Elma and Al

Technically Al wrote this letter the day before Elma wrote #4, but I think she wrote that one before she received this one. Does that make sense? Anyway, here is #5.

The transcript:

620 N. Union St.

Kokomo, Ind.

February 10, 1931

Dear Elma

Well Elma here I am back with a few words for I have nothing else to do but sit here in my room and pass my time away somehow, it seems like I have been here for a month or more already but if everything is like the fellows say I won’t be here very long, if I am lucky enough I might get out of Kokomo by the first of March but whether I don’t know all I know is that three fellows out of the gang are going to get transferred by the first of March but I don’t know where they go to, so don’t go to worrying about that I will be home the first day of March. O boy wouldn’t that be great, they also say that this job should be completed by the first of April or so and the use of the Dial is supposed to start the first day of June, so I guess we will have to trust luck and not make assignments and pray a whole lot so we might see each other real soon again, I feel like I couldn’t wait or like I had to see you tonight Elma, but it is too far to see you tonight. So I guess I will be going to bed tonight with a busting head and dream all night about being there to see you and how.

Elma I guess you can read my scribbling I don’t know, like you said whether you are any good on working crossword puzzles, but that is just the way I feel the way the scribbling, scratches and hooks look to you.

Elma tell me something, I haven’t heard you say anything since Sunday morning when I kissed you goodby at the buss station. I am doing all the talking all the time and don’t hear you at all, so if you can’t say anything please Elma write a few words for I feel like I fell off, off a cliff and nobody knows where I fell to, so I am looking for a few words even if it is no letter, just a few words will be enough to tell me that you are still alive down at Evansville.

Well Elma I am catching myself getting too darn homesick I will have to change my subject and try to think and write about something else Elma I don’t know whether you can make heads or tails out of my writing or not if not let me know and I will try and study my letters before I start writing. study it like a German and then preach ha, ha sent that hot.

Well Elma I am getting good at writing and making funny hooks on a piece of paper, I am going to tell you a little something about my room, it is very nice and clean. I have a large bed for two to sleep, but I have no bed partner and haven’t seen any bed partners either, I have a great big dresser in one corner and a wardrobe in another corner and at the foot of my bed is a door to the side into the bathroom, hot and cold water and a gray rug on the floor it looks pretty good, one door leading into the living room and one door to the front porch and one window in the front, it is nice and warm furnace heated and also have a drop light in the center of the ceiling, nice and white lace curtains on the window and door. Oh I guessI will have to draw you a sketch of my room for positive it won’t be anything extra, so here goes, ***** well here it is I guess you see the little grid on top of the W.R. that is where I put it haha laugh a wile.

Well Elma I guess I have spread whole lot of stuff tonight enough to make anybody sick so I guess I will have to close for this time and write you some other time and tell you some more when I feel more like writing again. I don’t mean that I ain’t feeling good, for I am feeling pretty good about as good as can be expected from anyone being away from home, I wrote mom a German letter tonight, Elma you go and see mom sometime I know it will make her feel better and let me know how she is getting along.

It is now about nine O’clock and I will close this letter and go to bed and dream a **** with Love and kisses from Al.

My comments:

1. My first thought was that my grandpa spoke very little in the 25 years that I knew him, so reading this four page letter was both eye-opening and bewildering. I asked my mother if he spoke a lot when she was growing up and she said, no, that he would come inside from cleaning the ditches, run cold water over his wrists and sit down at the table to eat–all without saying a word. I wish I had spoken to him more to learn more about him. I don’t feel like I knew him well at all.
2. It is clear from this letter that my grandpa loved or was smitten by my grandma. I am very thankful for his persistence, because without that I wouldn’t be here. When I read this letter my grandpa’s homesickness was palpable.
3. I have always been curious about the cultural influence of my great great grandparent’s German heritage. Both of my grandparent’s grandparents were born and grew up in Germany and clearly they still clung to that culture, frozen in 1850. I find it interesting that my grandfather refers to his handwriting and tells my grandma to “study it like a German”. Only he can interpret that for us, but my stab at it is that culturally Grandpa perceived Germans as being highly critical and scrutinizing.I guess I know where I got it from ; ) I also found it interesting that my grandpa wrote a German letter, which I can only assume is a letter in German. I had no idea that my grandpa knew German well enough to write it. He did have kind of an accent when he spoke English, but I never thought about where that came from.

Until next time…..

At first I thought, “geez Grandma, write him a letter already”, then I realized that she was waiting to receive his letter so that she had his address. Anyway, here is her first letter. I will comment more once you have a chance to read it.

The transcript:

Evansville, Ind.

Feb 11, 1931

Dear Al

I sure was glad when the mailman came this morning with those letters for I got them both at once, but almost began to think you forgot to write to me, your Dad got one yesterday already.

Al it sure was blue here since you left for me but of course it won’t do to show it, but my that empty feeling. We put up that quilt this week and are working at it now so that helps out during the day. I just took a little time off on the sly. Mom and Mrs. Weinzapfel are at it now.

I’m sure glad you got their safe, but I guess it was tiresome, only wish I could have been with you on the way. Hope there’ll be more pastime there than at Rockport.

Well Al I’ll have to quit and go after Harold, might run over to your mother’s a minute. (their both well).

Be careful with yourself and I’ll try to have more time the next time

Goodbye Al with love and kisses. X

Elma (forgot this at home. I’m at school now)

(and sure have the Blues)

Hello from all the rest

My commentary:

A couple of things…

1. Why were my great grandmothers, Sophie Bassemier (Feldhaus) and Elizabeth Weinzapfel (Soellner) together making a quilt? They weren’t related yet and Weinzapfel’s lived “in town”. My mom thinks they may have been working on the wedding ring quilt, which now 90 years old and resides at my Aunt Delores’ house (she is the oldest). Also, my grandma was 25 years old at this point and she was quilting with her mother and future mother-in-law. Times definitely were different.
2. My grandma said she was “at school”. I figured out that she was picking Harold up from school, the public school one mile up the road. She must have driven, but my mother told me that she NEVER HAD A DRIVER’S LICENSE. Yep that’s right Grandma, I told everyone.

This 3rd letter is a little different. It is from my grandfather to my grandma’s baby brother, Harold. He was born in 1922 so in this letter Harold was 9. !t’s good to have that context, because if not the letter would seem a little awkward and goofy. Harold would go on to serve in WWII and after the war he married Pearl Buente (it was his second marriage–there is a story there) and they had two children. My mom told me the story about one time in the 50’s Harold took her to Indianapolis to see Pat Boone. She said it was amazing.

Dear Harold

This is old Al trying to write to you, broadcasting from the station ACW as you see at the top left corner. Station ACW in Kokomo. It is now a little colder and the temperature for Wednesday is supposed to rise a little but we don’t ask or advice anybody come out in their bathing suit without a shirt and a pants for he might get bud nipped. Haha. Ain’t that hot.

Well Harold I guess I will write you again some other time. Station ACW signing off 

Goodby Harold from your old pal 

Al. 

This letter is the first one that I could find chronologically. It was written by my grandfather right after he made the long trip to Kokomo, Indiana from Evansville, Indiana.

The first letter:

The actual text of the letter:

Elma Bassemier – Evansville, Indiana
Alphons (Al) Weinzapfel
Kokomo, Ind. February 8, 1931
Dear Elma,
I have arrived safely at Kokomo at 4:55 o clock PM Sunday and am feeling about as good as can be expected after such a rumpling all day as I had coming up on the bus. Boy I mean they shake you up plenty, the interurban from Indianapolis wasn’t so bad, and I also made good connections at Indianapolis. I got off the bus and walked across the tracks in the central station and bought my ticket for Kokomo and asked the agent what time the train pulled out, he said, its ready now on the third track, that was 2:55 o clock P.M. and I boarded the car and at 3:00 P.M. it pulled out for Kokomo, boy wasn’t I glad that I didn’t have to wait about three or four hours.
Well Elma when I got here I went around the corner and got me some supper and now I am sitting here in Room No. 12 in the Union Hotel where I will stay tonight, tomorrow I will have me a boarding place if I can find one, which I hope will be a good place to eat and sleep, no bugs, I already looked for bugs in this bed here but I didn’t find any so yet and hope not to find any. Elma, I didn’t tell you yet where and what kind of dinner I had today. Elma I bet I had as good a dinner as you did. It was chicken dinner, down at Orleans, Ind. The bus stopped there 20 minutes for lunch at eleven o clock this morning Elma. I told a lie, it was not like home cooked, it tasted fair but nothing compared to home cooking.
Elma, I guess you are feeling very well by now too which I hope you will remain all the time and take care of your self don’t worry so much, I will take all the care I can for my self too so don’t worry, will write more in the near future, with love and kisses

Al

My notes

This letter was the first of many letters that my grandparents wrote to each other while my grandfather was working in Kokomo, Indiana installing phones. I find it to be revealing that he wrote her name five times within the body of the letter. You can feel how much he missed her.

A few things to note:

1. Kokomo is not that close to Evansville, 225 miles apart. Even today it would take four hours by car to travel that distance. It must have seemed like a vast ocean between them when my grandfather left that Sunday back in 1931.
2. His first night he stayed in the Union Hotel. At the time there were seven hotels in Kokomo. I’m going to guess that my grandfather had never stayed in a hotel. He went on to rent a room somewhere–I’m guessing that we will get the scoop on that in future letters.
3. Dinner and supper are not the same thing. You will notice that he said he ate “dinner” in Orleans. Growing up in the Midwest I reflexively have always called the middle of the day meal “dinner” and the last meal of the day “supper”. In southern Indiana, were I grew up, we always referred to the noonday meal as dinner, but I never knew why. The reason for this goes back to the time when the economy was based on agriculture. Farmers worked a busy work schedule and had little time and meals were typically breakfast and dinner, with dinner being eaten around noontime as a large feast. Supper was always lighter and often leftovers were eaten. (reference) https://tiphero.com/dinner-vs-supper#:~:text=And%20lunch%20is%20what%20you%20eat%20midday.%20So%2C,being%20those%20who%20grew%20up%20in%20rural%20communitie
4. Last thing. in the postscript he mentions writing a letter to Harold. You might be wondering, Who is Harold? Harold was one of my grandma’s younger brothers, along with Ed and Ray. My guess is that my grandpa was friends with Harold. Not that interesting, but helps us build a clearer picture of their lives.

And just one day later…here is his second letter:

The actual text of the letter:

Dear Elma, 

I am still with the living and scribbling again, but not in the Hotel. I am now in my room and new home located at 620 N Union St so if you want to write me a few lines which I am longing for, it will make a little more life, everything seems so dead nothing to do and no plans to go, all forsaken in a little bitty corner of the Great Big World in the Land of Kokomo. Well that is that forget the craziness and use a little common sense. 

Elma we have school on Monday and Thursday nights here so that is the reason I am writing this letter now because we have school and it is about time for me to get started to go there. I don’t know really how far it is, the warehouse I mean I was not there yet, I am but about three blocks from the new Telephone building which is right up here on the corner of Union and Taylor St. It is a bldg about like the one in Evansville the only difference is it is not quite as big. 

Well Elma I didn’t do anything this morning but fool time away, this afternoon I worked with a fellow changing telephones to the Dial, I changed four myself so that wasn’t so bad after all. Elma if I haven’t the blues too much tomorrow night I will try and write you another letter and tell you a little more. I am well and how these few lines will find you the same. 

With love and kisses Al

Goodby Elma

My notes:

I found 620 N. Union, Kokomo, Indiana on Google maps

I was so surprised that he wrote another letter so soon, but I guess he had to tell her where he was. Remember: no cell phones, no texting. I am not even sure that Bassemier’s had a phone yet. Many years later they would have a “party line”.