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Dear Katie,
Thanks for your lovely postcard. Atlantic City must be beautiful this time of the year and what a relief it must be to get out of the hot city for a few days. Poppa was saying last night that he wishes you would think it over about coming up here for a week in August or more, if you want. There’s plenty of room and I know you’d enjoy it because you always have.
It’s funny here without Momma God rest her soul and I think that Poppa really feels it but he won’t say a word just plays his croquet as usual beating everybody. The Sapurty’s are here and Grace is still the same accident looking for a place to happen that she always was, trying to look like a school girl. There’s another family here through the second week of August a nice woman and her husband and, their two girls who are both Boy Crazy. Specially the oldest girl who makes a spectacle of herself at the lake with any thing that wears pants. Her father eats like a stevedore as he sure wants to get his moneys worth. You remember Helga Schmidt? Well, she is here too, the heart broken widow and it is pitifull to see how she is playing up to Poppa who doesn’t even know she is alive.
Eleanor and Dave Warren will be married in the Fall. Eleanor is still homely as sin but Dave would not win any beauty contests either so, they seem to be a match. God love them. There is another man here and the gossip according to Grace Sapurty and her Big Mouth is that he just got a divorce. He seems to be a real gentleman to me and has taken a shine to Billy and they get along together just like ham and eggs. He has a real sense of humor. Next week he is going to drive us on an outing to High Point. Remember going there when we were just girls? They were happier days God knows.
Well that seems to be all the news for now. Write to me and let me know how Leonard is doing with that back of his and drop a line to Poppa too? And really think it over about coming up for a week anyway. Say hello to Leonard and Arthur and Janet and give them my love.
Marie
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I haven’t really had a chance to offer my sympathy to you, Helga. I mean poor Otto. A wonderful man. It was such a shock to us.1
Ja. For me too, Marie dear. But you can know about it with your own poor mother passing away. Life is hard, hard. I was saying to Otto last winter, just last winter, before he took sick. Ach, we thought it was a bad cold, how Bridget was last summer not looking so good. Peaked, you know, and so pale, not like her skin always was so nice and fresh. Peaches with cream.2
Yes. She was sick a long time before we knew just how sick she really was. The doctor, oh … the doctor said it was her blood was just tired.3
Ah, ja! The doctors. They don’t know nothing!
Momma was always so strong and full of fun, you know? It was just terrible to watch her get weaker and weaker every day. But she was a soldier.4 Never a word of complaint out of her.
A swell regular sport she was. I remember like yesterday, right here, watching her play croquet with your father. Ja. Always a good sport she was. And ready for anything. Ach, life! Who would believe that you and me—? Always she had, always, a nice smile on her for everybody and a nice word.5 A real lady. I’ll miss her more and more. None of us are getting any younger. Ah! Your poppa must be so sad but always a gentleman. You never see him telling his troubles to the world. Polite and nice. You’re a lucky daughter, ja.
Poppa misses her so much, I know. Well, they’d be married thirty-six years this fall — October.6 That’s a lifetime.
Thirty-six years! Your poppa don’t look a day over fifty!7 God bless him. The boy — he misses his granma?
Oh my God, yes. He adored his granma. Well, you know how grandmothers spoil their grandchildren. But he seems to have gotten over it, you know how kids are — especially boys.
To have such strength to forget. Well, God is good. We don’t know how lucky we are when we are kids, ja? God makes it so they don’t suffer like we do.
Yes. God is good. If I didn’t believe that …
Now now now. You shouldn’t too much upset yourself. What’s past is past. Maybe it’s all for the best, poor Bridget and Otto, God bless him.
They say that God works in mysterious ways.
I believe this too. Very much. We got to go on living our lives no matter what, ja? You have your big handsome boy to make grow up to be a strong man, and to look after you have your poppa. Now more than ever your poppa needs you, ja?
Yes. Oh yes, we have to go on living. That’s what life is about. But it’s so hard.8
But you need to have some fun and relax a little too. We don’t live on only bread, God said. I am starting again to play the piano.9 It’s nice and makes me peaceful. And you, I notice how nice it is you have a nice friend here for you.
A nice friend?
Ja. The nice gentleman with the moustache? And a pipe he smokes?10 Mr. Teebus?11
Oh, Mr. Thebus.
Ja. Excuse me. Sometimes my English.
Well yes, but. Mr. Thebus is not really my friend, I mean my friend alone — I mean he always, you always see him playing croquet with Poppa. They’re really serious about their game of croquet.12
Ah?
Yes. Yes. I mean, you watch Poppa play most of the time, don’t you? It seems that way.13 I mean, you see … him and Tom …
This is a game I love watching. A nice and calm gentleman’s game. It is good for the nerves, ja? Better than a hundred doctors. And it, ah, it reminds me of Otto. God bless him.
Well. Otto. Well you know the old saying, six of one and half a dozen of the other.14 Anyway, Mr. Thebus and Poppa really hit it off, I mean he’s our friend. Poppa thinks the world of him.
Ah? Oh ja. A gentleman.
And Mr. Thebus has taken a great shine to Billy too, you know. So of course, we talk about him—Billy. And if we take a little walk once in a while it’s no skin15 off anyone’s nose. Is it?
It is good to have this friend. What is so nice, so very very nice is what a good man and regular sport is your poppa. He don’t mind it a bit to be left all al — to be, have his nice privacy for a few hours, ja? Dear, believe you me, your poppa knows you are still a young woman. Ja!
A young woman? I don’t know really what … Tom and I have taken two walks, three, three walks. And one night we went to get clams for everybody at Harry and Mary’s.16 And Peggy Copan came along.
Ah, ja. How nice! How good to have nice friends your age — and one that your poppa likes so much, ja? A croquet player and everything.
I mean it’s just, well. Well, God, anybody can make friends with Tom,17 Helga.
Ja. With Tom. What a gentleman, so handsome. And so polite and full of fun. And with his nice little shiny car. So sporty.”
Yes.
I don’t want to tell tales but Frieda told me he had some unhappy things at home? Some trouble, his wife? Ja?