Earlier this month, I read an article in the Seattle Times about the pay phones of South Whidbey Island. Pay phones! Remember them? Remember rotary dial telephones, the princess phone, those new-fangled phones with push buttons? There was a wire from the phone that actually went into the wall and another one that connected the phone to a part that looked sort of like a dumbbell. You were a real dumbbell if you talked into the end meant for listening. Then there was a wire that came out of your house and went up to a telephone pole where more wires marched from telephone pole to telephone pole all the way down the street. And you could talk to people on your telephone. You could sit at your little telephone desk and talk for hours - unless you were a teenager and hadn't done your homework. If you were away from home, you always made sure you had a nickel, or a dime, or a quarter in case of emergencies. Just about every gas station had a phone booth, every restaurant had a pay phone near the restrooms.
Now people carry little wallet-sized things around in their pockets. I refer to mine as a camera since I am still wedded to my landline. Other people call them phones, but chatting on them seems to be the last thing people use them for. The Seattle Times article pointed out that behavioral scientists are warning that verbal communication may soon become as dead as the dodo because so many people text or instant message instead of actually talk on their "phones". My sons don't even check their voice mail because, I guess, thumbs have overtaken vocal cords. And as for sending cards and letters, mail can sit in their mail boxes for a week before they open the box.
I come from a family of letter writers. Before telephones, how else would people keep in touch with those in other towns or countries? And after the invention of telephones, things didn't change much since long-distance calls were costly. I also come from a family that kept things. I wouldn't say that they were hoarders; they just had houses with big attics and big basements so there was lots of room for lots of things. And now I have some of those things including boxes of cards and letters. I threw away all the Danish letters since I can't read Danish (but I kept the stamps). I threw away a lot of envelopes since they were taking up space (but I kept the stamps). I would like to write about stamps, but this is an article about talking and writing.
When I was in Jr High, I started to write to penpals: a Cuban refugee in Paramus, New Jersey, five girls in England, one girl in France and one in Cameroon, a boy in Turkey and another in Japan. Catherine was crazy about the Beatles and proud when her brother's band, Lee Paul and the Wheels (her brother was one of the Wheels), played in Liverpool's Cavern where the Beatles got their big start. (Out of curiosity, I just decided to google Lee Paul and the Wheels, and imagine my amazement when they turned up!) Jane went to boarding school in Wales. Penny and I exchanged whatever was the latest fad every Christmas. (She sent me black nail polish with white heart and bulls eye decals and patterned stockings, along with other trendy gifts.). Guven wrote about sneaking cigarettes and Takashi about the pressures of the Japanese education system. I'm still writing to Val and Claudine, but, I must admit, just by Facebook messaging now. I have visited each of them twice. My penpals opened a window on the world for me and started me on a lifelong habit of looking forward to the mail carrier's visit.
Going through old letters, I love the way the voice of the writer comes through - as if they were talking to you. I have made the acquaintance of my great-grandfather who wrote: "It is 7pm. Christian is down from Everett. He, Mama and Anna went to Church and have probably gone to take in a movie. We have had a fine day, almost a summer day [January 18, 1931]. I worked in the garden from 10am to 4pm, then I changed my rags and took a two hour nap. Now Jerry, that's our new dog, and I are keeping vigil alone in the big house." "[May 17, 1935] Many thanks to you, Sep, for the cigars. You know my weakness, if I could die with a cigar in my mouth, I would call it a fine death." Now I feel like I know him. A string of emojis will never do that. I find that kind of voice in the books listed below and in Letters of the century : America, 1900-1999, and Don Mayer's entertaining Riding Kid Writes Home: The Remarkable Adventures of a Teen-Age Cowboy in the Years of the Great Depression, which tells the story of Don's uncle through letters and interviews.
Letters from Dachau: A father's witness of war, a daughter's dream of peace. After her parents' deaths, Clarice Wilsey found a box of letters in their attic written by her father, a doctor with the 116th Evacuation Hospital, who was present at Dachau immediately after the liberation. "Emily, we are 'sweating, stinking, existing' in The Hell-on-Earth Dachau...The atrocity reports are true - and more!" He told his wife to tell the world what happened. "All I ask is that you 'instill' it into as many thousands of others as you can - till maybe we can get millions to see it." In the event, Clarice's parents didn't tell the world. They didn't even tell their family - or just as little as possible. It was too hard to talk about. Now Clarice is telling the world through her book and as a speaker with Seattle's Holocaust Center for Humanity. I would whole-heartedly recommend it even if Clarice weren't my sorority sister!
Last year, I wrote about Judy Bentley's new book, 25 Sugarland Road : letters of love and war, 1943-1945. Like Clarice, Judy came across a pack of letters - more than 200 - written by her parents and other family members while her father was serving in Europe. Excerpts from a memoir that her father had written filled in what the censors would have blacked out. One of the things that I really enjoyed when reading Judy's book, was the "voice" of the letter writers. That is what inspired her to gather them into her book. She said in an interview: "The voices in these letters were so strong—my father’s cockiness, my grandmother’s down-home diction, my mother’s weariness as a young mother separated for more than a year from her husband".
Call a friend or take up pen and write some letters. Your stamps support the United States Postal System. Your cards and letters will bring joy to others. It's a good thing to do, and maybe, fifty years from now, someone will come upon your letter in desk or a box or tucked into a book.