“Burn that letter I sent”—83 years later, I’m glad she disobeyed
I’ve spent today delving into the letters in the attic. After reading a few from 1917 (and doing my normal note-taking and free-writing about them), I sorted through other stacks of letters. Separated a bunch (1921-1925) into piles by year. Found some written in spring of 1925— a few months before my grandparents got married. Jackpot! Motherlode! Mother’s Mother’s Mother’s weary load, it was. Mama’s (Fannie’s) reaction to news of her daughter’s engagement. Which take different forms over five or so letters as the unwelcome news settles in. But the Jackpot letter was the one in which my great-grandmother describes to her daughter her own marriage to Ben.
She said, I thought I might write this story in a letter for you to read after I am dead. But then she thinks the better of it, in light of young women who make mistakes and say, If I only knew! If only my mother told me. So she wrote that letter. And today I read it.
Dear web reader, what a tease I am! I’m not going to dish all the dirt. But there’s dirt. It’s juicy. It’s... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Letters in the Attic
• Personal History
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Recommended reading for hard times… Hard Times
The breadth of his interviewees and their experiences is what makes the book so good. The reader gets a good snapshot of life from many different perspectives from all strata of American society. No one is excluded. Wall Street barons and the great crash of 1929—those who got out of the market in time and those who did not. The adman who got rich during the Great Depression. People who helped to set up the Public Works program, including the... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Books
• Oral History Projects
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