Old letters are portals to the past

A very curious thing happened to me today as I was going through some papers and documents in a box in a closet that I never cared to go in,and let the door be gradually barricaded, shut by stacks of books that I had run out of shelf space for.

But I’m clearing, sorting, and giving away numerous things I’ve accumulated over decades, including lots of my books, that I don’t think I’ll ever read,and dozens of shirts that I used to wear to work, but which of course I have no use for now in retirement.

My sister has been wanting to locate my father’s papers for some time now, and she will be coming here in a few weeks to go through those papers and other documrnts in preparation for our selling the house I live in now, and which my mother and brother built 25 years ago. It’s been my home for the past ten years as I moved into take care of Mom as her dementia got worse. But now that Mom is gone, I can no longer afford the taxes, insurance and upkeep, so we will have to sell the property sometime in the Spring. I’m trying not to think too much about it since it’s very hard to actually contemplate selling this house up the road a a bit.

My sister was the baby of the family and was much closer to my father then I was. We never got along and quarreled often. My mother tried to keep the peace. Julie (my sister) was very excited to learn I had located Dad’s papers, and she wants me to refrain from going through them so we can do it together when she comes. This hopefully will also distract her from thinking about all the clutter I’m responsible for in this house, and it’s not just books. Someone sent me a saying on a t-shirt recently, which read on the front, “It’s not hoarding if it’s books.” Fair enough because the bulk of my belongings are books. But I also have a very hard time recycling or giving awaymy own papers and memorabilia that isnot exactly worth holding on to. Out of sight, out of mind. But still almost everything I’ve bought snd saved has great intrinsic value.. priceless.?

Here’s one reason I’m glad I save things like old letters. In the days before the internet, letters were our emails, but much more personal. When saved they become the perfect personal history documents that tell our stories, briefly or in great detail, and which when handed down through succeeding generations become priceless family artifacts.

One of the first documents I saw in a folder of my father’s papers was a xeroxed copy of a letter my 10-year-old younger brother had written to my our grandmother and two aunts following our return home in the summer of 1963 after spending a week’s vacation with them. For us brothers these were idyllic times of going swimming in a mill pond; eating huge and delicious Southern dinners every afternoon at 1 o’clock after we had come home from swimming, and where we loved to go fowntown and shop in one of the small city’s three Dime stires located on Main Street. Those were the days. I was 12 in 1963.

In the sweet letter my brother wrotecto iur closest relatives he described a trip to downtown New Orleans to spend some money our relatives had given us. My parents must have thought I was pretty mature for my age (which I was, overly so) as they let 12-year-old me accompany my brother to the heart of the big, famous city. Our house was on a bus line so we just walked a block to catch that and disembarked on Canal Street, the very very wide main street in the Crescent City. We went to a movie (PT-109) and did some shopping, after which we had lunch at Morrison’s Cafeteria. My brother wrote that he then got sick, so we had to go to my father’s office in an old skyscraper and return home with him.

The letter was written in precise handwriting, which surprised me. I didnt know my brother wrote anything. Such a poignant surprise this 57-year-old letter, and a glimpse into our lives in the early 60s, a time of innocence before the storms that shattered the latter part of that tumultuous decade. But for brief interludes, my brother and I had a lot of fun.