Visiting the Past on Paper

Had to leave Ellen at the airport--sob!--but we managed to say goodbye without tears.  I had no problem at all getting home; there was little traffic and at that point, it was a perfectly clear day.

As soon as I walked in the door, I turned the oven to 400 and oiled and seasoned the chicken parts I had bought the other day.  Popped two in the oven and the rest in the freezer.

I was determined to continue clearing out and to that end, opened the big, mouldering boxes that had been in the attic.  Armful by armful, I brought the contents from the garage onto the kitchen table.

Almost all paper, these could be categorized into roughly three groups: letters to my late husband, Pat, from family and friends when he was in the Air Force and when he lived in Florida; writings of my own, from college, as editor of the Rider evening school paper, and from other publications; and assorted miscellaneous, such as newspaper clippings and photo book souvenirs from when Pat was stationed in France.

The last were badly damaged and I threw most away.  The others I laboriously examined, discarding those that seemed of least sentimental value (Pat's sixty-year-old pay stubs from the Boca Raton Club, an ad from a car company, receipts from various purchases) and putting the others into categories.  I came across letters from lifelong friends, including one from my brother, Larry, dated 1954.  That one, I scanned and will print out and send him a copy--yes, the old-fashioned way, via U.S. mail.  I'm not sure why, but it seems a secular sacrilege to share it electronically.        

I still haven't read most of the letters.  It's such a time-consuming--as well as melancholy--task, I didn't want to do it.  I do have them in some kind of rough order and will delve into them here and there.

Incidentally, these don't include Pat's and my letters to each other, my articles for Revenews, the Rider Credit Union newspaper of which I was editor, or copies of American Jewish Life, for which I wrote several years running. 

Sam Jacobs, our next-door neighbor in Ewing, was editor of the latter.  I well remember this often-repeated scenario: nudging deadline while sitting at the kitchen table finishing a piece, with Sam right next to me, chomping at the bit.  As soon as I ripped the last page from the typewriter (which had been my father's at Villanova during the nineteen-teens), Sam would grab it and rush to the printer's, which was--how could I possibly remember this?--in Neptune, about fifty miles away.
Aside from all that, I brought in the steel box that holds Pat's several hundred slides, most with metal "frames." Most are from Chaumont, the base in France where he was stationed, others from the short time he lived with his brother, Bill, and family. His slide projector is long gone and I'm trying to find a way to view them for distribution, aside from holding them up to a lamp--very tedious and the subjects are still hard to make out. 

Okay, back to the present: Called Aline, who was in Atlantic City on a bus trip, to see if she wanted to go to the water after dinner.  Yes, indeedy, she said, but by the time she got back after 6:00, the weather had turned mean and we decided to scratch it.  However, I invited her to come with me to get a birthday present for soon-to-be-ten granddaughter, Vivian, and we'll do that today.