I told you, Gentle Reader, that I was expecting and had received a passel o' correspondence from back in the day... which consists mostly o' love letters between my beloved and I, back when we were betrothed and in a long-distance relationship. I've had an opportunity to scan those letters over the last day or two and the ONE letter I was hoping to find isn't in the stack o' letters I received from SN2. I've asked Sam to go back to the well and see if there isn't another stack o' letters stashed somewhere, mainly coz nearly all of the letters I wrote during my four-month deployment in Thailand have gone missing. We shall see what he comes up with, if anything.
That said, I've been spending some time going through my letters over the last two days. The emphasis is on "my" because reading her letters might could be painful in ways that are hard to describe, but I'm sure you can read between the lines. I found things in the old letters that might could be of general interest and it's in that spirit I offer the following...
Some explanation is in order, no? The Second Mrs. Pennington had left Japan a month earlier (from the date of this letter) and was back at school at Notre Dame in Indiana. I, OTOH, was still in Japan serving in an Engineering and Installations unit at Yokota AB, on the outskirts of Tokyo. I wrote this letter from Wallace Air Station in the Philippines, where I was on a temporary duty assignment (TDY) to perform a pre-depot level maintenance inspection of the radar facility at Wallace. So that's the background. The one thing that mystifies me about this letter is the racy bit in quotes on the last page. I have NO ideer where that came from, but that saying appears in other correspondence... from the both of us... to no small extent. All I can think of is we must have heard or seen that expression in some movie we saw or some book the both of us read. Be that as it may... the sentiment was NOT misplaced, on either side of the wire.
I DO miss the girl.
That said, I've been spending some time going through my letters over the last two days. The emphasis is on "my" because reading her letters might could be painful in ways that are hard to describe, but I'm sure you can read between the lines. I found things in the old letters that might could be of general interest and it's in that spirit I offer the following...
Some explanation is in order, no? The Second Mrs. Pennington had left Japan a month earlier (from the date of this letter) and was back at school at Notre Dame in Indiana. I, OTOH, was still in Japan serving in an Engineering and Installations unit at Yokota AB, on the outskirts of Tokyo. I wrote this letter from Wallace Air Station in the Philippines, where I was on a temporary duty assignment (TDY) to perform a pre-depot level maintenance inspection of the radar facility at Wallace. So that's the background. The one thing that mystifies me about this letter is the racy bit in quotes on the last page. I have NO ideer where that came from, but that saying appears in other correspondence... from the both of us... to no small extent. All I can think of is we must have heard or seen that expression in some movie we saw or some book the both of us read. Be that as it may... the sentiment was NOT misplaced, on either side of the wire.
I DO miss the girl.
No explanation needed, at all. I raise my glass, Sir.
ReplyDeleteThank ya, Sir.
DeleteThanks for posting this glimpse into your personal history - missing is part of loving.
ReplyDeleteI'm a fan of your artwork.
The art work in the letter kinda surprised me, Anne, as not many of the letters (and there are hundreds) are illustrated. That said, thank ya for the kind words.
DeleteI second gunsmoke - the artwork is great! As is the letter - a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak. Rare indeed to have that kind of correspondence and rarer still is the man confident enough in who he is to actually - share it. Thank you for that.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank YOU for your nice words, Kris.
DeleteVery interesting to read and poignant because of the history and passage of time...thk you for sharing something so deeply personal.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Alison. There might be more. ;-)
DeleteOne of my first thoughts was how artistic you were (are?). Also, your way of expressing yourself well goes way back.
ReplyDeleteArtistic? Moi? Heh! That might be the first time I've ever heard THAT! But thanks for the kind thought, Lou.
DeleteIt is a defect (I'm sure) of mine, in that I keep nothing. I'm not sure what a psychiatrist would say (maybe nothing), but I have no nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteIt may also be that we lost our home and everything in it when I was young, after a storm, so I seem to be determined to not lose anything, by not keeping it in the first place.
So it must be strange for you to read an old letter I would think. My daughter Océane on the other hand is a premier pack rat, and when she went to college all her stuff went up in the attic, and I actually dreamed of it all crashing down through the ceiling and killing us in the middle of the night :-)
I share your "defect" to a limited extent, Christiane, what with divesting myself of nearly all of my "stuff" when I moved into my RV back in 1999. That said, there were SOME things I simply couldn't part with and these old letters are part of those "somethings." It IS strange reading these old letters, given that I'd forgotten nearly everything about my day-to-day life 35 years ago.
DeleteI like yer dream story!
Great post. A fascinating look back that's enhanced by reproducing the handwritten letter itself. And I too agree with those who praised your artwork. BTW, isn't that a "Huey" copter in your drawing?
ReplyDeleteNot a Huey, Dan. It was a CH-3, better known as a Jolly Green Giant back in the day.
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DeleteThat was a good letter. In a few years I may call up the hard drive that has so much of mine on it and take another look at them. That was the nature of an affair of the heart when one lived in San Diego and the other lived in San Francisco and only saw each other on weekends. A lot of it was electronic back at the very dawn of the 21st century. :)
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kids like that do today. Is it all skype and face book?
I wonder what kids today do when they're courting (does that make me sound OLD?), too. I suspect a lot of phone calls get made, since everyone has a cell phone these days and most plans allow for unlimited cell-to-cell conversations. And then there's e-mail, as you note. The ex- and I spent a good portion of the late '80s and early to mid '90s separated, as I traveled a lot in my civilian job. Those trips were always shorter, though, measured in weeks, not months. I think we mostly talked to each other on the phone during those times.
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