My recent post about early television sets (scroll down) prompted me to search my files for photos of our family's early sets. None of them showed a "TV light" on top (just rabbit ears), but I did run across this early letter to Santa, annotated by my mother.
The letter was written on the back of my father's business stationery (he was a traveling salesman who incorporated himself under the rather grandiose company name "Continental Marketing Corporation.") The little envelope was franked with a 1950 Christmas seal.
That would have been I think our first year in Minnesota, where we moved after my father finished his wartime Navy work in Washington, D.C., where I was born. Our new Minnesota home was in Edina, which was in the 1950s a prototypical post-war modest-income suburb of Minneapolis with dirt roads and small houses. This was the back yard during the Christmas season:
When I got old enough to skate, the area between the house and the trellis would be flooded by my father with a garden hose to make a skating rink. By that age I was post-polio and had weak ankles, so my mother sacrificed one of the dining room chairs to give me support while skating:
(This photo taken at a neighborhood pond).
Posted for family, but I thought TYWKIWDBI readers might enjoy the read. The Christmas season is a good time for reflecting back on past years, so I'll probably post additional memorabilia in the weeks ahead.
Polio? shudder, thank all the deities, Jonas Salk, and the belief in science to defeat that sumbitch. Shame we can't do that anymore.
ReplyDeleteJust wonder if all the COVID anti-vaxxers would have turned down the polio or smallpox vaccines, or even the annual flu shots too?
DeleteAnd just for the record, in my Wisconsin hometown about 150 miles southeast of the Twin Cities, our park department used to flood entire softball fields (a full city block!) and kept them up for free public skating back in the '60s and '70s — which is why I was probably so underwhelmed when I finally got to see the positively puny Rockefeller Center ice rink in NYC in person.
-"BB"-
Smiles...
ReplyDeleteSmiles and nice warm feelings. More, please, sir.
ReplyDeleteLove the personal posts. I'm not from the midwest, but I find the midwest posts to be really interesting. Maybe because I went to Carleton in your old home town of Northfield -- I was there during the big Metric football game v St Olaf in 1977 that you previously posted about. I wasn't at the game (we always lost), but I can report that we were, for once, excited about a football game.
ReplyDeleteOne of my St. Olaf aunts married a Karl, and her children broke with my family's tradition and attended Carleton (Carleton had the reputation of being a better college academically).
DeleteGreat post and I love you site
ReplyDeleteDr. Salk deserves more recognition.
ReplyDeleteWhat great writing for a 3 year old, and skating with weak ankles is hard, so nice to see the big smile! I have always admired and appreciated your persistence in keeping the blog going--good to see the how long you've had the excellent attitude!
ReplyDeleteActually I was 4 1/2 at the time. When my mom wrote the note many years later, she miscalculated the length of time between the summer of 1946 and Christmas 1950. But she did teach me to read and write before I started school.
DeleteThat is precious! You are too!
ReplyDelete