Category: Writing

In 1974, when I arrived in London, I had a short list of European places to visit.

Most of my list was the result of an art history class taken the fall semester of 1973 in the then new art museum of the University of Iowa. The art collection was removed during the 2008 flood and never came back to that building.

I wasn’t a good art student, and elected a pass-fail grade versus A – F. My teacher was disappointed when he discovered my choice. I passed the elective course.

Despite my chary engagement as an undergraduate student, there I was in London beginning a 1970s version of the Grand Tour. It was a rite of passage to elevate myself from the blood, slop, bacteria, and gore of two college summers working in a slaughterhouse. It was the same plant in which Father died in an accident. I had rejected the post-college job the company recruiter offered me that spring. It was time to break loose from my local moorings. Once I got to Europe it became clear there were hoards of young people doing the same thing.

A wad of American Express travelers checks was tucked inside the baby blue bag Grandmother made for me, about $2,000. The money came from selling the band equipment and the Volkswagen micro bus used to haul it around. It turned out to be enough cash for the trip.

On the list were the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, Italy. Our art history teacher marveled at them and inspired enough enthusiasm to pique my interest. It was that way for many of the places I visited. It was also an easy side trip enroute to Vienna, Austria where a student I met in Stratford at a performance of Twelfth Night had invited me to stay.

Ravenna was significant for more than mosaics. On the train rides from Barcelona to Rome, along the Mediterranean coast, I met several Italians. They insisted I learn to speak Italian if I would visit Italy. I studied French in college and had reasonable fluency. Learning another Romance language wouldn’t be too hard, I thought. I searched a book store in Genoa for an English-Italian phrase book and found none. I settled for a French-Italian phrase book which served. By the time I got to Ravenna I was able to check into the hostel, order meals, and converse on a limited level without speaking English a single time.

I was concerned about funding the rest of my European trip while in Ravenna and sent the pictured note to Mother. She came through with an American Express travelers check which was waiting for me when I arrived in Amsterdam. It turned out I didn’t need the cash. I don’t recall whether I gave it back to Mom when I returned to Iowa. She kept the note.

No regrets about spending most of the money I had in 1974 on a trip to Europe. A return to the continent seems unlikely today. At least I escaped the slaughterhouse. That will have to be enough.

The boxes of letters written to Mother over 55 years fill gaps in my life’s story. Things I didn’t remember came to life as I began to read them.

I hadn’t thought there was a record of some parts of my life. Now I see a lot was shared with her, more than expected.

The work of opening more than 200 letters is a big task. Reading and considering them will occupy time. Reflecting on what I said will be the crux of an autobiographical work, especially in the period from 1965 until 1974 when I began to keep a journal. When I was in Europe I wrote home a lot.

What about the period between my birth in 1951 and seventh grade when we started at the new school in our Catholic parish, after that first letter from camp?

I remember things from an early age, including visits to my maternal grandmother when she lived on Fillmore Street. Mother took enough photographs to provide a meaningful chapter or two of those early times.

Likewise, there are enough census records and genealogy snippets of public documents to piece together the earliest times. There are a few photographs from those early days, including one of Aunt Stella in her coffin and one of Granny Reed. I remember an explanation of those pictures, although I’m not sure who gave it. The photographic record of my maternal ancestors is equally thin. There is the photograph of Maciej Nadolski on a fishing trip to South Dakota, and that’s pretty much it. However, there is plenty between census records, public documents and snippets of memory to create a narrative of my forebears. There are also legions of shirt tail relatives living in both Minnesota and Virginia if I want to visit.

A question: To what extent do I write about a broader society and how it influenced me? I don’t have a good answer yet.

A case can be made for letting life’s artifacts tell the story. The census records show my grandfather worked as a coal miner, and there is oral narrative of how he started a retail business to compete with the company store. It didn’t work out, and eventually he was convicted as a draft dodger during World War II. He served prison time during which his children were split and went to live with relatives. My uncle explained the charges were a result of a “misunderstanding.” Do I need to broaden the story of mid-20th Century Appalachian economies, resistance to the draft during World War II, and dig deeper into the public record of those times? Do I just need to clarify and tell what I know? Telling what I know is straightforward. Awareness of what I do know and what I can yet learn is a separate issue.

People also have things that are personal and private. My default position is to let those lay. The end result of these efforts will be to create a narrative suitable for a broader audience, something interesting enough to read. Importantly, it will be something our daughter can read to know her own history without reviewing the thousands of documents and artifacts sitting in boxes and albums around our house.

That Mother kept my letters is remarkable. Reading and digesting them will be a welcome experience. I look forward to gaining insight into who I was then and how today’s version came to be. The number of gaps in the narrative has been significantly reduced by this find.

Our daughter and I drove to my home town on Sunday to visit my sister. The conversation ranged across many topics and toward the end of the visit she asked if I wanted to take the second of two shoe boxes containing letters I wrote home.

Of course I did.

I wrote a lot of letters home and to friends before email became a widely adapted replacement.

The earliest letter I found was written while attending YMCA camp as a grader. There was at least one more camp letter, followed by a couple while I was in high school, more in college, and in every stage of life afterward. There were some recent holiday cards and letters.

We logged on to the internet from a home computer for the first time on April 21, 1996. As soon as Mom got an America On-Line account we began communicating via email. She had already been using email in her work at the Corps of Engineers, just as I had been using email when I worked at for the oil company from 1989 to 1991. Over the years I saved as many personal emails as I could and there are a few between me and her from the late 1990s. The last email I sent her was dated March 7, 2014. It was about putting a photo on her Facebook account.

While it seems unlikely the others to whom I sent letters will return a similar archive, I have their letters and what is turning into a substantial trove of documents, partly written by me and partly by Mom and my friends about what my life was about. Combined with my hand-written journals beginning in 1974, and 14 years of this blog, I should be well prepared to relearn who I was and what I became.

The question becomes how shall I organize everything? There are no good answers as new documents are discovered and processed.

Artifacts like the camp letter pictured above lead me down a path of memory I had forgotten. It’s about canoeing on the Mississippi River, about campfires, and summer free swims, and having fun away from home and telling my parents all about it in a letter. Now that they are both gone the memories are welcome.

Letter writing, then email, journal writing, blogging, and now texting has become a part of who I am. I believe I’ve become the better for it.