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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer
Dear friends,
Please write. I promise I’ll write back as soon as possible.
It’s a dead horse I’ve beaten for years, but it seems that nobody writes to anyone anymore.
Now, I’m not talking about using electronic forms of communication. Nor am I referring to news writing, although there’s a lot of that that barely meets the definition of communicating thoughts and ideas through the printed word, but that’s a column for another day. Besides, far more of my words than I prefer to admit fall into the latter category.
I’m talking about letters, notes, and cards. I have a few ever-faithful correspondents, among them Mesdames Rebecca Porter, Margaret Weatherly and Grace Britt. No matter how many cards and letters I receive from these ladies, it’s always a thrill to open the mailbox and see something other than a bill or a pitch to buy a new car I don’t want and can’t afford.
Stapled and tacked and taped to the walls of my office are letters and cards from all kinds of folks, from plain old people to politicians. I treasure each and every one of them. On the rare occasions I receive an electronic message worthy of going up on the wall, I must print it out on a piece of paper to get the full effect. Even the nicest e-mail, no matter how heartwarming or complimentary, still has a sterility that can only be partially washed away by applying the message to paper.
I fully realize communication is much easier now, what with e-mail, virtually free long distance calls and those infernal, demonic cellphones. We don’t have to fill out an envelope, walk to the mailbox, wait for the mailman, wait for the letter to travel, then wait for a reply. What really scares me is the fact that someone can send an e-mail to my telephone. As handy as this feature is sometimes, if I haven’t answered my phone, it likely means I (a) can’t right now or (b) don’t want to do so. Why, then would I take the time to answer a text message?
But I digress.
When I was little, my folks went to great ends to make sure I wrote thank you notes for gifts. I once even had to write a thank you note to the police officer who contacted my parents when I ran away from home.
Notes like that were more of a polite responsibility, but letters were something else entirely.
I loved writing letters to my beloved Great-Aunt Eleanor; she was my father’s sole surviving aunt, and the closest thing I had to a grandmother on his side of the family. From her townhouse, you could sometimes see the horse-drawn caissons going to Arlington Cemetery, and big cities were still fascinating to me then.
Her letters were always simple, happy things, like one would expect an 80-something-old maid to write to her round, little great-nephew. Sometimes she shared news of my nephews and cousins, sometimes she commented on things I wrote about, and sometimes she just wrote small talk.
I almost always wrote back, with reports of Scout camping trips, fishing expeditions, baseball games, and news of whatever adventure my dog and I had most recently survived. Those letters would likely bore anyone else to tears, and I’m sure they would almost embarrass me now, but they were an important part of my life.
When Aunt Ellie’s vision began to fade and her hands crabbed up with arthritis, she began calling us on the telephone every Sunday night. By then I was a teenager, and barely had time for a minute or two of conversation. Even though a long-distance phone call back then meant something of an investment, it was never the same as a simple little letter on lavender-colored paper.
Letters kept me connected with my folks when I was first off on my own trying to change the world. The Old Man was always more formal than Mother, (a habit I must admit I picked up) but those letters always seemed to arrive at just the right time. I am ashamed to admit I didn’t answer every single one.
They both understood all too well the importance of a letter; Papa wrote Mother regularly went they were courting, even though they saw each other frequently and only lived a few miles apart. Mother wrote to her children, all five of us, although the frequency of her letters was directly proportional to how many we wrote back.
Were it not for letters, my father would never really have known his father. Aunt Ellie saved all of Grandfather Weaver’s family letters, including those to my grandmother and several to his only son before Papa could even read. Grandfather was killed by a trolley car shortly after returning from World War I, when Papa was still a toddler.
One of those letters to Papa was written as allied forces were massed for one of the deadliest battles of the war. Apparently worried he might not survive the coming battle, Grandfather wrote a detailed, heartfelt letter to be given to Papa when he came of age. The Old Man shared it with me when I was old enough, and truly, it’s full of advice that is still useful, even after 90 years after Sgt. Tom Weaver scratched it on patriotic stationery, his desk the side of a tank. One of these days I’ll put that letter in this space; maybe around Father’s Day, because it truly is a column for another day.
When I was out of town covering a murder trial years ago, I wrote my then-affianced Miss Rhonda every day from the booth by the window of a diner in Beaufort. I could write the letter over a cup of coffee, walk past the post office on my way back to court, and know that by the next day, she’d have another reminder that I loved her.
Of course, all the technological endorsement of our laziness as letter-writers has an upside of sorts.
I have discovered that if I want to get someone’s attention, the best way is not to call or e-mail them, but send them a real, honest-to-goodness letter with a real hand- or typewritten address on the outside. No laser-printer label has the effect of noticing that someone actually took the time and effort to pick up an ink pen and actually use said pen in a legible manner.
So please, friends, take the time to write. If not to me, then to someone. It could make all the difference in their day.
And while you may prefer a simple farewell as a closing to your letter, I still have too much of my father in me, so I hope you will forgive me if I close this by wishing you the best, and reminding you to always consider me.
Your Obedient Servant,
Jefferson Weaver
Weaver is a staff writer at the News Reporter. He may be reached via e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz, or via telephone at 642-4104, ext 227.
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