The Old Hidden Letters

My blogging buddy Terri recently came into possession of an old trunk. The previous owner is deceased and the trunk probably contains bits, pieces and mementos of personal history. It inspired me to write today's blog--about some letters found in my boyhood home.


In the beginning, the letters started out chatty, impersonal--comparable to the banter you might read today in an on-line chat with a stranger.

But not even the ballpoint pen had been invented when these pages were written in fountain ink. In fact, they were over 40 years old when my father discovered them hidden in the rafters of an old house we bought when I was a first-grader.

There were about a dozen letters as I recall--all written around 1918 by a young lady from Jackson, Michigan to a young gentleman, a former occupant of our home in Bay City.

How the pair met wasn't clear. Jackson and Bay City are more than 100 miles apart and this was before the Model T had been invented. The young woman did mention meeting in person, probably more than once, but the letters didn't reveal how or where.

Through her words, one could glean life as it was almost 100 years ago. An influenza epidemic ravaged worldwide that year, claiming a half million lives in America alone. She wrote about neighbors dying from the plague. America had entered World War I and she described a mock battle which took place in her city.

As best as I can remember, since it's been many years since I've read the letters, she chatted about the goings-on at her job in a typing pool, working in the stifling upstairs of a two-story building long before air conditioning was common. Eventually, her letters became less about events and more personal. She never wrote of love, but you could sense the growing fondness in her correspondence. One letter included a picture of her on a swing. She also sent a postcard special delivery. I remember the stamp depicted a mailman aboard a bicycle.

Obviously, they had met more than once because her letters spoke of their face-to-face encounters--friendly yet platonic, with a hint of romance. She teased about where their relationship could lead. A young man approached her, trying to make conversation, she wrote. He asked her if she had a boyfriend. She passed along the question to him in a letter.

It was implied that the answer would come at their next rendezvous, The young woman wrote about his upcoming visit with eager anticipation. In reading, I could almost envision a heroine from a gothic romance awaiting the return of a suitor. Yet this real-life story was about to take an ill-fated turn.

For whatever reason, the young man's mother did not approve of the developing relationship. She had it within her power to forbid her son from seeing the girl. And she did. An emotionally written final letter from the young woman blamed not the mother but the young woman herself for not being deserving of him. It was her goodbye. There were no more no more letters from her.

But inside the cigar box, among the letters carefully folded and put back into their original envelopes, there was one final letter. It was from the mother of the heartbroken girl. Directed mostly towards to the young man's mother, the older woman said she believed that young people should be free to make their own decisions, to live their own lives.

If there was any response, we never knew. Elderly neighbors who recalled the family, and knew of the correspondence, said the pair went on with their separate lives. You wonder why the man even felt it necessary to collect and preserve the letters through all these years.

Some years ago, my mother discovered an older man on the sidewalk looking over our house. She inquired why and was told that he was a member of the family that had lived there decades prior. My mother invited him in to see how we had remodeled the interior. During the course of their visit, my mother gave him the cigar box with the letters.

So we lost a piece of interesting history. My guess is that the letters now would command a not too paltry sum on E-Bay. But my guess is also that their sentimental value would be greater. For someone anyway.