Grandma's 1916 letters, part 1

The first letter we have from Grandma to Grandpa in 1916 is from May 23. It finds her lonely, and grieving for a lamb. Like the previous year, she’s working at a sheep camp.

“I had a little black-faced lamb, the cutest little thing you ever saw. I was going to keep him here until I got ready to go home. But I had to tie him up to keep him from following the men off and I didn’t have any better sense than to tie the string around his neck and he choked himself to death, night before last.”

By June 4, she has another lamb or two, and they’re surviving an unusual diet. She also writes that she’s making baby bonnets again:

“I’m crocheting one for Nellie’s baby, then I have to make one for Lottie’s. Lottie named her baby Lena. It tickled Mama half to death. She didn’t expect a namesake.”

On Independence Day, her letter doesn’t mince words about her love and affection for Grandpa.

“You don’t know how glad I was to get your letter last night. I’ve read it till I almost know it by heart. And I’ve been lonesome, too, dear. I hated to see you go back. I tried to get Caroline to go up town that Monday morning, but after I saw you I was glad she wouldn’t. If we had been somewhere else I would have liked that hug. You would probably have gotten something, too.”

The later, in the same letter:

“… I came home to write to you. I wish I had you here by me. I wouldn’t write much more, I’ll bet.”

In the same letter, she makes reference to geography, and I’m trying to figure out just what she’s talking about. By this time, she’s back in Burlington, having concluded her work at the sheep camp. She writes:

“I don’t want you to cross the river any more when it [sic] so high, sweet-heart. It scares me for you to. I couldn’t get along without you, so, you see, you’d better be careful what you’re doing.”

The she sort of backs into a subtle warning to him about spending time with other women:

“I’m just as glad as you are that Billy did so much interfering. I don’t want you going over to see Nina, either, young man, or I shall come up and investigate.”

Her letter of July 9 offers a funny bit of trivia. The big July 24^th celebration that year – the 24^th was the date in 1847 that the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley after being hounded from the United States – was to be in Otto instead of Burlington, and the Otto residents were so excited they “say they are going to send up all their cars to bring us down to celebrate and they are going to have a pavilion to dance on.”

I guess the attraction and convenience of riding in automobiles would be expected to boost the numbers in attendance.

She also mentions that “Jim Yorgason has a new Hupmobile.” She adds that “Della does the driving. Jim can’t handle the car at all.”

I should also mention that she refers to all sorts of family members and neighbors in al these letters. She lets go with good and bad about everyone, so I hope people aren’t offended; she must be on the other side cuffing Grandpa upside the head for saving all these letters, and apologizing to her friends and family members for some of the unflattering things she wrote about them.

In the July 13 letter, we get a sense of what must have been Grandpa’s mischievousness in his letters to her:

“I’m going to quit making ‘baby clothes,’ especially if it’s going to remind you of Bro. Packard’s sayings. You’re a bad boy and I’m going to try and box your ears nicely when I get hold of you again.”

Then, in her July 16 letter, she writes something that puts me right back onto my childhood in Wyoming:

“There are certainly lots of cars going through to the Park now.”

She’s referring to Yellowstone National Park. And in those days, it must have been unusual to see so many automobiles. In my youth, 50 years later and in a town 30 miles east of Burlington, the cars themselves weren’t at all unusual, of course, but, like her, the warm months were spent seeing tourists from all over the nation heading to and from Yellowstone – or, as everyone in that part of Wyoming still calls it, “the Park.” One of our pastimes was to look for cars that were from as far away as possible: Florida, East Coast states, etc.