Mom wrote this letter to her long deceased sister Anna. I don't know when she
wrote it but at some point I typed it up for her but on a typewriter not a
computer so its really old. She had them written as questions but she never used
a question mark. I tried to leave them as close to the way she had written them
but I couldn't help but correct spelling.
Mom's letter to her sister Anna
The Letter
To the sister who left us in 1938. She was seventeen years old and would have been valedictorian for her graduate class. She left a few days before Christmas.
Dear little sister, to you I write this letter hoping you will be able to receive it and to know how much you are missed and loved.
Yes, I have the large family you said I'd have and am the big fat Mama you said I'd be. But you did not stay to be the teacher or the friend of the children you said you would be. God wanted you for an Angel and called you. Let's think of the good times we had together.
How well do I remember the warm summer nights, the old men beside the house in chairs and squatting on the ground smoking the strong old pipes and wrapping out the heels that would choke you to smell them, the smell of tobacco juice as some one of them squirted it on the ground, sometimes on your bare feet, the fireflies flicking on and off and a big fat toad beside the porch waiting his chance for a fly.
Two little girls sitting, listening to the tales of woe, of who outsmarted who, of a cow about to come in or be taken to the neighbors. Yes, that was home.
Listen! Do you hear the sheep bleating up on the hill? And the frogs chugging down in the pond? Remember how Uncle Ben took us to hunt for frogs? The twine, safety pin and red cloth. We'd catch a pail full and he would clean them and cook them for us because Mom couldn't abide them. They were delicious.
Anna, remember the time we took Bennie strawberrying and set him in the meadow and a snake crawled over him? I can still see that snake slithering across his little white dress.
And Anna, the running blackberries that grew on the slate rock across the meadow. We ran barefoot over the sharp stubbles of cut hay and I'd puncture my feet and sit down and cry and you'd take my hand and pull me up and we'd start again.
And the sugar we stole and made a small mud cake and Uncle Ben made us eat some. We never took sugar again.
And the grasshoppers we caught by the jar full and ground them up to use for make believe food to play house with.
And remember the big grey barn spiders? You would climb the horse stalls and pick them off the ceiling in your hands while I stood and screamed and you'd laugh. They never bit you.
Then came the day I went with a wagon load of children and Uncle Ben to the woods for wood. I fell down a cliff and cut a four inch cut in my thigh and when they got me back up the ravine, I was bleeding so he sent me home. Beatrice came with me.
We started down through the sheep and first bunch let us through. But the next ones had a big horned ram and he smelled the blood and went for us. We ran till I thought our lungs would burst. She jumped the fence. I fell over and ran hit the fence as I lay in the clover and hounded back like he'd been hit. It was a good thing the fence held. I had to be taken to town and be sewed up.
And the terrible thunderstorms. I got so scared of them.
On the way to school we picked flowers, hunted the biggest apples and made paper boats to sail on the water in the culvert.
And Anna, remember the black cherry trees. They had such big luscious cherries on them. And the grape arbors we raided. Pink and white and blue grapes. We would climb up the arbors like stairs and that big cherry tree by the barn used to be so loaded. And then it got hit by lightning. Then we had only plum trees and apples and pears. The plums were wormy.
And that beautiful apple orchard where so many different apples grew. We always stopped to consider which tree we'd go to.
The pear trees grew in the yard and one was near the house. It had grafts of fancy pears on it and Mom hid some in the baby carriage so Uncle Bill wouldn't get them and he asked where they were. And you told him and he ate them all and we didn't get any. And she licked us both for that.
Remember that piece of horse harness she used for a strap? She'd make our legs bleed and we'd go to school and the teacher would try to get us to tell her and we'd say we got hurt.
Remember our Christmas trees at school? Real little candles on it, paper chains, pop corn. The teacher kept two pails of water on each side of the tree and two big boys to watch the candles.
We drew names and two big boys always got our names and got us nice things.
One of them always started the fire in the morning before we got there. The big girls swept the floor and kept it clean.
Remember on a very cold morning, the teacher made hot cocoa and the boys toasted marshmallow and she served it to us on crackers. It tasted so good.
That first day of school, when the big boy behind me pulled my long curls and I cried. Teacher thought I was being a baby and sent me home. Mom whipped me and sent me back.
And Anna, at home you and I would go behind the pantry door and get a loaf of fresh bread and dig the center out and put vinegar on it, wad it in a ball and eat it. That was the best years of our lives there on that farm.
The sheep fold, remember we liked to investigate it and walk on the timbers of the fallen down barn.
In the house we went upstairs and in a big closet, there was hidden door. You and I took hold of each other and opened that door . . . . to a dark alley. It was a narrow alley and had a few turns in it, enough to scare you. We could go the length of the house. There was a dark room up there and there was corn husk in it. We didn't know then what it had been used for. We would now.
When we came out of that tunnel, we would be in the old attic over the woodshed where all kinds of furniture, bottles, boxes and junk were kept, old lamps, candle molds. To us it was a treasure. We'd laugh over the odd old shoes.
Well I guess I can't tell you the names of the children, but I know you remember them. Remember the kids who brought graham crackers and peanut butter to school? Sometimes they would give us one. They were lucky. We never had that stuff at home.
Then one summer, our girl cousin came to visit. The men had put up a tent in the yard for us. She said she was making us all a drink that was good. She made us little ones drink it. It was a mixture of Mom's spices and we all got sick and they took the girl home next day.
She did go to Vermont with us once. She was a pain. She acted grown up and wanted everyone to treat her grown up. Dad found a scarf in the road and gave it to ma. She got so mad she cried.
We stopped at water trough's to drink and eat our sandwiches. When we came to a hill, we all had to get out and push the car up over the hill.
Remember the July 4th, your father and Lillian's brought fire works and we had a wonderful time watching them.
And the times we had to walk from that school at night to Mom's house. It was over seven miles and I'll never forget the cold snow blowing in out faces out on the flats. Sometimes the teacher would pick us up but she always tried to pick our brains too. That was when Ma left Dad and went to Fort Edward to live.
One morning I got to school with my hands almost frozen. I passed out and when I woke the teacher and kids had a pan of water and were rubbing my hands in it.
Ma made me a big rag doll, and we took it to Vermont with me and my cousin didn't have one so they took it away from me and gave it her. She was called Dinah and I cried for my doll, but I didn't get it.
Do you remember going after the hound dog down in the woods by the stream. Some one had poisoned him and he lay halfway in the water and we put him in a cart and took him home, but he died soon after.
Then coming home one day, from town we found a little yellow puppy. She called her Flossie. Grandpa hated dogs. One day we went away and came home. There was blood everywhere. Ma ran in the house and asked Gramps if he was ok. He said he was alright, said he'd been sleeping ever since she left. She asked for the dog. He didn't know but the axe was all blood. Dad and Ma followed the spots and found her in a burlap bag all cut up in pieces in the stone wall. He said he didn't do it, but she said he did.
And Anna, the cold beds at night? Remember how we got in bed, slid down in them icy cold sheets and shivered for twenty minutes before we warmed them up enough.
End of letter
* As I re-read this while I typed it up again and tried to get the pages in the right order I couldn't help but notice how she wrote of her getting her feet cut on the hay stubbles because I did the same thing when I was little and went down to the field where Dad was cutting hay on the Tracy farm.
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