Please note that there is not a zip code in the destination address but there is one in the return address. Five-digit zip codes were first introduced in 1963, and became mandatory for some bulk mailers in 1967. They were generally adopted soon after that. I do recall seeing print or television ads encouraging people to use zip codes when I was a child.
Also note the stamp says "U. S. AIR MAIL" on the bottom and cost 8 cents. (Not 0.08 cents!) Sending snail mail via "air mail" used to be a thing back in the day since it was faster than sending mail via a ground route. (Not Pony Express, but still slower than air mail.) Air mail effectively ended as a separate class of service in the US in 1975, since by then almost everything went via air anyway when it was practical. Incidentally, 8 cents in August of 1967 bought about as much as 58 cents in June of 2017. (More on that later in this blog post.) Forever stamps cost 49 cents today.
Also also note that this letter was addressed to two people, specifically my grandmother Eloise Mordecai (aka "Nana") and my mother's younger brother Mike. He had just turned 17 and would have been entering his senior year of high school.
Following the same conventions used in the diary entries, I'll always write out my name as "David Wayne" and my dad's name as "Dave." I'll also take the liberty of making any minor corrections to grammar or spelling, or other minor adjustments for readability purposes. I know Mom would appreciate that, since she was an elementary school teacher for about 25 years.
Since these letters are considerably longer than the diary entries, I will be interspersing my comments between paragraphs rather than at the end of the letter. My comments will be within square brackets. [ ]
Letter postmarked August 1, 1967:
Dear Mother and Mike,
It was wonderful getting your letter. I had been patrolling our mailbox for several days. I was relieved about your x-rays. Dave laughed till tears ran down his cheeks about the chocolate (Ex-lax?)[As I mentioned in an earlier diary entry, I really wish I had the letters my grandmother wrote my mother while we were living in Los Angeles. I don't know if Mom kept them for any period of time or not. It sounds like this one had a rather amusing anecdote about chocolate and/or ex-lax. My dad didn't laugh that hard very often, so I'm sure it was a good story and the way my grandmother told it was hilarious.]
Mike was right about bringing Taffy instead of David Wayne. There is no problem with pets - cats, dogs, etc. (I don't know about iguanas) - just no children. David Wayne talks constantly about getting a bird and getting one of your cages to keep it in. He doesn't want one bird though - he wants a family - mother, daddy, and a baby. It's the same story with rabbits.[One new character to introduce here. Taffy is my mother's dog (a black cocker spaniel) who I presume stayed with my grandmother and uncle while we were in Los Angeles. My mother mentioned iguanas with the other pets because, as my uncle recently confirmed, he did have a pet iguana for a brief period while he was in high school. I don't remember the iguana, but I do recall my grandmother having pet birds at least into the early 1970s.]
I haven't got a letter from Wayne and Linda yet. I guess they are busy packing. David Wayne told me that when the baby comes he wants it to live with us. Be sure to ask Wayne and Linda about this.[Two more characters to introduce in this paragraph. Wayne is my mother's older brother, and Linda is his wife at the time who was apparently pregnant. (Spoiler alert: Their baby did not come live with us.)]
We haven't done much sightseeing yet. Friday night we took David Wayne to the La Brea Tar Pits. They have reconstructed a giant mammoth from bones found there. They have other statues of prehistoric animals sinking into the tar. I forgot to tell you about David Wayne and that dinosaur book. On the way to L. A. David Wayne learned the name of every reptile that was pictured. His memory and learning ability amazes me sometimes.[Awww, mothers say the sweetest things . . . The La Brea Tar Pits were previously mentioned in the July 28 diary entry. Way cool. I do remember that book Mom mentions here. I kept it throughout my childhood and I'm pretty sure it was among the books Mom kept at her house for her grandchildren, too.]
Sunday we drove by Griffith Park. They had a hippie demonstration there about two weeks ago. From what I could see, it hasn't broken up yet. I try to keep Dave away from their hangouts. He gets so mad at the sight of them that I think he would run over them if he got a chance. It would be very easy since they usually walk in the middle of the street.[This paragraph cracks me up. I don't remember any specific incidents like this, but I can just see my dad tightly gripping the steering wheel, cursing under his breath (or not) at the sight of those darn hippies out protesting and causing chaos. It's no wonder I remember not liking hippies when we lived out there.]
Also, Sunday we drove to Santa Monica Beach. David Wayne loved it! It is so cool by the ocean that I don't think it will be possible for us to swim there.[Too cool to swim in July? What kind of nonsense is this? Hopefully climate change has taken care of that by now.]
Sunday was a good day and that was mainly because it was our anniversary. David Wayne got his daddy a shower soap with a cord.[Nothing says love like soap on a rope, right?]
I got Dave a gold (filled) money clip and had it engraved. It says:
To my husband David
7/30/67
Linda
Pretty sneaky of me to have the date put on it, eh? Of course, if Dave ever finds out I paid $20 for it, the marriage will be dissolved. The engraving cost more than the clip - how's that for sentiment? I had to swear David Wayne to secrecy! Dave completely floored me by buying a necklace with a small diamond in it. The diamond _is_ small and David Wayne embarrassed us both by repeating over and over: "What diamond? I don't see a diamond. Where's a diamond?"[It may seem strange that my mother was worried about spending $20 on an anniversary gift, but according to the Inflation Calculator provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm), $20 in July of 1967 had the same buying power as $146.68 in June of 2017. So, yeah, $20 was a bit of money back then. But Dad must have liked it because he used it the rest of his life. Here are pictures of the front and back of it:]
[Hopefully you can read the engraving on the right side of the first picture. (That's a scratch and some lighting that makes "LINDA" look like "MNDA.") You can also see that it's quite scratched up from being in my dad's pocket for 24 years. The plating on the back side is very worn, and you can barely see that it says "12K G. F." there.]
[Regarding the small diamond in the necklace, I do remember asking where it was when Mom showed it to me. I really wanted to see it, but as I recall I don't think Mom tried very hard to point it out to me. Alas, I do not have a picture of the necklace.]
We are really looking forward to your visit. David has already mapped out the route to the airport. David Wayne is excited about you coming, but he is disappointed that Mike can't come. He says you can bring the iguana instead. We are saving most of the sightseeing to do with you. Please come, I may never see anything unless you do. You know Dave and spending money. I told him yesterday if the Lord came down and offered to take him on a tour of heaven for only a dime, that he wouldn't go.[Ok, it looks like my grandmother is planning to visit us in Los Angeles. I'm sure the note I wrote her in June asking her to come to Disneyland with us is what convinced her. I'm also sure I was disappointed my Uncle Mike couldn't come visit. But at least I suggested the iguana as a backup. And yes, my dad was a little tight with money. I'm surprised I never heard that "tour of heaven" quip before.]
We are in a perfect location - for Dave anyway. There are no stores where I can spend money. David Wayne and I walk everywhere we go. Last week we averaged three hours of walking per day and two blisters per foot. I did find a dress shop and I bought a fancy bra - you know the low cut kind that pushes you up. (Very sexy, I thought.) I just knew Dave would be impressed with my "new" figure. His reaction, "Why did you buy one that was too small?" I haven't worn it since. Wow! was my ego deflated![Well that comment backfired on Dad, didn't it? He probably thought it was a clever compliment.]
I wrote Sara a letter. I'm sure she told you if you saw her. I got a letter from that teacher that lives by us. She had kept her house this summer so she could get close to us next year. We may never come home.[Another new character in this paragraph. Sara is my mother's aunt on her father's side. She turned 98 years young this past December. I don't know anything about the teacher Mom is referring to here, but it sounds like Mom was not looking forward to her living close to us.]
Oh, yes! David Wayne thinks he is seven years old instead of five. We couldn't understand this until he explained. He had a birthday at your house - 5th, he had a birthday at Papa's - 6th, and then the kids ate cake at our house - 7! Very simple! I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the little girl next door is older than him. He is a very lonesome little boy with no playmates. There is one 10-year-old boy upstairs, but he stays somewhere during the day and on the weekends they go a lot. I feel I'm slipping (mentally) by playing "Candy Land" and "Winnie the Pooh" all day. I can get a job in a factory when we return - I'm getting very good with my motor skills by putting Tinkertoys together.[Apparently I was good at math at a very early age, or at least manipulating it to meet my needs. I don't recall having any friends to play with while we lived in Los Angeles, or being upset about it, so I guess my mother did a pretty good job keeping me entertained or letting me entertain myself. In this paragraph we have some evidence that I have always enjoyed board games. In case it isn't mentioned later, I was a terrible loser.]
[We have another new character to introduce here, and this one most definitely was a character. Papa was my mother's father. He and my grandmother were divorced around 1954, and then he remarried and moved to Sanger, Texas. He worked as a barber in Denton, and I remember hanging out in his barbershop for who knows how long and being mesmerized by the whole process as he adjusted the height of the barber chair with the lever on the side, put the paper around the customer's neck, slung the cape around in front of the customer and tied it off, sharpened his razor on the razor strop, etc. I could go on and on about him, but one thing relevant right now is that he gave me a very short haircut (essentially a buzz cut) right before we left for Los Angeles. (He probably didn't care for hippies either.) It's easy to tell in my early childhood photos whether they were taken before or after we moved to Los Angeles.]
I will close another catalog until next time. I need to put my beans on to cook. Oh yes, I'm becoming quite the little homemaker. I've cooked lima beans (dried), pinto beans (dried), and ham hock, and fresh green beans. I'm sure I walk five miles in the apartment every day just checking to see that the beans don't burn.
Love,
Linda
P. S. I wish these Californians knew how to butcher a cow. I have a difficult time buying meat. Who ever heard of a "7 bone steak" or "family cut?"[The 7-bone steak is so named because the bone that's in that cut is shaped like the number 7. It's also known as a center-cut pot roast, which is probably what it was more commonly called in Texas. "Family cut" may be referring to "family steak," which is a cut from the chuck of the steer. FYI, the chuck is the part of the cow between the head and the ribs. So it's the upper part of the shoulders, essentially.]
Ok, this was a good first letter from Mom, expanding on some things that were already mentioned in the diary entries and mentioning some new ones. It's neat to see how she felt about various things going on, good or bad, and also to see what she wrote about what was happening with the family back in Texas.
Breaking News: One of my sisters has the necklace. A picture may be forthcoming . . .
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