Handwritten on lined but not 3-hole punched paper.<\/p>\r\n
Content warning for this letter and the next couple of letters for discussion of being in quite a lot of debt.<\/p>\r\n
\r\n4 Jan. 1972<\/p>\r\n
(Really 1973.)<\/span><\/p>\r\n
Hi!<\/p>\r\n
Another crisis weathered\u2014\u2014we borrowed $50 from Marcy\u2019s mother for a week. Here\u2019s $5 of it\u2014\u2014the rest went for food, gas, & overdue bills.<\/p>\r\n
We\u2019ll send $5 a month from now on, until we catch up and can send more.<\/p>\r\n
We still owe $100 on a VW-engine I bought & installed after ours threw a rod; we still owe $75 car insurance (liability); we still owe $2000 on my dental and periodontal bills; we still owe $300 on our new stereo; we still owe $100 to Shell oil for vacation gas two years ago; we still owe $100 on a lady\u2019s car I crashed into a year ago; we still owe $1000 on a finance company loan we took out; we still owe $1000 on a credit-union loan we took out; we still owe $160 for this month\u2019s rent; we still owe last month\u2019s utilities and phone bill; we still owe $2000 on NDEA loans; we still owe $2000 to Marcy\u2019s mother, advanced for the car and moving expenses; we still owe $1200 to Kohlbergs, from seven years ago; to say nothing of $20 to my boss, $15 to our friend Laurel, assorted gas credit-card charges, etc., etc., etc.\u2014\u2014in all, close to $10,000 (ten<\/u> big<\/u> ones<\/u>!).<\/p>\r\n
So you see, we have not forgotten our obligation to you, but they\u2019ve turned off the water and, and, and\u2026<\/p>\r\n
So anyway,<\/p>\r\n
warmest wishes for a peaceful, fulfilling, and prosperous NEW YEAR!<\/p>\r\n
Peter, Marcy, Jed & Joaquin<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\u2026I\u2019m really not sure what kind of tone to read this in\u2014even after reading the next two letters, which provide further context and discussion. In particular, I\u2019m not sure whether Peter meant this as a general complaint about how badly financial stuff was going, or whether he was hoping that George and Helen would offer help, or whether it was primarily meant as an excuse for why they weren\u2019t paying back a loan faster, or something else.<\/p>\r\n
But continue on to the next two letters for more on this topic.<\/p>\r\n
Notes<\/h3>\r\n
\r\n
- \u201cthrew a rod\u201d and \u201cdental and periodontal bills\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- See other recent letters.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201ca lady\u2019s car I crashed into\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- I feel like both Peter and Marcy were surprisingly blas\u00e9 in these letters about having had car accidents that damaged other people\u2019s cars, and having no car insurance. (This was years before California\u2019s mandatory-car-insurance law.) I dunno, maybe they were just very minor accidents; I\u2019ve certainly (for example) accidentally bumped the fender of a parked car a couple of times. But still, it surprises me.<\/dd>\r\n
- Kohlbergs<\/dt>\r\n
- Peter\u2019s ex-wife Gail\u2019s parents. (Their last name was really spelled Kalberg<\/i>.)<\/dd>\r\n
- Laurel<\/dt>\r\n
- The mysterious Laurel appears again! I still know nothing at all about this person beyond the minimal glimpses\/mentions in the letters and postcards.<\/dd>\r\n
- $10,000<\/dt>\r\n
- An online inflation calculator suggests that $1 in 1973 is roughly equivalent to $6.50 in 2022, so that would make this about the equivalent of being $65,000 in debt today.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peter describes the amounts of money that we owed to various organizations and people. \u201cwe have not forgotten our obligation to you, but they\u2019ve turned off the water and, and, and\u2026\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":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-peter","category-awareness-house"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","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=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1261,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}