Peter, Marcy, Jed, and Jay

One-page letter, handwritten on graph paper.

Address redacted by Jed

Palo Alto, CA 94306

15 January 1984

Dear Mother & Pop——

Well as usual I’ve not written thank-you notes yet (well today I wrote John & Dave). Anyway—I guess you know we all had a most enjoyable time on our vacation: thank you so much not only for your putting [up with us / us up] for a week, but for your loving & thoughtful presents/presence. I treasure the afghan quilt you made for me, & will remember you whenever it’s cold & I wrap it around me. The boys also like the “reality meters” you gave them: Jed wears the watch, & the travel clock xxx is very useful beside our PET... now it thinks it’s a “watch-dog”... Oy, Peter...

I’m glad it worked out so well when we came back Saturday——I had felt guilty that I didn’t get the lady’s storm-windows up, and that I’d left the oil mess on your garage floor. So Don’s sawdust on the floor absorbed most of the oil (the slight stain still left gives the garage “soul”, don’t you think?). And it was a much easier job doing the windows than I had thought (I hope that John got his staple-gun back....)

Guess you know by now — we had a good time at Harold & Ethel’s, and were glad to see that Gary & his family are doing so well (a brand-new house on ten acres of arable land, with a well--not bad at all...

OK, I’m going to write Paul & Linda next... Take care, thank you, we love you.

Light & Love,

Peter, Jed & Joaquin

Notes

“afghan quilt”

I’m guessing this is the handmade knitted blanket that I had for many years (might still be in a box in my garage). I don’t think it was really a quilt. Grandma made several items (blanket and cushions and maybe more), all of which I think had little clothing-labels attached that said something like “Made with love by Grandma.”

PET

Our first home computer was a Commodore PET, initially with a cassette drive and maybe later with a disk drive. I did a bunch of my early programming on that.

“came back Saturday”

I initially read “came back” as meaning “left Tacoma headed for California,” but now I think it means that we had left George and Helen’s place at some previous point and then returned there on Saturday.

Harold and Ethel

Harold was Helen’s youngest sibling. For more about Helen and her five siblings, see my blog post Introducing the Hansons, from an earlier phase of my family-history project. Ethel was Harold’s wife. I think Gary was one of their sons (and thus Peter’s first cousin), but I’m not sure of that.

Harold and his family lived somewhere in Oregon. Apparently we stopped and saw them on the way home, but I have no memory of that.