Monday, June 9, 2008

March 19, 1943 letter from Elizabeth


This letter speaks for itself. When Dad found this letter in his things in the early '80s, he brought it to me, chuckling about the "Dear Rus" greeting. I suppose the attitude carries over from some of the earlier pictures of me. Anyway, this is pretty newsy, and if any of the three of us want to tell our children how tough we had it growing up, just read this one. Dwight and Louise were in the 6th grade and I was in the 2nd - and these chores didn't include the Saturday chores. Mother must have been milking the cows in Dad's absence. I'm not sure what "help with the cows" included. It was surely too early in the season for them to be in the pasture? Obviously, though, we had our appointed chores - and other letters indicate that we were getting some money. However, I think that the separation was pretty traumatic for us.
It's also obvious that I had a problem tracking across the page. I'm not sure why the writing ran downhill, but remember, I had just learned cursive this year. And, I can't remember who Mrs. McFarland was - obviously a teacher. Alice Carroll was my 2nd grade teacher. We certainly talked about grownups in a very familiar way.

2 comments:

Ann said...

News from home was probably a life line for Dad just as it was for each of us as we left home. I like the fact that each one of you older kids were trying so hard to keep Dad up to date on what was going on at home. The slant - must be a family trait that progressively got better as we got older.

Judy said...

Now we have Elizabeth detailing each person's duties. It looked fairly even and I am sure that Dad was pleased that everyone was pitching in to help in his absence. Elizabeth's list reminds me somewhat of Grandma Tilda's dishwashing list. A family trait?