Front of Envelope from Charlie, July 1971

I truly love that my senior citizen son STILL begins letters to me “Dear Mommy!”  (Thank goodness, though, that they’ve never been to Mommy Dearest…)

Back of Envelope from Charlie, July 1971

After reading all of Gordon’s epistles (and saving some for subsequent blogs), I tackled the fattest packet of all — letters from Charlie beginning in in the 1970s when he was up here at Camp Sherwood Forest and I was still living in California. Many of them (and their envelopes!) were richly illustrated but it’s the history that he was unknowingly writing about that I have especially enjoyed re-reading.  Like this one:

L.A.
Nov. 13, 82

Dear Mommy!
Here’s some exciting stuff for you!
The query was driving me crazy — so I did something new & exciting!  I went down to a place that has word processors — and lets you use them by the hour.  You type — and your words appear on T.V.!  Well, the deal is that you only have to type your letter once, and then type your mailing list — and the word processor does the rest — freshly typed copies for everyone — no errors, envelopes & all.  At the touch of a button you can delete, copy or move as little as one letter or as much as several paragraphs!
If you want, the can print it out to look like book copy — proportionally spaced and justified on the right — but I think that looks fussy — I wanted it to look like I had taken individual care with each letter.  Anyway — I spent a couple of days there — training on the machines is free.  I’m addicted!  Have to make a fortune & buy an IBM machine!

He “signs” the letter (which is, as are most of his epistles, printed in all caps on lined yellow notebook paper) with a drawing of himself at the IBM “word processor.”  Priceless!

I’m sending the packet on to Charlie with the thought that these letters going back as many as 50 years will be fun for him to “re-live.”  They certainly were for me!