fact that Grandpa just wanted to travel and see some of the west coast, but she was not.

Apparently there were a lot of outside influences.  Grandpa had people telling him about things Grandma was doing while he was away and Grandma also seemed to have some information likewise with regards to Grandpa's extra-curricular activities.  Their letters seemed to be a series of unfortunate miscommunications and fishing for the truth.

In and around accusations, Grandpa would quote from Tennyson and Shakespeare and Grandma would close her letter "Tu es amor."  The mixed signals make my head spin.

TOTAL WORD COUNT = 18,222

NaNoWriMo Day 5 - Beans and Gloves

Two more letters transcribed today...a typewritten letter from Grandma to Grandpa, and another handwritten letter from Grandpa.

I adore the handwritten letters!  Even though they are faded and sometimes hard to read, the familiar stroke of the penmanship is reminiscent of the many, many greeting cards I received from Grandma over the years where she would sign her and Grandpa's names with love.  I can almost hear their voices in their handwritten words.

One of the lines from Grandma's letter challenged Grandpa to tell her the truth by using a little humor..."You may string beans, but you can't kid gloves."  She also ended her letter with, "Yours till the Kitchen Sinks and The Marble Walls."

Grandma definitely had a quirky sense of humor mixed in with her mean and spiteful spirit...quite the combination.  Pretty sure I have that same mix.

From Grandpa's letter today, I learned the exact date when he left Iowa to go explore California - June 20, 1927.  It's just a trip he felt he had to make while he was still young and unmarried.  Too bad his time there was tainted by letters from back home.

TOTAL WORD COUNT = 10,321