Transcription
Irene
#10 Washington’s Birthday, 1977.
Dear Family,-
My Letter #9 was written on Feb. 6 - that’s 16 long days ago - an unusually long gap for me, but I was so busy getting a lot pf [sic] “musts” handled before leaving for the Hessel Winter Carnival that I had to skip my F.L. that last week. I had planned to get an early start Thursday morning so as to get to Hessel before dark, but the game of CHESS held me up, and thereby hangs a tale: Wally Jarman, who was on the Lawrenceville Chess Team and then on the Princeton Chess Team (Captain for two years), has Parkinson’s disease. It has become so severe that he has to have a male nurse to take care of him (do the heavy lifting which his wife cannot do). Johnny Faber, our Class Secretary, replied to a letter I wrote, inquiring about Wally’s condition, and assured me Wally was mentally alert, played bridge and chess weekly, but just could not navigate. So I wrote Wally, recalling when he was a championship chess player at Lawrenceville and Princeton, and asked him if he had ever tried “chess by mail.” His reply, dictated to his wife and written by her, informed me that he never had played chess by mail but would be interested in giving it a try. So I ordered a supply of postcards like the enclosed and we got started. I, too, had never played chess by mail before, and am finding how much time you can put on a mail game. It takes about a week for an exchange of cards. Wally and I are up to our 20th move now, which means the game has been going on for at least 20 weeks. I had expected Wally’s 19th move would arrive last Wednesday, but when it didn’t come then, I was sure it would be in my Thursday mail, so I delayed my departure on Thursday until/about noon, when The [sic] mail arrived, and there was Wally’s 19th move which enabled me to send him my reply 19th move immediately. If I had made my early start in order to get to Hessel that night, Wally’s 19th move would have stayed in my mail until my return from Hessel, with Wally wondering why it was taking so long to decide on my 19th move. (In “chess by mail” you can spend more time on deciding what your next move will be than normally you spend on a whole game, face to face.)
I got as far as Gaylord last Thursday and arrived at my Cedarville motel about noon Friday and went back to Hessel for lunch at Garvie’s, where I had a regular reunion – it is always great, the welcome you receive [sic]. Though the Upper Peninsula winter has been more severe than our Ohio winter, they have not had as much snow as we have had. The snow photos I took at the 1971 and ’72 carnivals were way ahead of anything I could get this year. I drove out the Point Brulee road to our entrance gate, put on my snow shoes and took about a two-hour exploration tour. When you stop walking and just listen, the “silence” in the woods is awesome. And it was a thrill to see the big open meadow leading up to where the cottage will be, for now it is all smooth with pure white snow whereas last fall it was several acres of “humps” where the trucks had been dumping the “bottom land” dredged from our harbor. I also took a snowmobile ride over to Cedar Lodge, but did not take my snow shoes along, so had to stay on the snowmobile as we cruised around, inspecting the boat houses, Cedar Lodge, the cabin and the block house. No fallen trees against any of the buildings and no evidence of any break-ins. The snowmobile ride across was very rough. Though the ice is from 2½ to 3 feet thick, at times it buckles up in ridges. Off shore from the block house a pyramid of ice was sticking up about 4 feet. There must have been 50 fishing shacks in Wilderness Bay and close to a hundred in Hessel Bay. Think of the job of sawing a hole through 3 feet of ice! Due to the extra thickness of the ice this winter, the prediction is that the ice may not go out until the first week in May.
The enclosed yellow card will give you the events of the 3-day carnival. Before closing I must report on my Volare gas mileage. Going up I was driving between 55 and 60 m.p.hr. and got only about 18½ m.p.gal. Coming down I disciplined myself to keep below 55 m.p.hr. (probably averaged around 53) and got 19 m.p.gal., showing the gain you get at lower speeds. The official tests on the Volare give 20 m.p.gal., but my guess is that these tests are at an even 45 m.p. hr.
Love to all,
WTranscriber
Cindi RokeLanguage
English