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In yesterday’s post, we saw a letter from Helene written in 1939. She has begun typing and numbering her letters. Over the course of a year, she has sent her children at least 61 letters from Vienna to San Francisco.
Clipper #61
Vienna, 2 December 1940
My dear children! Harry expressed joy in his last letter that we had not completely lost our sense of humor. I really lost it in the last few weeks, but I found it again yesterday when the letters that were on their way which had been taking their own sweet time, almost as if to say they were apologizing for having taken so long, did finally arrive. First #11 came from November 13th and that didn’t come as a surprise to me, because I heard from everywhere that letters from America were arriving in series. Since I considered letters #8, 9, and 10 to be lost, my joy about getting #11 was a bit clouded because the rest had gotten lost. I was even happier that I got letter #8 with the next post (it didn’t have a number on it, but it appeared to be a continuation of a letter I already had). My sense of humor that I had found again was in somersaults because I was expecting letters 9 & 10 and I was happy about that. Harry’s quarter report card was bursting with A’s and B’s and that really fills me with colossal maternal pride which I multiply by 2 because I am sure Everl’s report will soon be coming out. Don’t let your little brother tell you any different – go ahead and write when you want, because then nothing more will bother me. There’s not much new to report here. Across from Harry’s old kindergarten, in the house where my hairdresser was, there are large offices and several men who work there have already been into our store but they didn’t find what they were looking for. Just one of them had any luck. In the window display, there was a postcard which he was interested in and he ended up buying the entire stock (10 cards). Recently at breakfast, I noticed that the little pebble I thought I had found in my bread was actually one of my teeth and I had to have a Richmond crown made. I assure you that Dr. Uxi really wasn’t at fault. Have you ever heard of or read about crazy moths? Neither have I, but apparently there is such a thing and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Papa left his summer suit, which he had still been wearing every day until quite recently, hanging in the front room for a few days. I got his permission to put it away for hibernation. Who can describe my horror when I found out that a hungry moth had eaten holes in it in the middle of November. The hussy had – there is no doubt about it – lost her mind. When it’s more than 27 degrees, the moths lose their minds. There is a certain threshold – the “moth horizon” – another one of those false things you learn in school – that moths cannot do any damage after August and there’s no point in killing the little male moths because those don’t really do any real damage, it’s just the female moths that prefer to lay their eggs on the most beautiful and newest wool items they find, which then serve as food for the moth eggs. Maybe I thought one of these damned female moths was a man and I didn’t kill it and the damned disguised woman, thinking it was the month of May, decided that Father’s suit was a good place to lay eggs and sought it out for that purpose. That she had gone crazy is not just evident from the fact that she was laying eggs in November, but fortunately also from the fact that she had found the oldest piece of clothing, even though it was hanging right next to my new jumper. I just noticed that the typewriter, despite the fact that there was a new ribbon, is not behaving and I am going to stop until Papa can come home and fix the problem.
So, until we write again [word play on the traditional – “auf Wiedersehen”/goodbye].
Helen
The original was not legible so I am sending a copy.
The postscript on this letter explains why so many of Helene’s letters look like they were carbon copies – indeed they were. Although the original page may have been difficult to read, the strike of the keyboard keys made the words on the copies legible.
We saw a copy of Harry’s Fall 1940 report card from Mission High School in the October 28th post.
The Richmond crown was introduced in 1878 and is still used today.
Although Helene was probably writing many more letters to her children than they were writing to her, they were more prolific than their numbering system made it look. We have seen many letters over the year when Helene begs them to number their letters so she would have an idea of how many were not making it to their destination.