Day 80: The Dead Pen Pal Box Part Five - Boy Crazy in Wisconsin!

When I finish posting photos of stuff around the house, or old photos taken in the house, I shall begin a blog about pen pal letters. But in the meantime I couldn't resist sharing a few more gems.

I had a lot of boy crazy pen pals. Most of them seemed to live in the midwest where they seemed to start "going steady" at age eleven and wore ID bracelets with the name of their squeeze. I don't believe this sort of thing ever caught on in California. But then again, I didn't hang around with boy-crazy girls.

I had a pen pal called Nancy in Wisconsin, and then one of her best friends, Cindy, also started writing to me. This is the letter in which Nancy asked if I wanted to write to Cindy too. And inquired if I had a [symbol for boy] friend. In the meantime some [symbol for boy] grabbed something of Cindy's (maybe Nancy couldn't think of a symbol for UU?) to make her go flying in the mud.

Ah, the early seventies! Midi skirts had just come out, bikini underwear was the new thing to wear under your hot pants. I don't understand what the thing is where you can get "mostly whatever U want".

I collected gum wrappers to make chains. (Yes, we had no Internet in those days; we had to pass the time somehow!)

And here's my "name" which Nancy sent me. Yeah, I liked it. But not enough to ever take it out of the envelope.

Here's an early letter from Cindy. I wish I could have seen her Jass (sic) solo on The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In!

 

And here's the envelope it came in:

 Back to Nancy, and some breaking news.

"Guess what? I don't like Joe McEwen anymore. I like Jay Valentine. And I kind of like Mike Wildenberg, and Tim Schmidt. Jay and Mike are in the 9th grade, and Tim is in the 8th grade. They are all cute."
 

 And Cindy is even more fickle:

"I don't like my old boyfriend anymore because he doesn't like me and I "HATE" him."

 And the accompanying groovy envelope:




I think I had some stationery that was headed "Kicks from Karen". I believe Nancy was trying to emulate it, but forgot to add who the "Kicks" were from.

I had sent her a post card chain letter, and she assumed I knew everyone on the list. I did not.

"I'm in twirling. We are going to go to competition. Our uniform is hot pants, and a mid drif (sic) top. We are twirling to the song Hot Pants." As you would.

 

 


I'm kind of digging this stationery. I think I had a couple of other pen pals who used it too. And everyone had those psychedelic name stickers.

 And check out the other side of the envelope! Do you think she knew what a roach was?

Back to Nancy. Now, if you ever wanted to know the complete plot of  Escape from Planet of the Apes as described by a preteen in Wisconsin in the seventies, well, today's your lucky day. I love "I forgot to tell you that the apes could talk."

By the way, I wish I knew how long she saved my letters. If only she knew that I would be saving these letters of hers for decades... It could almost be a plot point in a Planet of the Apres sequel!

And finally, she must have been in the habit of closing letters with "Sorry So Short"... Couldn't she have gone into a bit more detail about the movie?!

If you have the patience to read this letter from Cindy, you're a better person than I. I did see that she is describing treating some kind of skin infection in it and there's something about 3:00 in the morning.

 "Do you like midis, gauchos and knickers?" (For my English friends, she is not talking about underwear! I think I had told Nancy that I had received a red velvet maxi skirt for Christmas. It was a set from the Sears catalog, paired with a white lace mini dress.

I do like her birthday survey. I was kind of obsessed with birthdays too, and I was always looking for a "birthday twin" as a pen pal. Never found one, but Nancy was only three days off. But as for his list, I think she was a  couple of years off with Marlon Jackson of the Jackson 5 as he was older than Michael, and both were older than us!

"He's palys Keith Partridge." is kinda groovy too!

Of course I did not show you all the letters from Nancy and Cindy. When I started writing to Cindy, Nancy warned me that she was boy crazy. But most of her first letters did not mention any boys. In the meantime, Nancy started writing about other things - maxi skirts, hot pants, Planet of the Apes - and of the two, Cindy wrote much more about boys. That's why I found this excerpt from Cindy kind of surprising.

Both Cindy and Nancy were always asking for more pen pals; now Cindy is worried that if I ask some foreign pen pal to write to Nancy that she might not want to write to Cindy, too. Then:

"Don't tell Nancy this but I don't like her because all she does is talk about boys. I'm not against boys but she always thinks she is big because a 9th grade boy always smiles at her. She thinks that's a big deal."

I kept mum. Both of them were always asking for more pen pals, and each of them told me that I was their favorite pen pal. Both of them stopped writing to me around the same time, rather suddenly, when we were all around thirteen.

Day 79: Photos Taken Around the House - Living Room Edition Part Four - Celebrations: Babies, Champers and Coffee Cups

In the living room, Christmas 2003, here we have a rug rat who received a barking dog from his grandparents.




And here's Luke with his grandma, though the focus is on the background.

Still life in yuletide in the oh so brown late seventies.




Andy Morrison above a kitten on the keys sticker:

Another ex of my sister's, Jerry Sully. Is he wearing a Donny Osmond cap?

Unidentified sleeping bodies, sometime before 1984.

My sister, sometime in the 80s I think.

Party of my parents; Peggy Bartlett and Ann Martin.

John and Ann Martin

Their son, John.




This must have been a church people's party as I believe that's Pastor Ausland downing the champers.

Some of our fake relatives. We had so few blood relatives that my mom would invite family friends over for holidays. This is Helen on the left, and Evy Lind on the right. Both originally from Chicago.

And here's Hal Lind, with Evy behind him. Note the top loading Betamax.

Some neighbors were invited to this party. That's Fred and Cherie Eckert, who lived across the street.

Not sure why my dad is so dressed up! Maybe it was a party for their thirtieth anniversary or something; I wouldn't have been around. That's Barney Weltz, a friend of theirs from church, with the champagne this time.

Now we're eating cake... Fred Eckert and another neighbor who looks familiar but who I cannot place...

Back to church folk: Yvonne Ausland, Bonnie Werts and one of the Ausland sons, unidentified kids. From the mantelpiece I can deduce that my parents recently made a trip to Africa. That would have been in the mid 80s.

A different party; fewer things on the mantelpiece and my dad is now dressed casually, again with church friends.

Hmmm, I see something that looks like part of a wedding cake; maybe I was right about the anniversary thing. Here are June and Bob Weiss.




Going back forward in time to mid 2002; here's Luke before he was old enough to leave empty wrappers all over that couch. I had not met him yet.

Here is the only photo of me in this bunch. And it's not a great one, I need my roots done, and my Vidal Sassoon haircut (I modelled for them in late 85) had grown out a bit and was not styled properly. I was visiting over the holidays that year. Kurt was in Kenya so we were back to being a nuclear family.

But here's a smirking Kurt, a couple of years before that, on the previous couch. As I said many times before, that afghan is still on the back of the next couch. And spot the difference players, that fan has moved to the position where the guitar was.

A rare photo of my dad with his feet up!

Note that many years later, here in 2012 with a newborn Annabelle, he is still drinking from the same coffee cup.

And for completists, I photographed said cup this year before I threw it away. (By the way, right after the Annabelle photo was taken, I bought him a thermal Starbucks cup, which he used ever day right up until the end. I hid the green one.)

Day 78: My Forgotten Life in Art Part Four - Odd Todd Edition

Yes, as most, if not all, of these drawings were done when I was between the ages of 14 and 16, you might guess that my number one subject was Todd Rundgren.

Here I've got his seven colors of hair down, but his face and nose are not quite the right shape.

Not a very flattering portrait from 1974, but it does look a bit more like him.

I believe I was attempting to draw the photo on the back of Something/Anything? here.

Here come the Nazz... Or my attempt to draw the back of the album cover. I don't think Todd's overbite was quite that extreme!

This one of A Wizard, A True Star, being sort of cartoonish and primitive in the first place, fared a bit better.

The Todd LP cover:

Hmmm, here he looks a bit clownish... Or mime-ish?

Things are slightly lopsided here...

And finally, another attempt in color: