On Writing Letters

 ON WRITING LETTERS

By

Cathi McLain

The U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of bankruptcy. I understand the reasons: electronic communications, the Internet, text messaging, all eliminating the need for posting letters the old-fashioned way. Never mind the union contracts that are unsustainable given the reductions in revenue.

I was thinking about it recently, as I was cleaning out closets, and came upon the last of my late mother’s boxes that I had yet to sort.

Here’s a lifetime of saved birthday cards, photos and letters, art supplies and newspaper clippings. The photos are easy. Keep and organize. Store-bought cards, sort and mostly toss. And then there are the letters:  one from a cousin telling Mom that her aunt had died. A letter from Dad’s aunt, describing how she was stabbed nine times, in the New York City apartment where she’d lived for 40 years. My own letters from Girl Scout camp when I was ten. Every letter my brother sent home during his six years overseas as a Marine Corps embassy guard. His letters, newsy and interesting, riddled with spelling errors which embarrass him now, telling Mom not to worry about his poker playing, or describing how they removed listening devices from the walls of the U.S. embassy in Warsaw during the Cold War. There’s a telegram from Madrid telling us when to expect his phone call. A draft, written on yellow legal paper, of one of Mom’s Christmas letters, well written and full of family news. I marvel at her hand-writing this letter in each Christmas card she sent. And oh, how I wish I had more of her voice on paper.

So fascinated am I with the letters, that I postpone, once again, the task of sorting and tossing, and instead go in search of my own box of letters. This Sunkist grapefruit box contains every letter I received from my friends after I moved away-- junior high and high school missives, worthy of a sociology paper into the attitudes of the day, reminders of where we were in life.

And then there are the letters from John, who I met the day after high school graduation and married two years later. He lived in Long Beach and I had just moved back to Riverside, so we were separated by fifty miles. Long distance telephone calls were expensive, so we wrote long letters at least once or twice a week. John saved all of my letters, too, and they’re also in the box.  Organizing them by date, you can almost see our love develop. John’s first letters have silly poems and mine have descriptions of my activities as I prepare for college. By the time he went away to Marine Corps boot camp, we were engaged and madly in love. Our letters are mushy and filled with missing each other.

I never kept a journal or diary, but these letters are almost better, reminding me of friends long missing from my life, and of the passion—and friendship—that grew between John and me. It makes me remember those days when I looked forward to the mailman bringing long, newsy letters, and not just bills and mail order catalogs.  

I can’t help but feel sorry for today’s friends and lovers. Yes, they can enjoy the immediacy of keeping in touch with text messages, tweets, emails and cell phone calls, and I’m as hooked on email and texting as the next person. But years from now, what will they have to remind them of those heady days of youth and growing love, or that moment in time when they were ten and away from home for the first time?

I think I’ll go write a letter.

PICKLES!

Pickles

            My dad was Jewish, raised in Brooklyn. He and his family weren’t religious, and because his job as a jewelry store manager required him to work Friday nights and Saturdays, he never went to Temple when I was growing up. He left religion to my Protestant mother, and she took us to various Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches over the years.

            One thing Dad was religious about was Jewish food. He loved his rye bread, corned beef, matzo ball soup and kosher dill pickles. Especially his kosher dill pickles. There was no place in our home for sweet pickles, or even the mock-kosher dills available in supermarkets.

            But in 1950’s Riverside, California, the Jewish community was relatively small and there were no kosher deli’s available to supply him with his favorite foods. So, unwilling to compromise his standards, he found a way to bring his precious rye bread and kosher pickles to Riverside.

            The company that owned Dad’s store was headquartered in Los Angeles. He worked a deal with the man who made the twice-monthly deliveries of diamonds, watches and other fine jewelry, to stop at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Blvd. in Los Angeles to pick up his standing order of two loaves of rye bread, a couple of pounds of thinly sliced corned beef, and a dozen big fat, homemade garlicky kosher dill pickles. I can only imagine the difficulty that driver had, having to smell those delectable foods as he drove the fifty miles from L.A. to Riverside.

            On delivery day, Dad would walk into the kitchen after work, carrying the large brown paper bag containing his Canter’s order, the smell of pickles preceding him. One by one, he’d unload the fragrant loaves of bread in their waxed paper bags, followed by the flat package of corned beef, and finally the cardboard containers containing the pickles. Since dinner was always on the table the moment he walked in the door, there was no sampling of his treasures, but if we were lucky, he’d allow Mom to include a slice or two of his pickles in our lunchboxes.  Those were the days when there was at least one classmate who wanted to trade lunches.

                                     

             

My Mid-Century Modern Childhood

I've been writing memoir stories for a couple of years, mostly to share with family. These are episodes from my 50's era childhood that was mostly happy and usually interesting. Enjoy these "blasts from my past."