Letter postmarked October 18, 1967:
The CCZCC now stands at 10. Double digits!
This letter is being posted one day after the date of the postmark because the October 17 letter was split into two posts.
Dear Mother and Mike
This may not be legible - I have written three letters already this morning and I'm lying in bed and I've got Kleenex in both hands. No, I don't have a cold - I'm just trying to filter the air as I take it into my lungs. Coming from a family of breathers I find it hard to exist in this climate. I think within a few years the population in Los Angeles will have gills instead of the regular breathing apparatus. Either that or they shall all surely suffocate. The smog really isn't too bad now - by that I mean you can see "Mr. Sun" peeping through, but we are due for another siege on Thursday.
[That ongoing smog problem sounds awful. Reading Mom's firsthand account of her difficulties dealing with it has given me a little more appreciation for the tighter restrictions on things like automobile emissions in California.]
[The handwriting in this letter is definitely different than the handwriting in previous letters. The most noticeable thing to me is the lack of a slant in this letter. I have scanned in samples of this letter and the previous one so you can see for yourselves.]
Handwriting sample from letter postmarked October 17, 1967.
Handwriting sample from letter postmarked October 18, 1967.
Of course, we could go to the mountains again like we did last Saturday, but then we might be called upon to fight the forest fires that are surrounding us. They (the police) have arrested several known "fire setters" this week and I wonder if our little handyman will show up for work today. (That's another reason my hands are sorta shaky, I suppose. I get just a teeny bit nervous on Wednesdays.)
[Forest fires in California. Imagine that. (Those of you reading this way in the future can google "2017 California forest fires.")]
David Wayne said for me to tell Nana that Mike is a Knucklehead. He really misses his Uncle Mike and is always talking about fighting with him when we get home. So tell Mike he better get in shape - David Wayne is a lot bigger now than when he last saw him. Also, David Wayne keeps in practice by fighting with Dave. They are constantly rolling around on the floor and I wonder how many lamps we will have to replace.
Dave and I have something in common with the Johnsons. We also have a child that makes visits during the night. It's a little eerie to wake up and find someone standing by your bed, but it is better than him getting out the door and chasing him down the street. You should tease Dave in your next letter about our having the same experience as the "cookoo Byrds."
[I didn't find anything to confirm this, but I suspect the Johnsons Mom is referring to here are President Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson, or perhaps their first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson. That seems like a logical reason for the "cookoo Byrds" comment.]
[I wonder if I ever woke up Mom and Dad yelling "Red Rum!" repeatedly?]
Joan Baez is going to be giving more free concerts for the next ten days - this time to the men in jail where she will be in residence. It seems that she was a ringleader in a big riot on Monday. I think this riot or sit-down or whatever happened in front of an army induction center where they were protesting against the draft system. Anyway, the police drafted her and her mother to jail for ten days. I wish I could go to jail with my mother for a few days - I think our relationship is lacking in some way, don't you?
[Joan Baez gave a free concert for an estimated 30,000 people at the Washington Monument in Washington, DC in August of 1967, to protest the Vietnam War. The arrest Mom is referring to here occurred in Oakland.]
[Fun fact: It was during this jail sentence that Joan Baez met an inmate named David Harris, whom she would marry in March of 1968 and divorce in 1973. She was pregnant with their son Gabriel when she performed at Woodstock in 1969.]
We are busily getting ready for Halloween. David Wayne was driving me nuts asking how many more days, so I made him a calendar and he is marking off each day. The witch pinata we got on Olvera Street is really cute and we have decided not to break it. I don't know how we will get it home but Dave says he'll figure something out.
You just thought you bought the little turtle for David Wayne . . . but Dave is the one who pays the most attention to Snappy. He even talks to it! Sunday, on Olvera Street, they were displaying some turtles that were ten times bigger than Snappy and Dave wanted to buy one. I wouldn't have minded, but I know he would have come straight home and played with it the rest of the day. I imagine we'll get one this weekend. By the way, how is your livestock? Any little hamsters yet? Adelia wrote David Wayne that they were expecting twin goats and that if we had twins she would swap him for one. He thought that was a great idea, naturally.
[Adelia, in case you have forgotten, was my grandfather's second wife. They lived on a farm in Sanger, Texas at the time.]
I will close for now. Please write soon as I have started accusing the postman of losing my mail. You wanna hear something funny? I get so much mail from Mordecais that the postman wished me a "Happy New Year" a couple of weeks ago. I took me a while to figure out that greeting. Another funny thing . . . Dave cooked outside on Yom Kippur (the day of Jewish fasting) and we got some mighty dirty looks that day! I'm afraid we have a lot to learn about living around Jewish people. Maybe we will learn since we're going to be here so long.
[Mordecai is apparently a traditionally Jewish name, but as far as I know you have to go back quite a ways in our family tree to find a Mordecai who was Jewish. Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) in 1967 was on October 5, and Yom Kippur was October 14. So here's some more exposure to other cultures that Mom and Dad were not exposed to very much while growing up in small Texas towns.]
Love,Linda
P. S. - Does Linda Kay have one of those electric baby food warmers? They are something new . . . at least I don't think they had them five years ago. It saves putting water in a pan to heat the jar of food. Anyway, I would like to get one for her, so find out if she has one please.
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