Treasures Amongst The Boxes
Leaving Deshler for their honeymoon in July, 1950.
We’ve made a pact this year. Those boxes we have schlepped from our home in DC to Philadelphia and on to Harrisburg and finally here to Minneapolis will be sorted, discarded, or recognized for the treasures they are.
Meant to do this during the pandemic - what a perfect opportunity, no? But we found ourselves distracted by such essential pastimes as the Tiger King series, BBC’s Ghosts, and Schitt’s Creek.
So we’re on it five years later.
We began with what should have been easy - pulling the boxes out of the closet with baby clothes and items from my 30-something year old children. We thought Grandbaby #1 might just benefit from something useful or meaningful within them.
In short - less useful than one would have hoped. Some items were downright dangerous - it’s remarkable my kids survived the stuff we hung in their cribs. But we made it through six plastic boxes of clothing, toys, dolls, and scrapbooks of cards sent on the occasion of each child’s arrival.
And then we found a mystery box. No baby clothes. No toys. Just a box of small journals and papers that included letters.
There are diaries and musings by my Grandma Blue from the late 1930s through the mid 1950s. I’ve only begun rolling through the journey of her days. They’re filled with the cares and worries of her daily life. Did she prepare the chicken well? Were her neighbors concerned with the way she kept her garden? These will be a source for more thought and discovery.
Wedged in the box, I found a set of ten letters written by my father to my mother the spring and summer before their wedding in July of 1950. If my parents were alive today, they would be 116 and 106, so these are a snapshot of 1950 from the 40 year old Art to his 30 year old fiancee.
He writes to Miss Mercedes Blue Deshler, Ohio from his drafting desk at Humphryes Manufacturing Company on blue lined graph paper.
“After seeing that beautiful stationery you use I feel like a tramp using this stuff. I have better stationery at home, but I’m at the plant now and want to mail this on the way home to be sure you receive it tomorrow.”
Can you imagine? Mail out one day that’s received across Ohio the next? Of course, my parents couldn’t have imagined instantaneous email, either.
Amid updates on his efforts to find a suitable apartment for rent after their wedding, he regaled Mom with news of his engineering and drafting work for Humphryes.
“We are going to bring all three of our mold conveyors up-to-date…and…today, I hired the concrete busting labor and equipment from Mr. Purdy, and the new foundations to be built by Jacob Wolf Co. I am now writing orders for steel work. Luckily the drawings were all made.”
And he follows that with a line drawing, complete with dimensions in the midst of the page.
“You will see the discharge hole at the bottom is off center in both directions, which means each of the four corner seams is at a different angle…I will lay them out Saturday and Sunday so that Mansfield Structural can get the plates ready next week.”
Heady romantic material, no? That was my pragmatic practical father believing the structural engineering details of his work should be shared with the woman he was preparing to marry
But at least he signed this letter with a - Love, Arthur - instead of the earlier - Sincerely, Arthur.
I really need to find the box that has the letters mom must have sent in reply. Was she equally detailed in her descriptions of picking out china patterns and wedding arrangements?