And then I wrote

... that come June, (if I make it to June; there are no guarantees, are there?) I will have lived in this same house for 60 years, minus four years in university and four years in the Navy. I know a lot of the furniture is stuff that my paternal grandmother once owned, and it came with her when she came to live with my parents in Waukon after the death of her husband in 1933, the year before I was born. I have no idea how many years before that the things were purchased, but it suffices to say the stuff is old.

Since the death of my mother a little over a year ago, I have slowly been going through things and places in the house, many of which I had never “visited” before. As far as I knew, what was contained there did not affect me in any way, since I never was involved with putting things there.

And I have had some surprises!

The latest came the other day. I was getting tired of trying to cram return address stickers and stamps into the little drawer in the old writing desk. So, I decided to investigate one of the two smaller drawers below the fold-down desk. I knew my mother had kept lined and unlined writing pads in there, plus gum packages and hard candies, and some unused cards, such as for weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and the like.

There were also ration books and tokens from the WWII era in there, plus Iowa liquor store books from 1934 -1936, with price lists.

But much to my surprise, way down in the bottom, I found some letters I had received in the early 1960s. She had saved them. And what a flood of memories they brought to me.

Four of them were from the legal officer in the squadron in which I last served with the Navy. I was his favorite prosecutor in Navy courts martial, and he and his wife were very good friends of this bachelor officer. In the first letter, he talks about some of the officers and men of the squadron whom I knew. In the second, he writes about beginning pre-med studies at Stanford University while still on active duty. His wife worked at Stanford Research Institute. In the third letter, he reports that his beautiful young wife had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a usually fatal form of cancer.

In the fourth, and final, letter, about two years after the first, he says she has successfully been fighting the disease, but that he was going to transfer to Ohio State’s med school because it is in their home town.

I answered that letter, but never got a reply. I could not follow up, because I did not have an Ohio address for them. And I have often wondered.

Two of the letters were from the guy with whom I shared a cheap ($25 a month!) garret apartment in Iowa City for two years and a semester. He was four years older than I and a Navy vet who had been a cryptographer. In the first letter, he describes the young woman he met on a blind date in Washington, D.C., where they were both employed with the Department of State, which he joined right out of university four years earlier. He says they will be married soon, and that another mutual college friend, also employed there, will be his best man. The second letter was from his first posting outside the United States, he and his bride having been sent to Recife, Brazil. He was at the “political desk,” and I am certain he was actually a CIA operative, because I was interviewed by two CIA agents as part of a background check when he was applying for a government position.

He and I exchanged Christmas cards and now and then other letters all through his government service. With four Navy years plus that service, he retired on full pension. He, his wife, their three children and his mother came to see me in Waukon after retirement, enroute to the retirement home they had purchased on Puget Sound in Washington. That was in the middle 1980s. A couple years later, I did not get a Christmas card from them, and wondered why. Then, I got a letter from his wife saying he had died of lung cancer, at just 58 years of age. She and the kids were moving back to her home town. Again, I had no address to which to write.

Memories coming back unbidden, not expected. And not entirely welcome since they are sad memories, in some ways. But also the occasion for happy memories.

And I noticed both men, in their middle to late 20s, had beautifully legible handwriting, in those days before kids were introduced to computer keyboards in the hospital nursery.