Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

Amid the old family letters are half a dozen undated drawings and paintings by me or Jay.

They’re pretty standard kid art—they appear to consist entirely of random squiggly lines, with no evident order or shape. I wouldn’t have posted them just for the art.

But they’re also accompanied by text descriptions, presumably transcribed (by Marcy) from spoken descriptions by me or Jay, and I’m finding those just barely interesting enough to want to post them. Though that’s as much from a desire for completeness as any other reason.

Which is why I’m posting all of them in one entry. If you’re not interested in my (age 5 ½ish) and Jay’s (age 3 ½ish) descriptions of our art, feel free to skip this post.

…Although these ones are undated, other similar kid art that does have dates attached is mostly from November and December 1973. So I’m tentatively and semi-arbitrarily labeling all of these undated ones as being from sometime around fall of 1973.

---

First up: the give-away machine.

This one doesn’t have a name attached; I don’t know which of us drew and described it.

Transcription of the labels:

This is a give-away machine.

If anybody wants to give away something, you put it in here.

Then somebody puts something in here.

see this dotted line? It goes on the dotted lines.

then it goes “Box”

It comes out here to the person & then they take it home with them.

---

Next, in color: a road with tunnels.

It’s a road that has all kinds of little tunnels. There is a yellow tunnelx that curves in. There’s a red one that goes like a hat. There’s some green cars on it that have red people on ’em. They’re driving in and out of the tunnels. They’res bus[?] on the city and the cars are trying to get to a different city so they could stay there. There’s a cave at the end of the tunnel. They have to go thru the cave and there is lots of lights in it so they can see where they’re going. They’re at the other city.

from JED My name is written in my all-caps printing.

…That probably doesn’t say bus, but I’m not sure what it does say. lnus?

---

And now a story about Alice in Wonderland, by Jay. (If I have the approximate date right, this is the first letter from Jay!)

Transcription of the text on this page and the back of it:

To Grandma & Grandpa in Tacoma

Thank you for the Alice in Wonderland Record

This is a little dog and this is The story about Alice in Wonderland and this is Alice’s little puppy named Flupp. One yellow blob is labeled with the word Flupp.

And Alice was put in jail and this is the story on the record but it’s not the same story.

The game was named the king’s croquet game.

from xxx Joaquin

The king’s game & the person who was ordering the people who were playing the game & the person who makes lunch & stuff needs to know whose d crees they are and Alice said “I’m Alice.” Then the person said here’s some x nice strawberry pies. Take them over to the other team. As soon as Alice took the strawberry pies, the Judge said “take this pridsoner over to the dungeon.” So all the guards came & alice said, “but you ordered me to.”

So Alice got put in the dungeon And Then she found Humpty Dumpty & the White Rabbit in jail. It’s the fancy part. After she got put in jail she said, “Oh gee, I’ll never find Fluff.”

So Humpty Dumpty fell apart & the judge tried to put H.D. back together again but the judge couldn’t.

She finally got home again & she still didn’t have Fluff Flupp. She finally found Fluff Flupp again before she got home. And a knight came up to Alice & chased Flupp away, and after he chased Flupp away he said K-night in front of Alice.

And Alice finally got home and the White Rabbit came & gave a present to Alice. And she opened the present and then it was Flupp. And that was the end of the story. Love Joaquin

Probably d crees is wrong, but I can’t figure out what else it might say.

---

Dear Grandma in Tacoma

This is a beer bottle that x somebody just bought from the store

And it was on x G Street.

He wanted to stop but he was lost in his house

He didn’t know xxx what to do.

So he ran over to the light switch Cos he was in his room

He turned his light xxx switch on and it didn’t go on. So he hammered his nails into his door

As soon as there were no doors left he stepped right out of his room and then he saw a xxx he saw a lion*. And then he said Hello. Then DING and everybody woke up. And he got yelled at. And he wanted to sing And he couldn’t. So he ran into his room, got the beer bottle out of his closet and then he xxx drank it and he fell right

to

sleep

* Instead of a lion, it was a hippopotamus that just took a shower. Then it was night. So he fell right to sleep. Then DING A LING right after he went to sleep. Then EVERYBODY woke up.

There was the hippopotamus. Then the police came they called the police. Then the hippotamus run-run-run fast as he could. The police came and he arrested the hippopotamus. The hippopotamus had to go to jail. The policemen said “You have to stay in there for a hundred weeks! Have a good hundred weeks in jail!!”

That’s all.

All the police said “Have a good hundred weeks in jail.” Then they locked him up!

love,

I’m guessing the scribble at the end of this is Jay’s attempt at writing his name—it at least seems to start with JOA.

---

The last undated image is missing the image. It’s a half sheet of paper in Marcy’s handwriting that talks about a picture, but the picture itself is missing, leaving me unclear on whether it was a drawing or (say) a photo. I feel like a photo is more likely. Anyway, here’s the text:

Dear Grandma

We hope you will love the secret house in this picture as much as we love it—especially the boys—tell ’em something’s a secret and they’ll treasure it—and this secret treasure is special because people really lived in it once. Love,

PMJ&J

…For all I know, that last one might have been from years later. But seems plausible that it might’ve been from around the same time as the others in this post.