1973, November 12–December 7: More kidmail

As I mentioned a couple of entries ago, in mid- to late-1973 we moved to Santa Rosa and my parents started a foster home.

This entry is another set of notes/letters from me and Jay, some with art. The return address on all of these that have return addresses is our new Santa Rosa address, so we had definitely arrived there by mid-November, when the first note below is postmarked.

It looks like the first two foster kids arrived around then as well, but you’ll have to wait a few entries to hear much of anything about them.


The first quasi-letter in this set (postmarked November 12, I think) is a drawing on a rather long piece of fairly heavy-weight light-green paper, with annotations written by Marcy, presumably transcribing what Jay told her.

Fish trap.
Fish trap.

To Grandma & Grandpa in Tacoma

It’s from Joaquin

and we live in

Sebastopol.

It’s a fish trap, Nuffun Else!

That’s all!

(Nitpick: We did not in fact live in Sebastopol; the new house (the foster home) was officially in Santa Rosa. But I gather it was somewhere near the border between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.)


Next one is a drawing by me on the same weight and width of paper, except tan instead of green. At some point, Helen wrote “Nov 73” on it.

Good machine.
Good machine.

The caption says, in Marcy’s handwriting:

This is a good machine. It’s a plug-in good machine. It does lots of good things for you when you’re real lazy.

In block capitals, in my handwriting: LOVE JED

I still think that a machine that does good things for you when you’re feeling lazy would be a good idea.


Next: A note from Jay, which apparently came with some other item (that was held together with glue?) but I don’t know what that other item might’ve been. Helen at some point wrote “Nov 23 ’73” on it.

Dear Grandma & Grandpa,

First, no drawing inside that glue. Don’t open it. Look at it and see if it’s dry

Please write Marcy and me a letter. Yeh, and Jed too. love,

Joaquin

It’s a great huge big huge giant swimming pool!!!

Swimming pool.
Swimming pool.

On the back of that page, it says:

If yuh have anovver cup just like yuh send Jed, send it to Wah-Keen. Just the same cup. If yuh have one send it to Joaquin.

note by amanuensis: he refers to a plastic cup with ABC & 123 & some animal pictures. I’ve looked & looked & finally told him he could ask you if you could find one something like it sometime. Many thanks.


Next up, a big sheet of brown paper (of a type that I’ve always heard called newsprint, but now I’m not so sure that’s the right word), roughly 16" x 24", folded into twelfths and mailed without an envelope, postmarked November 26.

The drawing includes several instances of the outline of my hand.

Rocket taking off.
Rocket taking off.

My hand is a rocket that’s taking off into space. But before it takes off, it has to go up into space to see if there’s any of those little things called meteors that I read about in a book called Rusty’s Space Ship. It goes off into space finally, and all the lines are the rocket’s trails of fire. And they’re kind of electricity tubes and they have to be attached to each other because they’re all to the same rocket and they go to the same plug. And it finally lands on the Moon and comes back to Earth. And that’s all.

I don’t remember Rusty’s Space Ship. It was apparently published in 1957.


The next letter is on clown-and-balloon stationery (a slightly different drawing of a clown this time, but similar enough that I’m not scanning this one), postmarked November 27, 1973.

DEAR GRA-

NDMA AND

GRANDPA

I LIKE YOU

AND THA-

NK YOU FOR THE

BOOK YOU

SENT ME AND

JOAQUIN AND WE

HAVE OUR FOSTE-

R CHILDEREN.

So at age five and a half, I had the capital letters down pretty well, and I knew about hyphens, but apparently didn’t know that they’re only to be used in certain places in a word.


The last letter in this set is postmarked December 7, 1973. It’s on lined notepaper, but I wrote mostly sideways across the lines; most of each of the four pages was taken up by a drawing. The last of the four drawings is the same kind of squiggly-lines art as the rest of this kid art, but the first three are grids filled with Xs and Os in various combinations; I don’t know if I was trying to copy a pattern that appeared on the blankets or something, or if I was just making up the patterns.

Xs and Os p. 1.
Xs and Os p. 1.
Xs and Os p. 2.
Xs and Os p. 2.
Xs and Os p. 3.
Xs and Os p. 3.
Xs and Os p. 4.
Xs and Os p. 4.

DEAR GRANDPA THANK YOU FOR THE LETTER. LOVE JED

DEAR GRANDMA. THAN-K YUO FOR THE BLANKETS. LOVE JED

3 Responses to “1973, November 12–December 7: More kidmail”

  1. 1974, February 6: Kidmail from Jay or Jed to G&H – Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

    […] it’s the second piece of kid art in a couple of months to use the phrase “fish trap”; see earlier entry. I imagine we must have been exposed to that phrase at some point, but I don’t know in what […]

    reply
  2. 1974, Spring: Letters from Jed to G&H – Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

    […] It’s the first time that a letter that I myself wrote was not (at least in part) a thank-you letter. (It’s not the first-ever letter that I wrote to them; that was a few months earlier.) […]

    reply

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