Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

Handwritten by Marcy on another one of those fold-up-and-mail notecards with art showing vegetables printed on the back/outside.

This is the second and last letter sent from our second Santa Rosa address; the next letter comes from the next new place, in Cotati. But more on that anon.

Dear Grandfolks

It sounds so great! I was ready to drive up there the day we got your xxx letter - but we have to find a new house first, and it’s pretty tough. Soon as we do, and get moved, if there’s time before school starts, I’ll check out a driveaway - Jed & Joaquin are all ready to pack at a second’s notice, & Ivan wants to come, too. Peter has to work - did he tell you - at a Sebastopol bookstore, Mon, Tues, xxx Friday & Saturday, xxx soon to be weekend manager. He loves it. Oh, how lovely to have such a wonderful house!

Hey, when is that baby comin’?

Hope to see you soon. Much love

Marcy

Notes

G&H’s new house

George and Helen lived at the same address for years before this and decades after this, so I think that the house that Marcy was referring to here must have been the beach house that G&H and at least one of my uncles bought together, somewhere in the greater Seattle area. I only visited there once or twice.

driveaway

I haven’t heard of anyone using a driveaway car service in decades, but a quick web search reveals that such services still exist.

Ivan

As of the previous letter from Marcy, Ivan and George were the only foster kids left. I think that George left us before we moved out of the big house, but there’s no mention of his departure in the letters. At any rate, by the time of this letter, I think Ivan was the only one who was still with us.

bookstore

I’m guessing that the store in question was Merit Book Center. I knew that Marcy worked there (later), but I hadn’t known or hadn’t remembered that Peter had worked there. Apparently he took George’s advice to “get a job” to heart after all!

I did a quick web search to see if anyone else had posted about that particular bookstore; found someone’s blog post mentioning that the store closed in 1982.

“that baby”

My cousin Jason, born not long after this letter was sent. (Oddly, Helen at some later point wrote “?? Whose, I wonder.” in the margin—I think she must just not have looked at a calendar to see the grandkids’ birthdays before writing that.)