Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

A brief thank-you note from me for some birthday presents (which they apparently sent a month early? I’m guessing that they sent presents for both me and Jay at the same time).

Written on lined three-hole-punched paper, but apparently nobody told me that the holes are supposed to be on the left, so I wrote on what’s generally considered to be the back of the page.

The unusual thing about this letter is that it’s written entirely in cursive (except for the LOVE, JED at the end, which is in small block capitals). It’s the first of only three letters that I ever wrote them in cursive—at some point years later, I switched to typed-on-a-computer-and-printed for the few letters that I wrote them. My cursive here is not bad; I was about to turn nine, and all the letters are pretty clear and consistently formed. (Except in one place where I left out the lower part of a lowercase h, turning it into an l.) They’re fairly big—two lines high for capital letters and letters with ascenders, another line below for descenders, so they’re essentially three lines high—but much neater than my early efforts at writing non-cursive.

Dear Grandma and

Grandpa, Thank you

for all the presents,

especially tle crystal

radio and also the playing

cards. I will be looking

forward to your arrival.

LOVE,

JED

They were apparently planning to visit about a month later, judging by the next letter.

I have very vague semi-memories of a crystal radio kit; I think Peter may have been more excited about it than I was, because I think he had built one as a kid.