Mary Anne McIntosh's 1914 letters, part 2

This is a photo of Mary Anne McIntosh with her students at Otto, Wyo. The date is unknown. Does anyone recognize a face besides Grandma/Mary? Click on the photo to make it larger.

As I take up where I left off with Grandma’s 1914 letters, we get evidence right away that she doesn’t much go in for the gooey romantic prose. In her Feb. 26 letter, she refers to the letters her roommate receives from her “beau,” a fellow named Paul:

They beat anything I ever saw. If you wrote one like that to me, I’d have you sent to Evanston [where the state mental hospital is located] by return mail. I never read anything so slushy and to think of getting one every day. It’s more than I could stand.

We – or should that be “I”? – also get an occasional lesson in medical lingo. In her March 24 letter, Grandma says they had dinner at Larsen’s’ because Norma Larsen has “quinzy” and Ruth has been doctoring her. I looked it up: “Quinsy” is “a recognized complication of tonsillitis and consists of a collection of pus beside the tonsils.” Ick!

But that’s not all. Guess what they had for dinner? “Fried rabbit, and it surely tasted good.” OK, if she says so.

I also get a kick out of reading slang in her letters – especially if it’s slang that persists to this day. In her March 31 letter, she writes of not having much good to eat, so “Ruth went down to Sprague’s and bummed something to eat.” Honestly, I didn’t know that use of “bummed” predated the Great Depression.

When she wasn’t teaching – in the spring and summer – Grandma had to find other work. Her May 17 letter talks a little about the job search. She’s been helping with the mail at the post office, and:

I have the offer of another job, too. Jack Pierce wants me to go up to Newcomers for a week or ten days to cook for [sheep] shearers. Don’t know yet whether I’ll go.

In the May 24 letter, she teases Grandpa a little:

Jack told Carol he’d like to beat your time, so next time I see him I’ll bet I make eyes at him. Don’t be surprised if you hear of us eloping.

Then, later in the same letter, she notes that Grandpa has been working as a sheep herder:

I sold Marion [Grandpa’s younger brother] a pound of butter the other day and he said if it killed him they’d have to send for sheep-herder to come home and farm. I told him I didn’t care if it did, then. I’d kind of like to see my sheepherder.

Once in a while, too, her letters contain little oddities like this one, from May 31, 1914:

There is a man and his wife, their dog and donkey in town. They have walked from New York to San Francisco and are on their way back. They give some kind of shows as they go and are going to give one here Tuesday night.

I’m not saying I have – or will take – the time to go looking, but wouldn’t it be fun to see if anyone’s journal or news article mentions those people? I remember when I was a kid growing up in Basin, Wyo., we would meet people traveling through town and think they were so exotic just for living somewhere else, or having traveled across the country.

Grandpa did work to make the relationship last from his end. Of course we see her references to his letters, but also this from her June 21 letter:

I received your letter and the candy O.K. and surely enjoyed them both. I sure wished that you were here to help eat the candy.

In the same letter, she makes reference to an "Iva" who came to help eat the candy. My guess is that would be our Aunt Iva who married Grandpa's brother Marion. (Iva and Marion lived in the home behind us in Basin, Wyoming, when I was growing up, having moved there after retiring from the farm in Burlington.)

Later on in the same letter, she hints at some possible romantic intrigue between Grandpa, a woman named Theresa and herself. But she does so with a cool confidence that Grandpa is hers, and hers alone. She says that Theresa has gone to where he's working the sheep operation, but that she's not worried, then casually mentions that another man, Jim, didn't try very hard to sweep her (Mary) off her feet, and that anyway she thinks he and Theresa are a better match. It's all quite subtle and interesting to read.

Her June 28 letter is sort of a rehash of the June 21 letter, in some respects, since she discovered the earlier letter was forwarded to Burlington, and not where Grandpa was working. But she does tell him she longs for his company:

It is such a dandy night tonight that I wish you were here to take me for a ride. I don't think you had better stay away very long. It's too lonesome.

The same letter offers another window into her personality. It's a little long, but I'll quote this section in its entirety:

The Bishop had Iva and I arrange for a party to be given by the choir. We were to issue special invitations for it, but I didn't have time to write them so I told everyone about it. The Bishop and Jim and Nellie wouldn't come because they had no special invitation. I sure was wrathy. We had a short program, ice cream and cake and then played games until midnight. I wished all day that the Bishop would ask me why we didn't invite him and I would have told him we didn't want him to come. but he never mentioned it.

Now I know where I get it from. She also speaks of a "picture show" to be screened July 3: "One Hundred Years of Mormonism." I wonder if it was a church-made film, or independent? It would have been silent, of course, but I've never seen a reference to it before this, and I've read quite a bit in years past about Mormons in film -- especially during the silent era. I wonder if any copies survived?

The next letter we have is from Nov. 10, so Grandpa must not have been very good at saving them between summer and fall. That's too bad, but there is a difference in this very brief letter from all that have gone before it. She signs off with this:

Lots of love from Mary

I think that's the first letter she ends with the word "love." It's usually "Write soon to Mary" or something like that. Anyway, it's a little thing, but also maybe a big one, too.

And that concludes the review of 1914. Next week I'll begin on the 1915 letters.