Sometime in the spring of 1974, two more foster kids arrived. One was named George; I think the other was either Ivan or Robert, but I\u2019m not sure. (Ivan and Robert both arrived sometime in 1974, I\u2019m just not sure when or in which order.)<\/p>\r\n
George was Black; I think that all of the other foster kids were white. (I know that most of them were, but there are a couple of them who I barely remember at all, so I\u2019m not certain they were white.)<\/p>\r\n
It never occurred to me until just now that foster-kid George had the same name as Grandpa George. I never thought of Grandpa as George<\/i> when I was a kid, so it didn\u2019t seem confusing to me. For that matter, Grandpa George\u2019s name rarely comes up in these letters, so I suspect that won\u2019t be especially confusing to y\u2019all readers, either. But figured it was worth noting in passing.<\/p>\r\n
Below are two hand-printed letters from me, written in block capitals on 11\" x 8½\" paper. (Which is to say, US letter-sized paper, but turned sideways.) Both are undated, but internal evidence strongly suggests that I wrote them both sometime around April of 1974. I don\u2019t know which of them came first, but I have vague reasons for thinking they may have been in the order given below.<\/p>\r\n
\r\nDEAR GRANDMA I HAVE SOME (A PAIR OF<\/p>\r\n
SH
XXX<\/strike>OES TENNIS SHOES.) I HAVE TWOX<\/strike><\/p>\r\nNEW FOSTER BROTHERS AND ONE
X<\/strike><\/p>\r\nOF
X<\/strike> THEM WITH.ME LIKES TO WATCH<\/p>\r\nA TV SHOW CALLED STAR TREK THE<\/p>\r\n
FOSTER BROTHER\u2019S.NAME IS GEOR
X<\/strike>GE<\/p>\r\nLOVE.JED<\/P>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
At the bottom of that page, an addendum in Marcy\u2019s handwriting:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nP.S. The leathercraft set was a big hit! Jed wears the purse on his belt every day<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
(The leathercraft set was one of the birthday presents that they sent me that year, as indicated in the previous post<\/a>.)<\/p>\r\n
A couple of notable things about this letter:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n
- It\u2019s the first time that a letter that I myself wrote to them was not (at least in part) a thank-you letter. (It\u2019s not the first-ever letter that I wrote to them; that was a few months earlier<\/a>.)<\/li>\r\n
- It\u2019s the first time that I used parentheses in a letter to them. (I have been using parentheses more or less constantly ever since.) Also my first use of an apostrophe in a letter to them. \u2026The other interesting punctuation here is the extraneous periods\u2014I think that when I had accidentally written two words too close together, I generally added a dot between them.<\/li>\r\n
- It\u2019s the first indication of my being a media fan as such. (Marcy had previously indicated that \r\nI liked the Space Cat<\/cite> books<\/a>, so this was not the first indication of my being a science fiction fan.) \u2026Huh\u2014this means that I\u2019ve been watching Star Trek<\/cite> for nearly 50 years now.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n
(Star Trek: TOS<\/cite> had ended in 1969, so we must\u2019ve been watching rebroadcasts.)<\/p>\r\n
\r\nHere\u2019s the other letter:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nDEAR GRANDPA THANK<\/p>\r\n
YOU FOR THE TAPE<\/p>\r\n
THAT YOU SENT US<\/p>\r\n
I HAVE FOUR FOSTER<\/p>\r\n
BROTHERS AND ONE PLAIN BROTHE-<\/p>\r\n
R AND ONE MOTHER AND<\/p>\r\n
FATHER AND ALL.TOGETHER<\/p>\r\n
WITH ME IT\u2019S EIGHT.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
(The four foster brothers were Mark, Larry, George, and probably either Ivan or Robert.)<\/p>\r\n
On the back of that letter, in smaller and steadier letters:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nI HAVE A NEW CHESS<\/p>\r\n
SET AND A MAGNETIC<\/p>\r\n
CHESS SET. I\u2018M NOT<\/p>\r\n
BRAGGING ABOUT IT<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
Under that, presumably at some later date, Helen wrote \u201cJoaquin?\u201d But I\u2019m pretty sure it must have been me; Jay was two years younger than me, and my own writing was none too steady yet, so I don\u2019t think Jay was writing this clearly yet at that point.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In which I like Star Trek<\/cite> and I have four foster brothers. Also: \u201cI HAVE A NEW CHESS SET[\u2026]. I\u2018M NOT BRAGGING ABOUT IT\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-jed","category-hearthlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}