Letter writing is said to be a lost art. As is reading and writing cursive penmanship.
While I was recovering from a softball game played in blazing hot and humid conditions Sunday morning, Gilda spent the early afternoon reading through a box of mostly handwritten letters from her high school and college years (late 1960s) as well as the first few years of our dating and marriage (early 1970s).
She’s always teased me I secured her hand by default—her other boyfriend, Steve, played amateur hockey and seemed to perpetually have an injury to report. Letter after letter from him detailed a dislocated right shoulder, an unspecified mishap from a “collision in a friendly neighborhood vicious hockey game. It’s imazing (sic) how a cloth sling magically changes to a wooden crutch,” and “the usual car troubles.” When he wasn’t injured he was inflicting pain, proudly noting “the ribs of a Sutton Place doctor I broke in a hockey fight. I figure I cost him (in 1971 dollars) about $6,000 from his practice.”
I’m a lucky man, and no doubt a wise one as well to not having revealed my penchant for real and imagined ailments until after our “I do’s” were exchanged.
I’m not jealous of Gilda’s romances before me, but I did mention to her that one of the three letters she kept from Steve came but a few weeks before we got engaged; a second arrived just days later. Perhaps she had told him his cause was doomed, as he began the letter saying, “This is the price you pay for incurring my wrath. An eligible (sic) handwritten letter. Be thankful I’ve printed it.”
It should also be noted that Steve sent his letters to Gilda’s mother’s address, a home Gilda had moved out of months earlier.
Speaking of addresses, I think I’ve figured out why I have yet to win a big lottery prize. Often I play numbers based on addresses where I have lived, including 5 East Genesee St., Syracuse, during my year up north obtaining a master’s degree in newspaper journalism.
Turns out I never lived at that address. The real number of my Salt City domicile was 1518. Ach, all those wasted dollars!!!
Gilda kept many of my letters from that year. Some observations:
*My handwriting was a lot neater back then. I’m lucky today to be able to decipher my scrawls a day after I jot them down, but I was able to read without difficulty what I penned 44 years ago.
*I repeatedly noted how many papers I had to write for my courses. Honestly, I remember just two, one on the effect of herd mentality in the press, illustrated by a visit to the White House and interviews with members of the press corps on the seemingly pack-journalism sameness of their reporting, and a second on Birthright, a Syracuse-based home for women with unplanned pregnancies who chose to deliver but not necessarily keep their babies.
*Gilda and I always thought we became engaged over the 1971 Thanksgiving weekend. Reading my letters revealed our engagement occurred over the Christmas holiday.
*People, especially our kids, make fun of my taste in music, but here’s a redeeming item from one of my 1971 letters: “I’m listening to a great record now—Carole King’s Tapestry. Buy it—you’ll never regret it. It’s GREAT!!!” (FYI, if you didn’t know, Tapestry was released in 1971.)
*I was not a sentimental or romantic letter writer. Hopefully, I’ve matured in those areas. Of course, it’s up to Gilda to deliver the verdict.
Finally, for those not familiar with the provenance of the headline to this blog post, click on this link to Perry Como, a 20th century baritone for more than 50 years whose television show my mother rarely missed: https://youtu.be/IC7o7FbUipg
