It’s A Surprise!

Postmark Jefferson City, MO January 30, 5:30 PM

Thursday

Dear Jim:

I was surely surprised yesterday when you called me.  It was sure thoughtful of you.  I was quite thrilled.  If we broke the line I can’t imagine how we did it -can you?
We had a long teachers meeting this afternoon at the college.  All the teachers are in town.  Our superintendent really was angry because some teachers have been late so often and others leave too soon after school  I usually get to school on time but often leave before I should.  We are supposed to stay ten minutes after school is out.

Dad is taking Mother and me out to dinner at the Hotel tonight.  I’ll have to make this short-so I can get dressed up.  Some men are giving it.

Jim I haven’t heard from Henry since you left.  I guess he is alright.

I have a surprise for you in a few weeks.  I decided the other day.  You can guess all you please-but I won’t tell.  I’ll just surprise you some time.

I hope everything is alright at school.  You will come out with your usual good grades in the end.  One always feels that the first week is awful hard.  I will be proud of you when you finish even if you haven’t made the highest grades.  They don’t always count the most.

It has been trying to snow here all day.  I hope it doesn’t.  I am so tired of bad weather.

Your letter written Tuesday came today.  It was mailed at 10 AM the 29th.  If you mail a letter at night at the post office I get it about 10 the next morning-mail your letters at the co-op-they collect more often there, I think.

Love,

Mary

 

A surprise.  How fun!  With all the cold and snowy weather, could it be a stocking hat or warm gloves or a wool scarf?  Maybe a sled?  More candy, or perhaps cookies?  I wonder what it could be?  I wonder how long Jim will have to wonder what it could be?

I’m a sucker for a good surprise.  As it turns out, I happened to be married to the world’s all time best surprise giver.  Ever.  Sure, I have been the recipient of flowers for no special reason, funny doodads and shiny trinkets.  But, my husband is at a totally higher level when it comes to creating surprises.  Think stratosphere.  Once I learned our travel destination at 35,000 feet.  I immediately regretted packing the sweatshirt and hiking boots for a trip to the Virgin Islands.  He has also been known to mastermind events with family and friends all across the country.  He employs many accomplices.  One memorable Valentine’s Day he surprised me with a catered dinner and a harpist…in our very own dining room!  On the other hand, I am not very good at giving surprises.  For one, you must admit that the bar is set pretty high.  Yet, it also happens that I am married to a champion surprise finder outer.  He utilizes his sleuthing super powers to read my body language and the tone of my voice to determine if I might be up to something.  He engages me in conversation that inevitably leads me to make a slip of the tongue.  He has also been known to coerce others to gain information.  As I said, he has many accomplices.  It doesn’t help that I get so excited about the surprise and the element of surprise that I can’t wait for the perfect moment to catch him off guard, which is never since he is always on guard so this makes it next to impossible.  You see my problem?

I guess the thing that makes a good surprise is that it comes unexpected, for no reason other than wanting to give the other person joy.  A moment of pure grace.  Like I said, I’m a sucker for a good surprise.

What’s a memorable surprise you’ve received or given?

New Year, New Love

The single correspondence from 1929 is the letter Mary wrote from the train.  I have searched the letterbox.  Nothing.  Not even a reply from Jim to that letter.  I wonder what happened to that bundle, or were those letters even saved to begin with?  What might they have written?  Mary began to teach school that Fall.  Jim returned to classes at the university, where they probably enjoyed going to a few football games together.  The stock market crash in October plunged the country into the Great Depression.  It was a time of great change and uncertainty.  The relationship between Mary and Jim was changing, too, and one thing is sure.  The letters resume in early January 1930, and it is clear that they are now sweethearts.

The envelope is postmarked January 9, 1930, 11:30 P.M.

Thursday

Dear Mary:
Say-I didn’t mean for you to work all night making candy.  You shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble you did honey.  But, it certainly is good.  I love good homemade candy, and this is really good.  It surely is sweet of you to go to all that trouble for me.  Henry said to tell you that the candy is certainly good.  It just came a few minutes ago, about a half hour after your letter.

It snowed here all last night.  There is about eight or ten inches of snow on the ground now.  Henry and I got up this morning and dressed nice and warm, then went for a nice long walk about fifteen blocks.  It was snowing hard and blowing all of the time.  I felt lots better after I got in.

I think I am going to have to work tomorrow.  I’ll be rather glad to have something to do again for a change.  I wish you didn’t have to get out in it so much though honey.  This will nearly cover you up, won’t it?  Do you have to walk when the snow is as deep as it is now?  I hope not.  I think it would be lots of fun if we could get together and go for a big bobsled ride.  I always did like that.

Really Mary, you are about the sweetest thing I can think of.  I think I would like to have you for good.  No fooling.  I am sure of it.  I wish that I were through with school now.  I am sure things would be different.  They will be when I do get through.  That won’t be very long now, will it?

I’ll write Leon right away.  I’m sorry I couldn’t have thought of that before.  I know just how it is to be away from home with not a soul near that you know.  I was that way for a month last summer out in Lawrence, Kansas.  I never got so lonesome in my life.

There is a hockey game here tonight.  Henry wants to go so I might go to it.  I don’t know yet.  More than likely I’ll stay right here.  He is trying to get a date, and if he does-I won’t have to go.  I hate to get out in this cold unless I am dressed for it.  I can’t go there dressed like I was this morning.

I would like to go a few places with your dad.  I like to travel if I can go on a train.  I don’t care so much for going very long distances on buses or in a car.

I must stop.  Be a good girl.  I hope you don’t fall and hurt yourself.  Thanks again for the lovely candy.

Love,

Jim

THE Letter, Part One

All of my life I have known the significance of THE letter.  This special correspondence is pivotal in my family history.  A single piece of mail is the catalyst that brought my grandparents together and is the true genesis of their relationship, a relationship that endured more than 70 years.

My grandfather, Jim, relished in telling the story of THE letter.

Mary and Jim met sometime during 1927 while they were both students at the University of Missouri in Columbia.  The details of their meeting and their first date were never highlighted.  These particulars were never all that important, at least in Jim’s mind.  All that mattered to him was THE letter.

They dated, briefly, but then, as Jim puts it, “Mary quit me for another boy.”  Mary dated and, in fact, became engaged to someone else.  She also quit school, which I find interesting because dropping out of school would have been forbidden to me.  The idea of quitting school would have been forbidden.  Thinking about the idea of quitting school would have been forbidden.  Still, she dropped out of the university and began planning a wedding.

As it happened, the love affair between my grandmother and this other unknown man had a really unhappy ending.  It was so traumatic that her father, who was an attorney for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, sent Mary, her mother and her best friend on a trip to the Pacific Coast.  He put them on a train in Jefferson City, Missouri bound for California in the summer of 1929.  Her father figured that the distance and the sunshine and fresh air of California would help to heal her hurting heart.  He was right.

Somewhere  along the way home, Mary wrote a letter, THE letter to Jim from the train.  She was writing to inform him that the engagement was off and that she had told the other boy goodbye.  She wanted to know if they could be friends again.  We all understood this to mean more than just friends, but boyfriend and girlfriend.  Jim liked to tell it that “she wanted to know if I was still interested in her and would take her back.”  Which he did, of course.

My grandfather would always get a little teary eyed recounting the story.  (Turns out real men do cry.)  He would also always point out that this piece of private correspondence arriving in his mailbox forever changed his life and was the origin of our family.

Somewhere in the stacks of bundles is THE letter.  I sort through the envelopes, searching postmarks and addresses for clues.  Most of them are stamped 1930 or later.

It is exciting and wondrous to think that somewhere amid the hundreds of envelopes in the letter box is one that holds the most important family communication of all.  What is really in that letter?  What exactly did she say?  What were the words that melted his heart?  What other secrets might she reveal?  I suddenly realize this is very personal, to them and to me.