Skip to main content

Happy Valentimes

This is the front of a postcard my grandfather sent to my grandmother before they were married, sometime before 1920. He never mailed it, so either he handed it to her or had it delivered outside of mail service.

His message: Dear Ola, You will be some what surprised to get a card from me. I must beg you to excuse me Sunday. I had a hearing from home and I am crazy to go home.

I have often wondered about this message. Knowing what I know about the Methodist church services in those days and how they lasted all day with dinner on the ground between morning and evening sermons and singing, I suspect my grandmother-to-be had invited my grandfather-to-be to spend Sunday with her family, and he wasn't able to make it because he was homesick for his own family. I wonder where he was that called him away, given that he was not in the military or at least not overseas. Regardless, she was patient, and he eventually joined her. They spent every Sunday together until she died in 1974. Here is the link to a photo of them from a previous post. Scroll down, because no, Wilford Brimley is not my grandfather.

Comments

Neponset River Bridge Dig said…
Wilford Brimley... poor bugger does all those commercials about diabetes now.
1:30 PM
Anonymous said…
mommy. i'm in college and i have a snow day! this means sleeping in, no classes, no quizzes... and building snowmen with ellen and claire!

tell prince michael i snort in his general direction.
2:28 PM
dive said…
I was going to get all mushy about how much more romantic things were back then, but diabetes ads and snorting daughters (hey, what a great name for a band) have taken the edge off the romance just a bit.
2:58 PM
Sassy Sundry said…
That is a lovely card, Robyn. Makes me ashamed of my conversation hearts.

We have some love letters my grandfather sent my grandmother. He was quite the man for romance. It's really sweet to read them.
3:19 PM
Scout said…
Rich, I used to think he was so charming, but the commercials lowered my esteem.

#1, yea for snow days and snow men and big red Os! Prince Michael snorts back in your general direction.

Dive, I never thought my grandparents were even remotely romantic, but by the time I knew them they were old and tired. Diabetes ran wreck a lot of things.

Sassy, I don't have any other notes from him except for the letter he scrawled when I graduated from high school. It was difficult for him to write, and I have saved it as a treasure.
7:59 PM
Cheltenhamdailyphoto said…
Tis a treasure indeed, Robyn. Beautiful. Hi No. 1. Enjoy your time off!
5:17 AM
Alifan said…
When we had to clear my Mum and Dad's house after they passed away, we found so many gorgeous cards they had sent to each other..... I felt really sad because I did not know how they felt about each other even after they had been married for nearly 70 years...they did not seem the hearts and flowers type...

But my sister in law has kept them and put them in an album for the next generation to look at.... (not Dive then as he does not like valentine)he will have a job when he has to clear my things, as I have so many cards that I have kept!!!!but at least I hope he knows how much his Dad and I loved one another..
5:43 AM
Scout said…
Alifan, the thought of having to go through my mother's things is a bit more than I can stand. Dive's veneer fades a little when he writes about how much you and his father loved each other, so I believe he knows. Thanks for this note--it's lovely.

And Hi, Lynn.
7:51 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Right Brain Dominant

I am reading A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future , by Daniel H. Pink. I wouldn't have chosen this book had I been book hunting because I lean toward fiction—it was a gift from someone who, like me, is right-brain dominate. I haven't gotten very far, just far enough to learn that in Hippocrates' day, the left side of the brain was considered the true source of thought, the thing that separated us from the animals and made us human. It was the source of reason and logic. The right side was considered a useless left over, a parasite. Now we know that both sides of our brains are equally important and equally involved in our daily thoughts and functions. But some of us do seem to be governed by one side more strongly than the other. Me, sometimes I think the left side of my brain has completely atrophied, that the right side governs everything. But I am learning that I don't give that other side enough credit, that logical mathy side. As I read on ab...
12 comments
Read more

Happy Birthday To...

Pope Leo IX (the Pope) JCF Bach (German composer) Jane Russell (of Gentlemen Prefer Blonds fame) Daniel Carter Beard (founder of the Boy Scouts of America) Jean-Paul Sartre (French philosopher) Maureen Stapleton (Academy Award winning actress) Mariette Hartley (who?) Prince William of Wales (the prince) but most importantly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 years ago today, I was born in Alabama in a small town on the banks of the Tennessee River. Yesterday, someone asked me if my family has any birthday traditions. The answer is no. My family never cared very much, but I do remember a few birthday highlights. I was given a birthday party in the back yard when I was ten years old. Two years later, my sister got married on my birthday, so I was just a bit overlooked, although I did get a stuffed animal--it was a white Yorkshire terrier with an AM radio in its stomach. When I turned 20, a different sister took me to an outdoor performance of Dvorak's New World Sympho...
16 comments
Read more

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...
14 comments
Read more