What did people do before they could forward each other email glurge?

They sent each other clippings.  I haven't found any clipping wars in Grandma's box of yellowing letters, but I remember her engaging in a few. 


This is a clipping found tucked into one of the letters sent to her, from one of her friends.  It is suitable to this blog because I'm having trouble throwing the silly thing away, for some reason, and I expect that once it's enshrined here it will be easier to let it go.  I have no idea what newspaper it was clipped from.  And at this point I'm not sure which decade it came from.  It was either the thirties or the forties.


HE'D BUILD FENCE AROUND HIS WIFE


Here is what Francis Mac. Jones, well-to-do Angeleno, threatened to do to his wife, Cornelia, according to her divorce complaint filed in Superior Court yesterday.


Build a 10-foot fence with barbed wire topping it.  Put Mrs. Jones inside the enclosure.  Then when men came to see her, they would tear their clothing on the wire -- and Jones could identify them.


Mrs. Jones asked $25,000 attorney fees and appropriate alimony, her husband, she asserted, being worth $750,000. 

-------------

Update - I found another clipping in which a man asked the local police to lock up his wife until the Navy ship in port had sailed because she liked sailors too much.  The police declined.  Together with a few clipped cartoons, this makes a trend. 

Not Guilty

I don't often get the opportunity to identify something as something I definitely don't feel guilty about.  But tonight I mailed all of my Christmas cards.  Well, except for two cousins who have moved and whose addresses I still need to get.  And an uncle-in-law, whose address I got late.  But that's as nearly finished as makes no nevermind. 

I am feeling very not guilty.  At least about that.

Things I've learned about the Grandfather I never met

I'm also going to list things that I probably knew, but hadn't thought about for awhile. 

1. He was in the Navy.  He was assigned to the U.S.S Colorado according to the letters sent from 1930 to 1932.  About every sixth letter he talks about needing to get out of the Navy to be home with the people he misses.
2. He was a fiend for run-on sentences.  They read fine, because I read them as if they were broken up. So I didn't really notice until I typed a couple of them into my notes.  I'd have added paragraph breaks to some of those sentences.
3. He uses the words gee, keen, and swell a lot.  He often starts sentences (or clauses, in his run-ons) with gee, well, or heck.  He used sure as an intensifier, as in 'you're sure swell' or "it's sure keen." 
4. He always writes 'to' instead of 'too.'  (Yes, I do get paid for technical editing.  Why do you ask?)
5. He leaves the apostophes out of most of his contractions and the few he includes tend to end up before the N rather than after it.
6. "I sure have got those blues again . . ." ; ". . .well I should hope to smile."; ". . . well it all counts on twenty."; "I'm an honest square shooting man. . ."; ". . . desperately in love. . .".
7. More than a few people called him Red.
8. His ship was berthed in Seattle when his son (my Dad) was born in Bensenville, Illinois.  He didn't see him until he was 4 to 6 months old. 
9. He and Grandma called my Dad "Little Pal" (with the quotes) before he was born and for about half a year after.
10. In 1931 he usually started his letters to Grandma with:  My Honey Bunny Boo. 
11. I can't send money this week because - things will just be perfect when we finally get together - you're nearly perfect - you're an angel - I almost never leave the ship so I won't be tempted - I get crazy jealous when your letters mention other men. 

This is from Grandma's letters.  I remember other bits and pieces from Aunt D's things, but I'm not going to open that box now.

Does anyone say "got my dander up" any more?

I'm hearing dead people.  I'm still going through Grandma L's letters and tossing those that don't apply to descendants.  I stopped the night before last (yesterday was Thanksgiving and therefore a day off) when I hit packets of what looks like three or four servicemen that she was writing to in '44/'45.  It was late and I didn't want to get into anything that would make the think too much.  Or at all.

When I started again, I set them to the side and continued with letters from relatives.  Then I found what looked to be a stack of letters from friends.  One friend, named Bernice, is a hoot.  I put all of hers aside to read through later.  The rest seemed to be women that she met during her stay in a sanitarium to get over TB.  She cut a lot of sentences out, here and there, and cut the address of the sanitarium off of all the envelopes. 

She got letters from relatives, and possibly friends, who were looking after my dad, aunt, and uncle for her while she was away.  I could tell because the kids would include letters, too.  Dad was about 15 and wrote on his own.  It felt really strange to read letters from my Dad that started, Dear Mommy. 

One set of letters outlined a little drama.  I couldn't tell at first if Chris and Marie were sanitarium friends or neighborhood friends.  Joe was apparently married to or living with Marie and was writing to Grandma about an argument between her, Chris and Marie over money owed or paid and a sewing machine.  Joe was going to talk to the Singer people in the morning to see who had been lying to him about the matter.  If it is Marie, he swears that he'll leave her.  It's Joe that has "got his dander up." 

Dad always said that life with Grandma was like living in a soap opera, and that he could never watch soaps because being reminded was too painful.  But this is the first hard evidence of it that I've seen.  One complication for me is that Chris is the name of one of Grandma's brothers and and also name on a letter that seems to be from a woman who met her in Olive View, the sanitarium.  Joe's letter called Chris a he, though, and Grandma had been in a women's ward.  Per Joe, Marie has always liked Grandma, "She says aside from breaking into her home and taking the sewing machine, she always felt you were a very nice person, and have been helpful in many ways. . . "

I wonder if I'll ever know the end of the saga of the Singer.  Oops, it seems that five years of free rent in an apartment is also part of the argument.  Also Chris and Marie were married, but have split and she has custody of the kids.  The money would have been owed while Grandma was married to Woody, and Chris claims that the rent was swapped for roofing work.  Joe is going to check with Woody through the Veteran's Bureau.  Chris and Marie also owe Joe money.  I don't know who Joe is, but he feels a responsibility to look out for the interests of Chris and Marie's kids.  Go Joe. 

Aha!  In an earlier letter, Joe talks about a divorce and about how neither Chris's family nor Marie's family are qualified to take sides.  (Although Marie was hard done by and robbed.)  So I'm pretty sure that this is Great Uncle Chris they're talking about.  There always was bad blood between Chris and, well, any other relative that I've ever heard talk about him. 

Joe first wrote to Grandma to ask about a sewing machine.  It and some war bonds were things that Joe feels that Chris is trying to keep away from Marie unfairly.  Chris said that the war bonds went to pay for lawyers.  And the story of the sewing machine sounds like something that Grandma could spin out sadly in a letter detailing her woes and Chris never bought the machine, they were only renting it from me by making a few payments, oh woe.  Seems she told Joe that she didn't know where Red was, which may have been true but I haven't seen any other evidence of that. 

Now I'm going to have to check the "Grandma L" sewing machine that Uncle L brought me to see if it's a Singer. 

People wrote each other poems in the 40s, too

Aunt D included this one, written on a separate sheet, in a letter that she wrote to Grandma.  This is probably while Grandma was in the sanitorium for TB and her children were staying with relatives. 

Parted

(1)

Mom,
     Dear Mom

I never thought I'd see the day
Whe, from you, I'd be whisked away
Ans when I was eight or nine years old,
I'd have laughed if I'd been told
I was to go away from you
Ans all my friends and family, too.

(2)

But do not weep, lament or cry,
For someday very soon
We'll be together you and I
And all our family too
And though there are worlds between us
You'll always be in my heart
And this will always be true
No matter how far we're apart.

Original poem by
DH

My best guess is that she was about thirteen when she wrote this, maybe a bit older.  I haven't memorized how many years younger than Dad she was. 

People wrote each other poems in the 30's

2/23/30 From John E. Hardy on the U.S.S. Colorado to his wife, Lily

Never Forgotten

Honey, don't think that I've forgotten,
If I don't write every day;
For my thoughts are always of you
Although I'm far away.

Don't ever think that there's another
Who can take the place of you
No matter where I go or roam,
Always will my heart be true
To baby, you and home.

At present I'm in the Navy;
My future is unknown.
But always my thoughts are of you,
As I long for you alone.

So, while we are waiting; sweetheart
Think of me and don't feel blue.
For when I've finished this duty,
I'll be coming back to you.

When ocean waves do break and roll,
And your face I cannot see,
Kindly look into your mirror
And kiss your dear self for me.

Though miles and miles between us lie;
And we are so far apart.
Remember that it is me dear
That sends this, with all my heart.


It's kind of sweet seeing the Grandfather I never met get all sentimental over Grandma.  There is a small, cynical voice saying, hey, the man was a sailor.  They probably swapped poems for sweethearts.  There are more semi-colons in that poem that in all of the rest of his letters.  On the other hand, a bunch of them are placed for decoration rather than for grammar.  And his other letters are all extremely sentimental.  So I'm just going to assume that it's genuine and not even try Googling it. 

Clearing My Desk

I'm going to retire the old Guilt List and just keep adding to this.  Grandma is still exloded all over my desk, but I feel like I've made some headway.  I did triage away enough to make things fit into one bin.  Unfortunately, I then opened the bin and started reading through the letters.

On the up side, I was able to throw out more and I've found a couple more dates and names for the family tree.  On the down side, there is not much free surface area left on my desk.  I think I'm going to be boring and do some scanning and dumping.  When I say boring, I mean boring for anyone reading this, because it's about to turn into a list of scanned forms and certificates.