Transcription
Irene
#9 Sunday, 2-6-77.
Dear Family,-
When I wrote last Thursday that I had not received mail for a whole week, I thought that the deep snow and unplowed side-streets confronted the small Postal Jeep cars with impossible driving conditions. Saturday morning (yesterday) I happened to see Mr. Kennedy arrive with his Jeep, so I met him at the door and greeted him with the exclamation: “At last some mail!” To my surprise he did not blame it on the weather – instead, he had been away for a week and the substitute who had been handling his route thought I had gone up to Hessel for the Annual Ice Carnival and that he was to hold my mail at the P.O. for me to pick up upon my return. My 7 days of accumulated mail amounted to 29 pieces, of which 21 were first class, and among the 8 second class pieces there was not a single one addressed to “Occupant.” It took me several hours to go through all this mail, and the “high lights” were the Family Letters from Bill and Judy (Anne’s last F.L. was sent to Hessel and forwarded back to me, so maybe her letter about their winter struggles did NOT get “held” but was sent on to Hessel).
Bill, it is just TOO bad I had to miss your BIG 50TH. And I would have appreciated very much your taking me to the Planitarium [sic] in Chicago. Contemplating the vastness of the heavens is awesome and inspiring. And thanks for the chuckles in your letter: First the long sentence with the delayed verb at the end, and your added parenthesis (I bet you were wondering when I was going to throw in the verb.) Which reminded me of a joke on the German language: German students are listening to a lecture by their professor and Student Karl whispers to Student Johann, “I don’t understand what he is trying to say.” Johann replies, “Shush – be quiet – you’ll understand when he gets to the end of his sentence – the verb.” Another chuckle was about your tap water in Taiwan, which I assume was your drinking water. You wrote. “We tried goldfish in a bowl once but the tap water killed them, and goldfish can live in anything.” The underscoring is mine. The last chuckle was in your closing remark: “Being conservative by nature, I’m really looking forward to the next 40.” That means you may make it for another 50.
I’m all excited about your new 21 foot Slickcraft boat. Do you have any extra catalogue sheets or sales folders you could send me? And I am very glad to see you are planning on being at Cedar Lodge from July 13th to the 31st, with one set of guests for the first week and another set for the last week. With your plans and those of the Davis and Shaw families, Cedar Lodge is going to be used to full capacity this coming summer.
Judy, I was glad to see that you reread Bill’s poem for my birthday up at Cedar Lodge way back in 1943, and that you caught on to the “squirrel-nut-moron” joke that you had missed the first time. His lines that gave me a good chuckle are worth repeating:
He cannot stand to watch the girls
Go swimming every day –
And in this land just think with squirrels,
Such morons are at bay.
That’s a good “punch line” for a closer.
Love to all of you,
WTranscriber
Cindi RokeLanguage
English