Cyn’s friends in England, Anne and Jessie, sent cards!
The rest of the school year went well for all the Costains.
Linda and Charlie’s French classes in Grades 6 and 7 combined to put on a production of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” with the older students narrating, and Charlie being Pierre with his classmates as Grandpere and the animals!
Cyn managed his costume in spite of being very busy having her birthday and being featured in the newspaper.
As President of the Ladies Guild of her church, Cyn was designated as the opening Speaker for the 67th Annual Meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of the entire country which was being held in Ottawa.
“Madame Chairman, my Lord Bishop, Ladies and Gentlemen- I have a very great pleasure in welcoming you all to the 67th Annual Meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Ottawa Diocese. I have been given this privilege as President of the Women’s Auxiliary of St. Christopher’s Church in Cardinal Heights, because we are one of the newest branches in the Diocese. I must admit that I have cast a longing thought back to Victorian times when the youngest member of the family was seen and not heard, but I am most aware of the fact that this is a very living part of Women’s Auxiliary traditions, that the new and young should be taken into the family and should share responsibilities and pleasures right from the beginning.
When the Ladies Guild of St. Christopher’s Church decided to become a branch of the Women’s Auxiliary we received a very warm welcome from the Diocesan President, Mrs. Johnstone and other members of the W.A. and I greatly appreciate the opportunity of passing on that welcome to you. A ‘warm welcome’ is such a happy phrase, which immediately makes one think of old friends being reunited and the meeting of new ones – of exchanging news of past doings and making plans for the future. I hope that this meeting will mean all of these things to you and that you will have a worthwhile, satisfying and rewarding time here.”
Cec, Boris Stoichef, Dr. Herzberg, and Don Ramsay
Meanwhile Cec was enjoying a visit from Dr Shimoda, one of the scientists he and his colleagues had met in Japan, who was presumably working with the N.R.C. spectroscopists. Cec was also invited to dinner at his College in Cambridge in June. He sent his regrets no doubt, but it was an honour.
The great excitement of June, however, was the first wedding of the young generation of the Costain family. Linda was the oldest girl of that generation, but she had 4 older male cousins and 2 of these, Merle’s sons John and Lorne, were engaged, with Lorne marrying Liz in Brantford, the Costains driving down for the occasion, and everyone getting dressed up on a lovely summer day.
John and Sharon- the next wedding couple in 64!
They were a lovely couple, I was thrilled by the whole occasion, and remember the hats as a key feature. Out west, the grandparents were enjoying the youngest members of the family, but no doubt their daughter Merle kept them informed of the festivities we all enjoyed.
After that excitement, the summer approached, the children advanced to Grades 7 and 8 and their holidays in the new house.
School Reports
Cec had plans for a large garden – there already was asparagus- and there was a lovely Manitoba maple tree providing shade behind the house, the site of a future patio. The summer was going to be fun!
From January until March of 1963, the Costains were preparing to move to their new house, while leading their ordinary lives. Since the house was literally down the hill and around a corner, overseeing the renovations was not a hard job, but imagining living there was another matter. They would be living in a neighbourhood not on the highway, so it would be a different perspective, even though they already knew many families around. The school was closer, as the crow flies, but getting to it in a Canadian winter would have meant wading through snow over two untrodden fields, so the children left that idea until spring. Selling the Montreal Road duplex they lived in was an important part of the financing plan, so an ad was put in the newspaper. And packing began.
Cec and Cyn had planned the overall structural changes already, and Cyn had sent her mother the diagrams showing how the reversal of the orientation of the stairs made for better floor plans on all levels, but the renovation of the kitchen was Cyn’s pet project, and she was meticulous in designing it to suit her exactly- counters low enough to work at, enough cupboard space, efficient placement of equipment, pale blue paint, and a phone corner, making it her office!
Doors and old cabinets removed, wallpaper gone, new dining room wall added!
The living room already had a big window looking out on the road, and Cyn’s beloved stone fireplace with chimney was added on to the outside wall. The children were quite taken with the novelty but having always lived with central heating, it did not have the same associations for them that it had for their mother!
The children each had a bedroom upstairs, with the roof and the gable windows making the walls slope inside, and they were promised that they would be allowed to choose the colour of the paint to cover up the hideous wallpaper. The basement was unfinished, with a concrete floor, a sump pump in one corner to deal with spring flooding threats, the furnace under the stairs, the washing machine and dryer that kind Dorothy Scott had included in the house price close by, and a remnant of the farmhouse origin- a cold room in one corner, insulated from the heated house, with wooden shelving for the jams and jellies and bins below with earth in, to bury the root vegetables for winter storage. Cec had his tools down there, (and added to them more farm remnants as they appeared from overgrown mounds in the neglected garden). There was lots of room for storage, a permanent table for Charlie’s train set, and all the boxes and extras that come with moving.
Grandparents and family out west approved!
Moving Day was March 1st, and the children’s Spring Break came a few weeks later so they could help more with the settling in and learn to climb the old apple tree in the back garden. They would miss the hollow down behind that flooded in spring, and the wide fields they had played in, but as the years passed the hollow was filled in, and the fields became covered with houses. Ottawa was expanding, and the move was an excellent choice. Altogether, an exciting time!
Our teachers were always confusing Janet and Linda- just because we both had glasses and braids?
December was always a time of preparation for Cyn. She sent out Christmas cards with names from Cec’s travels added, and lovely unusual cards arrived in return, along with the customary pictures of the children of their friends, some quite grown- the adorable flower girl from their wedding with two children of her own!
Cyn also had to get her Christmas parcels for friends and family overseas off as early as possible, and she needed to get ready for Charlie’s birthday and the Costain Christmas as well. Presents this year had been made easier by Cec’s travel- her ‘Presents Sent List’ shows that Cec’s sisters and mother all got ‘Japanese silk material’, with sisters-in-law Errol and Leona an ‘Indian Scarf’, while the men of the family got ivory trinkets, and nephew Bruce a ‘Toledo knife’.
Cec’s bowling sessions with the Lab. led to a Christmas present of his own bowling shoes from Charlie (size 12 shoes may have been hard to rent) and prompted the activity for Charlie’s birthday party: he and his friends went bowling with Cec, followed by a celebration afterwards.
December also had local invitations, a funeral, and the birth of a Pembleton baby- Cyn’s cousin in New York very happy about becoming a grandmother.
And while all this usual Christmas activity was going on, with baking and wrapping and decorating part of the family life, Cec and Cyn were planning a real change- renovating and then moving to their new house. Excitement for all in the New Year!
2043 Montreal Road, Ottawa 9, Ont. 21st Dec. 1962.
Dearest Mummy, What do you think that Cec and I are giving to each other for Christmas? A NEW HOUSE! Of course we have done it all in our usual slow deliberate fashion – thought it over carefully – discussed it for a long time – didn’t do anything in too much of a hurry, and took a whole week over it! Now, having given you the initial shock I can tell you all about it! First of all it is the house that Dorothy Scott’s father owned – he died in the spring of this year and left his property divided amongst Dorothy and her 2 sisters. They tried to sell the house all summer but had no luck and at last a few weeks ago Mrs. Scott told us that she had taken the house as her share of the estate and that she now had the deed herself, so that is when we began thinking about it. I don’t know if you remember the house – it was next to Ken’s place, but around the corner on the way to Fanni’s – it is a small white house and very neat and pretty from the outside – the type they call a Cape Cod house. Cec and I had always liked the look of it from the outside, and actually I had quite often thought that it was just a sort of place that I would like to have, but when Dot and Ken sold their house and went to live with Mr. Watt we saw the inside and got such a shock! Of course, Mr. Watt was an old man when he built it for himself and his wife and it was as he wanted it, but it seem to be all cut up into little rooms, full of great big old furniture, and it was quite a disappointment. In the summer when it was for sale Cec and I talked about it casually and wondered who would buy it and decided that whoever did it would have to spend quite a bit of money modernizing it and and what they could do to improve it, but all in an academic kind of way! Anyway, when Cec was away this summer, the Hansons next door in the old house sold it and moved away. Not that I regretted them much as neighbours but all along the highway here is zoned as commercial property and I began to wonder what on earth we would get beside us as the house is worth nothing – no plumbing or water or anything, and the land might be sold for a service station or goodness knows what. Then of course, Myrtle is always a thorn in the flesh, and I felt that she probably wouldn’t be able to stay out here by herself much longer and then something would be done with her house, so with one thing and another I began to feel that maybe we should begin to look around and see what other places in the area were like and prices etc. Cec and I talked it over when he came home, and he thinks that maybe I have been a bit restless since the accident, and perhaps unconsciously that has had something to do with it. Anyway we saw some advertisements of houses being built down by the river in Rothwell Heights, and they seemed quite good value, but neither of us were keen on going so far away from the school and buses etc. Then one Sat. evening we had Ken and Dott up to see Cec’s pictures of his trip and in the course of conversation Dot told us about having the house herself now, and also said that they had tried to sell it for 20,000 dollars in the summer and that she thought that this was too much and that she would be happy if she got 17,500 dollars for it. After they left Cec and I were sitting talking and he suddenly said “You know, instead of buying a house right down by the river, I would rather buy Mr. Watt’s house.” So we began talking about it and wondering and sat up till all hours of the morning discussing it and then went to bed and couldn’t sleep, and next day Cec phoned Dot and asked if we could come down and look at it. We looked over it and Dot gave us the blueprints of the house so we could see if it was possible to alter it into the kind of house we wanted, and we sat up most of that night and most of the nights that week drawing plans and putting stairs up here and pulling walls down there until we were exhausted! The biggest problem was that instead of the stairs going up opposite the front door from front to back as they usually do in that type of house, Mr. Watt had put them in sideways and not only did this take a big piece out of the size of the rooms downstairs but it meant that upstairs there was only one big nice room – the other room had the stairs coming right up into the middle of it and there was a big long passage around the stairs to the other bedroom. Then downstairs there was a little living room with 2 doors in it, and the dining room ran right into the kitchen and had no less than 4 doors in it counting the door to the basement and 2 outside doors. There is quite a big entrance hall, but no coat closet, just a big old hall stand, and actually the closets were very few – none upstairs and then each of the 2 downstairs bedrooms they were long and thin and just hooks – no rod for hangers, and a little thin linen closet so deep that you couldn’t reach. Well, after all our cogitating and drawing and many trials and errors Cec and I came up with the plan which I have drawn for you, which we think will solve all our problems! We are going to have the stairs reversed – i.e. from the hallway we will have the entrance down to the basement stairs, and we will have the stairs going up into the middle of the upstairs instead of to one end. On the plan I’ve shown by the dotted line where they come now, and how much space we will save when they are put the other way. That leaves two lovely big rooms upstairs – the ceilings slope at the side but they are light and nice and we will have closets built in. There is already a small washroom there with toilet and washbasin and we will have a nice linen closet in there. [I really wish I could see that plan, but it doesn’t exist now. There is a plan of her kitchen in the scrapbook, but the plan of whole house went to St. Vincent.] Now downstairs we will not only have the stairs reversed but moved along a bit to make the passage smaller and the dining room bigger, and then we will have a wall built between the kitchen and dining room with a sliding door between and the wall between the dining room and living room knocked down giving us a lovely big L-shaped room just about as big as the one we have here. Also – joy of joys – we are going to have a FIREPLACE put in! We will close up the one outside door, just leaving the one into the kitchen, and instead of having the stairs coming down into the dining room we have curved them around to come into the kitchen opposite the back door. The kitchen will be small but at present it hasn’t much in the way of cupboards or counter space – a big old kitchen dresser is there and so on, so we are going to have it all taken out and remodelled into a brand new modern kitchen for me. The refrigerator will be on one side with a nice long counter – low for me to work at! – and on the other side I will have the stove and sink with a window above and cupboards at the side. [Cyn was only 5 foot so if there was no room for a kitchen table, she needed a counter suitable for her own height.] There will be a small partition the height of the stove between it and the back door and I will have a little shelves on it for my spices etc. Now, what else – the two downstairs bedrooms are both nice big rooms, I think I have made the bathroom too big and the end bedroom too small on the plan but you will get the idea. That bedroom will make a nice study–spare room – all ready for grandparents! – and oh! what bliss to have a proper bathroom with a BATH. The front bedroom will be ours and it is about the same size as the one we have here. The only change we will make in it is in the closet. We are going to do away with the skinny linen closet and instead make us a long closet in the bedroom with sliding doors and a closet into the hall also with sliding doors to take coats. There is an acre of land, all the front nicely landscaped and with all sorts of nice old apple trees, and a big shade tree in the back, and a hillside left wild behind that – not nearly as deep and rough as here though. There is a garage for two cars and a porch and kind of covered veranda round to the back door, and we plan to enlarge this a bit and screen it in so we will have a lovely big screened porch. For all of this we are paying 17,500 dollars, and what do you think – Dot felt that maybe she was asking too much so she is throwing in a beautiful automatic washing machine and a dryer of her father’s as well! Of course all the alterations will cost us $2000, and we have a carpenter who has worked for Ken on his new house in Cumberland all ready to begin in the New Year. Now you will wonder where on earth we are going to get all this money – particularly as we haven’t even mentioned selling this house yet – we are a TWO HOUSE FAMILY! However, we will begin to try to sell this one in the New Year – the alterations will take about 6 weeks, so we don’t expect to move until nearly the end of Feb. and we really don’t own it until Jan. 5th although we were down at the lawyer’s office signing the deed today. Dot will hold our mortgage and we are paying her $1000 now and maybe another 1000 or more when we sell the house – she doesn’t mind if we don’t pay her any more as she looks on it as a source of income and will buy an annuity with it. The money for the alterations we borrow from the Gov. as a Home Improvement Loan from the Housing and Mortgage Corp. and we will pay this back when we sell this house too, so actually though we seem to be running around spending money like mad at the moment, we think we will be fine once we get it all settled. The children are so funny – at first they were horrified at the thought of moving, and didn’t ever want to leave this house. Then, when they went down and explored the big garden down there and found all sorts of exciting places to play they began to get quite thrilled, and now they’re all ready and set to go! They still can’t imagine themselves living in the house I don’t think and I must say that I am the same – up here when we plan and draw out the rooms etc. I can visualize it all beautifully, but when I go down there and see it and all the rooms full of furniture I can’t believe it is true! We will take some ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures so that you will be able to see what it is all about, but I hope that you will be able to make out most of it from all my elaborate drawings! This is our big New Year’s Surprise for you, and I haven’t managed to write about anything else, but I was waiting till it was all signed and sealed before breaking the news! I will write about other things in my next, but this letter is really a fat one already, and I really can’t think of anything but House! We all send big hugs and kisses and all our good wishes for a Very Happy New Year for both you and Auntie Muriel. With much love from us all – Cyn
Sadly, this is the last letter we have until 1966! I am glad it exists because this was a big change in the Costain household, but I am sorry to only have a few pictures in a scrapbook to cover the new house, the alterations, the move, and the changes in the years that follow. It is the small details of daily life that I think make Cyn’s letters worth reading, but I will cover the missing years briefly and we will join her again in four years.
I am also sorry to be having technical difficulties at the moment that prevent me from being able to publish any pictures at all, which is why the usual documentation and photos are missing. I hope to be able to add them later, but until then there will be a brief pause!
November is not a great month for camping but it appears that Charlie’s Cub Group (the younger division of Boy Scouts) had a cookout one weekend.
Cec preferred indoor activities, and went bowling with his colleagues from the Lab.
The Costains no doubt sent best wishes and congratulations to Santiago Polo on the occasion of his wedding, and probably some of his friends from the Lab in Ottawa attended.
However, for the Costains, the main event in November seems to have been preparing for the Public Speaking Contest at the school. Both children incorporated some personal connection into their speech based on the gifts Cec had brought home from his trip, but most of the speech was informative and factual. Cyn typed their efforts but at this level, there was less input from her. The speeches were given in class, then the best competed within the school. Linda made a case for reading being her favourite hobby, and ended her speech on ‘Hobbies’ with this paragraph. “Most boys and girls have at least one hobby. I collect postcards, small china figures and dolls of all nations, and I learn a great deal every day through my favourite hobby, reading. One of these might lead to my life work and anyway I will get a great deal of pleasure from them.” This speech went no farther (probably to her relief), but Charlie was once again one of the 7 contestants in the Intermediate Level with his telescope speech.
After touching on the history of telescopes with Galileo and Newton, he went on to explain that Newtonian telescopes like his were based on mirrors, and gave details about the biggest in the world at Mount Palomar, then returned to his personal experience. “It is rather unfortunate that at first when I got my telescope, it turned cloudy. Instead of looking at the sky, I have had to look at other things. I can see the Uplands Airport radar tower about 5 miles away and I can watch it turning around with an occasional flash as a plane comes down. I can also see birds in perfect detail on the telephone line if they would only stay in one place. The magnification of the telescope is 126 so if a bird is 126 feet away, it appears to be only 1 foot away from your eye. I have also been looking at the sun, and for this I put a special sun glass in the lens.” He goes on to describe and explain sun spots, then his observations of Jupiter and Saturn once there was a clear night. He finished with “I don’t know much about astronomy yet but it is very exciting to look and to learn.”
This time, Charlie won the Intermediate Contest, and got a letter of appreciation from the Fairfield School District Association, as well as a page of the scrapbook devoted to it. The typed copy probably was sent to Carol in the West Indies, but the rough copy survives.
As a teacher (my life work?), the adult Linda found looking at the children’s work at the Grade 6 and 7 level an indication of future direction. I believe Linda’s ‘Hobby’ topic had met some opposition when she stated that her hobby was reading books. Her speech carefully defines the different sorts of hobbies- Collecting, Crafts, Activities- and in the latter category, which she explains as doing things for relaxation, she lumps all sports (which she was not at all interested in) with bird-watching, gardening, and, in her case, reading. It was an argument which she made sure to win, presaging her interest in debating in high school and her future success in essay writing and exams at all levels- not to mention the collecting of a library of over five thousand books.
Charlie’s speech shows his interest in science, and illustrates clearly the technical points as well as personal observations made with his telescope. And I believe at this point, the Costains started to plan their 1963 summer holiday, when there would be a total eclipse of the sun, best seen from the province of Quebec with a telescope …
Cec’s wartime experience of India had not allowed for travelling within the country. This time, after his stay at the university in Mumbai, he visited colleagues in the north, in Banaras (Varanasi), and after that, the Observatory in Nainital where Dr. Pant, who had worked with Herzberg at the N.R.C. earlier in the 60s, and whom I expect Cec had met at the Spectroscopy Conferences in Columbus, or even the symposium in Japan, gave him the opportunity to see the Himalayas in the distance when the clouds allowed.
Another picture shows the Yamuna or Ganges River up close, as if Cec was looking at the 16th century Allahabad Fort from the water.
He must have made a side trip from New Delhi to see the Taj Mahal, since his slides of the outside were foreshadowed by postcards to Linda and Charlie showing the detail of the inside that interested him. The children had a multi-volume children’s encyclopedia, so would have been able to look up the places of interest, but Cec added more facts rather than personal details! On the back of the Taj Mahal PC to Linda: “Dear Linda, Here are the actual tombs seen thru the arch in Charlie’s card. The flowers are semi-precious stones inlaid 1/2” deep in the marble. The tombs themselves are each from one piece of marble. Love Daddy.”
He also did a lot of shopping: Linda got another 2 dolls out of the visit to India, magnificent male and female Indian dolls, and Cyn silk saris and scarves- material for future sewing projects.
Cec left for Europe October 13th., stopped briefly in Italy and Spain (another doll, more PCs), and arrived home in Ottawa October 21st. On the postcard of Venice addressed to Master Charles Costain he writes: “17/10/62. Typical sight along the Grand Canal, the homes of nobles & princes of the Middle Ages. The canal has lots of traffic, gondolas, water taxis, & continuous ferry or ‘bus’ service. Tell Mummy the food was wonderful. See you soon- maybe before you get this. Love Daddy.”
Having Cec home again was reason enough for celebration, but getting presents is always fun. There was a lot of loot in his luggage- no Declaration Forms were preserved- but Cyn must have collected the telescope that had been shipped from Japan at Canadian Customs earlier that month while the children were at school, and kept it until Cec returned, because Charlie remembers that Cec’s help was needed to put it all together.
Later that Fall, Charlie made a speech about My Telescope where he describes what happened. “When my father goes away on a trip, he usually brings back a present. This year he went to Japan and India, and when he got home, he produced a huge box, nothing like I expected. I went to work unwrapping the parcel, and found a long wide tube with a mirror in the bottom. We put the pieces together. What a surprise- a telescope, for looking at the stars…”
Of course, life went back to normal now that everyone was in their proper place. Cec was glad to be home and back at work in the Lab. Among the younger scientists at the NRC, there was a spate of weddings. Dr. Hin Lu, on the permanent staff in the Physics Division, had married Marion in October, before Cec got home. In November, the wedding of the Spanish Post-Doc. Fellow, Santiago, would happen in the States, and the South African George Ritter’s wedding was planned for the new year in Ottawa. Cyn and Cec started having late night discussions that would bear fruit by Christmas, and the children incorporated their father’s travels into their November Public Speaking assignments.
September was a busy month. Cec left for Tokyo on August 31st, Labour Day was the following Monday, and the children started school the next day, Charlie in Grade 6, Linda in Grade 7 with Mr Lumsden, her first male teacher.
Cyn must have been working with her fellow Guild members on their fashion show, which was the following week- having arranged the clothes with the shops that were lending them, they needed to fit them to the ‘models’ and rehearse them on the raised catwalk that couldn’t have been built until after that Sunday’s service (the Church Hall being a multi-purpose structure that could host an audience with the altar area curtained off.)
Linda was one of the girls wearing ‘Back To School’ outfits- throughout the 60s in my experience, girls were not allowed to wear trousers to school- and later in the show, Winter Wear, with a jacket I remember as being a very strange colour- a deep purple, most unusual in those days, which I think they paired with pumpkin coloured pants, which would never have been my choice!.
Later Cyn got nice pictures of me doing this, but the newspaper clipping shows the adults and youngest model, and with 300 people attending, the Ladies Guild probably regarded this as a successful fundraiser. Unlike Cyn’s Cookery Demonstrations, however, the fashion show was not repeated.
Meanwhile Cec, having enjoyed the “soothing comfort” and “personal attention” of a flight over the Pacific (which led him to swear he would never do it again until he could travel First Class with room for his legs), was welcomed in Tokyo with his colleagues, especially Dr. Herzberg his boss, to the International Symposium on Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy with a photo op.
Papers and presentations followed but their hosts also arranged many sightseeing opportunities which Cec enjoyed.
One of the things Cec did in Tokyo was to buy Charlie a telescope and arrange to have it shipped to Ottawa. He bought a Japanese doll with 6 different wigs for Linda’s international doll collection, and pearl earrings for Cyn.
In mid-September Cec moved on to India for a month, to fulfill his commitments there. He visited Mumbai, New Delhi, and Varanasi, visiting former N.R.C. Fellows and meeting other scientists. At home, post cards arrived!
I can’t help thinking that August 1962 must have been rather busy for the Costain family. They returned home from their July holiday- American cottage, with hard work at the university for Cec; Stratford plays; and visits to relatives- and immediately began preparing for activity in September. Cec was going on a trip to Japan, India, and Europe for September and most of October, with a paper to give at the symposium to get ready, travel details to finalize, and work in his Lab to organize during his absence.
Cyn had to resume ordinary home life while cleaning up from a month lived out of suitcases, and her Ladies Guild had an ambitious fashion show planned for September that must have taken a lot of preliminary organizing.
The children, however, having had swimming lessons in June, and enjoyed putting them to use at the cottage in July, now had a month to enjoy their vacation before school started. The Klemans, the Swedish family who had house-and-cat-sat during July, invited the family up to their rented cottage one weekend for more water fun.
And Linda celebrated her eleventh birthday- more organizing for Cyn. It seems to have been a low key outing- Linda and 2 friends, Pamela and Joanne, went with Charlie and met some ponies! I assume there was a celebratory birthday cake and meal, and that Carol sent a parcel ‘from Grannie’ as usual to join the family presents.
In Ottawa, the Central Canada Exhibition was- is?- an August feature, and the Costains attended, for the usual combination of ferris wheel rides, farm animal and produce competitions, fairway food of cotton candy and corn dogs, and the grandstand show in the evening.
George Gobel was a comedian well known from American television. Of course, the Costains didn’t have a TV at this point…
Then by the end of the month Cyn and Cec would have been focused on getting the children ready for school, Cec ready for travel, and the whole family prepared for a rather long time without Daddy, waving goodbye to him at the airport on the 31st.
This is the second half of Cyn’s letter to Carol from their Michigan holiday cottage. She has brought all her mother’s letters with her and is catching up on answering her questions. The first thing she seems to be dealing with is a compliment, because Carol seems to be asking her to make a hat to match a wedding outfit- which unfortunately is hard to do when you are isolated in cottage country without a car! Carol, living on an island with limited shopping opportunities, (just like I do now) often has commissions for Cyn to fulfill- mostly batteries for her hearing aids, but sometimes things more difficult to find. However, Cyn discusses friends and relatives they both have been writing about, alludes to unknown people and events, gives her opinions about divorce, and lays out plans for family celebrations- as well as that night’s dinner!
… I just opened your last letter to answer it and Lindy saw the piece of material of your dress and thinks that it is very pretty. I don’t know if I will have much luck with getting flowers or a shape here – with being so far from Ann Arbor I haven’t had a chance to even look at the shops there yet and if I wait till I get home I don’t know if it will be in time for the wedding. I had thought that I might go into Detroit for a day’s shopping and Mary Jo and I had discussed my leaving the children at her house for Jody to look after one day and she and I going for a day, but what with Lindy and Cec not being well, and the difficulty of planning with all her big family, we haven’t said anything more and I think I will content myself with shopping in Ann Arbor when we are in there at the Motel. Cec and I have suddenly remembered that it is our 13th wedding anniversary on Thursday – with being away from home the days are all muddled up – but I think we will just have a nice dinner here at the cottage and then have a dinner out at the weekend when we would be eating in a restaurant anyway. One day when we were in Ann Arbor we had lunch at The Pancake House – they serve all sorts of pancakes and waffles and on the table there is a whole assortment of syrups and fruits to go on them and you can just help yourselves! Anyway, to return to our wedding anniversary, we plan to get ourselves an electric frying pan – everyone who has one says they are a wonderful help, so I thought I would like one and as they cost much less down here it would be nice to get it for our anniversary. Of course thanks to old Diefenbaker and his monetary policy our dollar is at a discount now and we only get 92¢ for each dollar! You asking your letter about Til and Lois – Til is your age I think and she retired a few years ago, but Lois is much younger and she is Physical Education Supervisor for the city of Toledo now and is doing a wonderful job. You also ask about the trip down and how Charlie got on – he seems to be getting over the car sickness now and I didn’t give him any pills this time. When we went down to Merle’s at Easter he felt queasy once or twice so I gave them to him then, but he gets so dopey and sleepy for such a long time if he takes them and he loses his appetite too, so that the trip is no fun for him. However this time he was O.K. – I think it is just if he is too hot or too tired or too excited that it sets him off. I know perfectly well that Cec would pour scorn on the chain idea and wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. Anyway can you imagine the jangle jangle all the time and how nerve-wracking it would be? Charlie, by the way stays in the water for hours now with no ill effects at all – mind you, the water is shallow and very nice and warm most of the time but isn’t it a change? You will be getting all excited about the Consecration of your Bishop on Wed. and I hope your tickets for the cathedral have arrived. I certainly think you and A. Muriel should have tickets if anyone does. I am glad that your Plant Sale was a success and that the rain held off at the crucial moment. I hope that it will do the same on Wed. and not wash all the clergy out to sea! I am glad that the batteries arrived quickly and I hope that Ena’s mother tries it anyway. I hope that the white dress will appear soon and that you will find it useful. I was thinking of suggesting that you wear some red with the white dress, but I can’t say that I think a big red hat like Peggy’s would be your style! I can’t somehow imagine Peggy in it either, particularly if her dress is red too, but red never was a favourite colour of mine anyway. By now I wonder if Peggy has had her baby – I am sure that she will be very glad to have it over and I hope that they get the boy that they are wanting. I have got a box of funny cocktail napkins for her which I will send in a parcel to you sometime. They are cartoons of a little ‘embryo’ baby called Egbert which I thought would be appropriate to Peggy at the moment and would amuse her. A. Muriel will think they are rather disgusting and I will admit that they are very indelicate, but also very funny!
We were very pleased to hear of Hugh and Ginny’s Coming Event and hope that all goes well and that they don’t produce twins too! A pity little Mona has such trouble adding to her family when she is so keen, but they have a lot of time yet. I am now answering another of your old letters and I find another question about the children’s swimming, so forgive me if I go back to it once more. You ask if the children always went to the Château for swimming lessons, but last year they both went to the YWCA which just has a small swimming pool and it’s over near where we went to that Lab. to have your blood tests etc. done. Those lessons were in classes of about 12 children or so and although they were good in that they taught the children to get used to the water and so on, the lessons at the Château are much better as the man gives them individual lessons and is very good with them. It costs a lot more too, $15 for 10 lessons (I had Lindy and Charlie share 5 lessons each), but it costs $.50 just to go in for a swim or 1 dollar after 4 o’clock for children, so it isn’t really too bad, and as I say the man is very good. The swimming pool is lovely with the most luxurious balcony for us mamas to sit and deck chairs with sun lamps etc. around the pool. I wouldn’t mind having a swim there myself but I was always busy rushing out and putting money in the parking metre and doing the odd bit of shopping. Also I am a Pudding in my bathing suit now! You asked if I heard from Hugh and Lee Brown this Christmas and yes, we did. They are still in the States – in Washington I think – and the note was mostly about Jim, their son, who is through Harvard now and has gone into the Army also. [They had met Hugh when the Americans were posted to Newcastle during the war.] You were asking about snaps, but I don’t think that I have any more of last summer. We had some at Christmas and when I get home I will see if I can find them and get some prints. Linda and Charlie both have their cameras here, but they don’t take pictures of each other much. Lindy was a page in her Ballet Recital this year and had black tights, a royal blue tunic white blouse and big blue beret-style hat with a yellow feather. We didn’t take a picture, I don’t think but maybe when we get home she would like to dress up one day and we will get some snaps. You were asking about Lindy’s birthday in your letter but I think that by the time you get this you will probably have done without my help. She isn’t too keen on material – you know it is hard for her to be enthusiastic over something she can’t put on right away, and I am afraid Mamma is not very quick about making it up. She would love a book I know, but it is hard to know what she has read. She has read most of the Children’s Classics by now, but she is very keen on all sorts of girls school stories, or girls annuals or that type of thing. Do you remember my Chalet School stories? She just loves those, so I know would be very happy with something in that line. I don’t know if sometime you would like to send her a little writing case – one of those small ones with a zip around. Not that she writes many letters but she is at the age where something like that appeals I think. I don’t know if sometime you might like to send the children a subscription to an English children’s monthly magazine. Mind you, I don’t know if if there is such a thing, but I thought some of the English people you know might know something about them, and I know the children would enjoy it. Til and Lois send them the Children’s Digest and they get a big kick out of getting it each month. Thank you for telling me the latest news about my Father. I am glad that he is so much better than the last report and as you say it is a big relief to have kind Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie there to tell you the real truth. When you write please remember me to them – I always meant to write, but I don’t think that I ever did. You ask about our croton plant – well the poor thing, the Canadian sun just about finished it! Just after we put it out we had a very hot dry spell, and although I tried to water it a bit it just collapsed entirely, and all the leaves fell off! I thought that it was finished but we had some good rain storms during June and just before we left we saw some little sprouts showing, so perhaps by the time we come home it will be all leafy again. Do you remember my patience flowers [Impatiens] which I had in the house and then put out along the wall at the back of the house? They were an orangy-red colour, and then in Greenfield Village in one of the gardens I saw a whole bed of every colour imaginable – my salmon pink, purple, magenta, ordinary pink, white, and even a white with some pink shading. I would have loved to take a few surreptitiously cuttings and put them in my bag and bring them home! You were asking about our Rector, Mr. Pulker the other day. He is very nice, but he is so different to Mr. Bowen that it is funny. He doesn’t have any of Mr. Bowen’s friendly charm – in fact he is one of those people who is very difficult to get to know – and unlike Mr. Bowen he doesn’t preach much of a sermon, but he does keep it short! Not that Mr. B’s were long, but he was so good that you had to listen to his sermons whereas Mr. P.’s you sometimes have to make yourself listen to his sermon! Also Mr. Bowen was very impractical and couldn’t care less about the business side of the church and also thought women’s organizations were so much waste of time, whereas Mr. Pulker is very practical and businesslike and is most interested and helpful with the Guild. He is much easier to work with for me and has really taken a big interest in the Guild and although he is not one for playing fulsome compliments he says he thinks that the Guild has excellent leadership. [Cyn is President.] The biggest contrast is his wife – she is a little dark woman full of high spirits and very down to earth and talk about tact – she doesn’t know what the word means! She says what she thinks and if she puts her big fat foot in it, it is just too bad! At first we were all rather amazed, but she is very likeable and we all like them both now. They are very hard workers, and have been to all our meetings and Mrs. P. has sung in the Choir and has begun a Children’s Choir. We hear that she is to teach the Singing at Fairfield School this year and we are very pleased as she is very good we think, and Linda who had her in the Junior Choir likes her very much. In one of your last letters you enclosed a blank check, but you didn’t say anything about what you wanted me to do with it so I will keep it until you write and tell me what you want – don’t forget. [In handwriting at the bottom of the page with an arrow: Is it for your shoes? Must tell me the number etc.] I don’t think that I have ever remarked on the news you sent me about Bebe’s impending divorce, although Cec and I had a good talk over it. I am very sorry as from what you say he seems a very nice person, but both Cec and I think living so close to Marie and so much in her pocket would be enough to send any man crazy. I can’t help feeling that Bebe was asking for it particularly if he didn’t care about horses and she was so mad over them, but it is a big pity because I can’t see how the little boys will be able to grow up normally with a grandmother like Marie and no Father to counteract. Then there was the news of Hazell Ann and her love-life and I must say that it seems a great pity for the poor girl. Of course I am amazed how her mother and grandmother pass all the poor child’s affairs around to the whole family, while it seems to me that the less said the better, but I suppose that is how it is. I can’t help but think that broken marriages breed more – here is Uncle Fred and Aunt Mil, then Jean and Dick, and now their daughter running into the inverse side of the same trouble. The same thing is happening with Til’s son Bill – his son by his first marriage is in the U.S. Army in Germany – married some little High School girl he had just met, they had a baby and now they are separated. It seems to me that the child of a broken home must unconsciously not feel the same about marriage because the same thing seems to happen to them so often. I have always meant to mention your dress size, as you said Monie was telling you to get a half size as they were shorter waisted, but I don’t think they will suit you very well as they are made for little fat women! Even I tried on one and as it had a straight skirt the skirt fitted over my fat seat fine, but the shoulders were much too broad and the bosom just sagged! You will have to see how this house dress Monie sent you fits, but I think it is easier for you to get a 12 and alter the waist than to have to begin bothering about shoulders and bosom. I have just been out to the kitchen and discover to my horror that it is nearly 5 o’clock. It has been dull and rainy and thundery all day and I have just sat and read your letters and typed all day long! My fingers are quite sore so I had better stop and get some dinner ready. I did get some lunch but Charlie washed the breakfast dishes and Lindy the lunch dishes so apart from making the beds I have spent all day writing to you – this is to make up for all the times I should have written and didn’t! It looks as if we are going to have our little wood stove going tonight but that is rather fun and keeps us all occupied! Pete and Mary Jo lent us a small outdoor barbecue so we have cooked quite a lot of our dinners outside and it has been quite fun – we even graduated from hot dogs and hamburgers to chicken and spareribs and Cec says that he is getting used to that burnt charcoal flavour! Must stop – the children send big hugs and love – love to A. Muriel from us all. Is Doris back from her holiday yet? Hope that she had a nice rest. Lots of love from Cyn.
P. S. Had a letter from Jane the other day telling me of my godson’s confirmation- feel I must do something about it but don’t know what. You asked about Linda – don’t know if she will be confirmed this coming year or not – some Rectors like to confirm them very young & some like to wait until they are in their teens, so I think Lindy could easily wait till she is 12.
And I did: December 1963 !
The holiday ended with the return to Canada and fun for the Costains in Stratford, seeing a Shakespeae Play and G.& S.’s Gondoliers, before visiting their favourite relatives in Brantford. Back home, ordinary life started up again with Linda’s birthday in August, and Cyn’s Guild activities and the school Fall Term. There are no letters to cover this period, but photos of the highlights will have to do.
I have divided this letter into two because it is so long and deals with quite separate matters- the Costains on their Michigan holiday, and then Cyn answering her mother’s questions of the last few months of letters which she has saved up. (I shall put the pictures of the end of their holiday with the second half, since there are no letters to follow to explain how it went.) But before the letter, here is a quick review of Cyn’s life already covered by letters from the post-war years 1946- 1951, to explain some of the American friends the letter mentions. Towards the end of the war, Cyn had changed teaching jobs and left her parents’ house in Newcastle where she had been stuck for the war years, and moved south to Cambridge. She enjoyed living independently and in 1946 took on a greater adventure by being part of a teacher exchange between American and British teachers designed to foster greater co-operation in the English-Speaking Union. Cyn was sent to Toledo, Ohio, where she taught high school Home Economics for a year, and also spoke to clubs and meetings, very successfully, about whatever aspects of British life her hosts or hostesses wished to hear! She was lucky enough to find a very happy home that year boarding with two other teachers, Til and Lois, who involved her with their families- Til’s adult son Bill, Lois’ sisters who lived locally- and took her with them on holiday with other relatives so that she saw a bit more of America. Her enjoyment of that year comes through in her letters home to Carol, but she was also happy to return to Cambridge for the following school year, where her mother joined her. They both met Cec who was doing his PhD. there, and Cec and Cyn married in 1949, with the intention of following Cec’s professor, Dr. Gordon Sutherland, to the University of Michigan for a couple of years before settling in Canada. Their stay in Ann Arbor was part of a transitory community- graduate students like Cec finishing and moving on, Cyn’s fellow workers at the University marrying or having babies and stopping work- but they were able to keep in touch with the ones who worked at the university and with Til and Lois, and made friends within academic circles that persisted as careers took off and families grew and grew up, because they met up over the years at conferences or during temporary work arrangements, such as Cec’s months work at the University of Michigan in July 1962. Back when the children were 3 and 4, the Costains had visited the States just as the Sutherlands were moving back to England, and also had stayed with Til and Lois while Cec attended the Spectroscopy Conference in Columbus, so it is not surprising that their friends thought Linda and Charlie had changed in the 6 years since then!
Portage Lake, Pinkney Michigan.
23 July, 1962.
Dearest Mamma, Here I am sitting on the porch typing away – it is Monday morning and it is quite grey and cloudy and looks as if it is going to be a storm and we can hear thunder rumbling around in the distance. We have had quite a lot of thunderstorms in the last few days but they are not as spectacular as the Ottawa Valley ones and they pass over very quickly, but the weather has been very changeable. Charlie has been having fun with a boy who lives a few cottages down. They have been getting bait for fishing, looking under stones for ‘crawdads’ and catching little minnows and catfish with a little net. Now he has gone home and some little girls from the next cottage have come over and Linda is sitting on the steps colouring books with them. The neighbours are very nice and friendly – I think I told you we had a nice family with a little 5 year old boy in the cottage next to us. Well, they were here for 2 weeks and were extremely kind and took me shopping into Pinckney etc., then we now have another family with 3 little girls – Kathy 8, Susie 5, and Carol 4, and they have a baby boy, Billy 1. Besides the mother and father there is a Grannie and Grandpa so they have quite a family not to mention all sorts of relatives with lots of children every few days, but they are nice too and have offered to take me shopping etc. The father is a great fisherman and goes out night and day, but he doesn’t have much luck – Cec and Charlie have been out a few times but they don’t do much either – Charlie caught a little one but put it back as it was so small! On the other side the cottage is owned by a man and his family from Ann Arbor, so they were only out for a few hours at a time to begin with but last week they came out for a while and we have had a few chats with them. They only have one boy of 14 and he is always dashing around in one of their two motor boats – the father took us out for a ride in one on Sat. and we went all around the lake and saw parts we didn’t know existed. It was quite blowy and we bounced around and got water splashed on us much to Charlie’s amusement! The thunder is really on top of us now and it is pouring, so the children have moved in and are colouring happily. It is nice that there is someone to play with as Linda has run out of her stock of books and Charlie is getting bored with Patience! Cec has begun to teach them to play Bridge but as he is in at the University all day we can’t do as we did at Mill and Ford’s camp and play all day. Since I last wrote the time seems to have melted away and we can hardly believe that this is our last week here. We will leave here on Sat. morning but Cec thinks he will need a few more days at the University so we will probably go to a Motel until Tues. morning and then go straight to Stratford as we see ‘The Tempest’ on the Tues. night. On Wed. we see the matinee of ‘The Gondoliers’ and then we will go and spend that night with Merle and a couple of days in Toronto and home on Friday. The Klemans go to a cottage for two weeks. We had a letter from Gudrun and all goes well at 2043 Montreal Rd. and Nicki seems quite happy and is presenting them with dead mice as usual! Thank you so much for your letters which Gudrun forwarded to me and also for the one which you sent to the Physics Dept. here. I was so sorry to hear about your poor little dog being killed. I know how much you will miss him and how sad you would feel to have him killed so suddenly when he was still so young and enjoying life. I hope that after a while that you will get another puppy for companionship and also as it is so useful for you to have a watchdog. At first though I know you can’t bear the thought of having one for a while. We are surrounded with dogs here and the favourite is a great big Basset Hound called Shorty. His legs are so small that he practically touches the ground but he is as solid as a rock and weighs about as much as I do. To see Charlie trying to move him is quite a sight, but he is very good-natured and doesn’t seem to mind how much he is pushed and shoved! Not long after I last wrote we had some bad luck. Linda got a sore throat and an ear infection, and so she hasn’t been able to have as much fun in the water as the first week. She had one really bad night of earache and the next day I kept her in bed here on the porch and gave her aspirins etc. and after that she didn’t seem ill although the ear was still aching a little, so we let her get in the water but not put her head under (she wears a cap and protector band of towelling underneath but still her hair gets wet) and that was all right until suddenly last week it began to ache again, so she was out of the water for a couple more days and is so disgusted over it. It seems nearly better now so maybe she could go in for a little today, but it is such a pity as she loves the water so much and had such a wonderful time in it. Just after Linda’s ear ache began poor Cec woke up one morning with an eye infection and all his left eye swollen up. He gets this every so often if you remember and if he doesn’t do something about it, at once it spreads to his other eye, so he went to Pete’s Dr in Ann Arbor and got various drops etc. but it wasn’t until he gave him some antibiotics that it cleared up. Told him he was working too hard and should have a rest. He seems quite all right now, but the weekend before last he was feeling pretty miserable. Charlie and I have kept well and full of high spirits, and it is really lovely to see Charlie so well and happy. He is so good-natured and helpful and sunny and he has such a wonderful time in the water now – you wouldn’t recognize the boy who sees how long he can swim underwater and dives through my legs etc. as the little fellow you used to know! We have been socializing a little bit as well as swimming around in our lake, and the first time we went out was to Mary and Arthur Dockrill’s for dinner. They have a nice new house in a new suburb of Ann Arbor, but not just a field with a lot of little houses in it but all trees, and winding roads and little hills etc. very pretty. Arthur is a real wizard with his hands you know, and he has fixed up their basement beautifully and they have everything very nice. Their one little girl Jill, is 4, and she is a little pet. She is small and has two little brown pigtails and speaks in a very English way in a funny little high voice. Linda loved her and both the children were fascinated because she had just about every toy going – Charlie said “I think Jill has everything!” We had a nice dinner and a really pleasant time, but we haven’t seen them since as they were going on their holiday at the end of that week. They had a Volkswagen bus like Hugh and Ginny and Arthur had fixed it up like a caravan with bunks etc. and they were going up into the Upper Michigan Peninsula. Last week our big excitement was that we had a letter from Til saying that they would come up on the Wed. so we were very pleased. They arrived just after lunch – Til and Lois, Lois’ sister Ruth and the granddaughter from Florida, Cathie. Til and Lois and Ruth all look just the same and we had a wonderful time catching up on all the news of people I knew. They said I looked the same too and I said “Fatter though!” but they were kind! They were amazed at how the children had grown, but Cathie who is 11, made them look like little shrimps! She is a really big girl – big bones and then quite chubby too, and I think Til had quite intimidated her by telling her not to be wild and hoydenish as Linda and Charlie were so well behaved! All the Americans think Linda and Charlie are so good! However, after Cathie had got over her alarm she and the children had a good time in the water, and although she is full of bounce and quite exuberant she is not sophisticated and blasé which poor Til and Lois were quite worried about. But poor kid, what a life she leads – the mother is apparently no good and her own parents threw her out when she walked out on Bill, but fortunately the grandparents have Cathie most of the time, and they are nice people, but the little girl is chopped and changed from one to the other. Of course I was very interested to hear what they all thought about Bill’s marriage to Lois and Ruth’s sister Mary, because they all thought so much of Mary and so little of Bill – even Tilda, his mother! – but apparently although they were all shattered to begin with and tried in all ways to talk Mary out of it, she went ahead and married him and they are very happy – in fact, according to Til they are so in love it is rather nauseating! Cec and I roared as this is such a Til-ish remark. Cec came home a bit early from the University so he had a chance to chat too, and they brought all sorts of things to eat, so I had very little to do. They told me in the letter that they would bring corn and a ham, so I had rolls and made a potato salad and bought a coconut cake and had raspberries and cream, but they brought no less than 3 doz. ears of corn and two huge melons as well as the ham and jars of applesauce etc. so we had quite a feast. Til is taking Cathie down to see C’Zelma’s in Kentucky for a while this week so we won’t see them again but it was such fun to get the chance of meeting once more and we had as good a time as ever!
Do you remember when I was in Toledo some of the teachers took me on a trip one day up to Dearborn, near Detroit where we went to a museum which Henry Ford had made, and while we were there we saw him? He was in a wheelchair going around his museum, and he actually died not many months later, but I was always pleased that I had seen such a famous person. Anyway as well as this museum there is a Village – Greenfield Village, in which Ford collected and had set up the homes of all sorts of famous American people as well as all sorts of little shops and crafts which they used to have in the pioneer days. Thomas Edison was one of his best friends, and he has the house he was born in and all the original furniture and then all Edison’s Lab. and also the same for the Wright brothers and Stephen Foster and all sorts of other famous Americans as well as the house he himself was born in. It is all set out like a little old-fashioned village with brick streets and sidewalks and horsedrawn carriages and ducks and geese and peacocks wandering about, and a windmill and a forge with a blacksmith and beautiful old trees and lovely gardens for all the houses. I forgot to say that Mary Jo took us – we went into Ann Arbor with Cec in the morning on Friday and he dropped us off at the Peters’ house and then after a while everyone was collected and we set off in their station wagon. One of their boys was at camp, but there was Mary Jo and me, Linda and Charlie, Jody and Helen each with a girl of the same age, Vinnie and Terry – 10 of us! Mary Jo and the older girls have been before but none of the rest, so it was great fun, and it was a grey dullish day inclined to rain so we weren’t sorry to leave the cottage. We got there around 11, and they give you a map telling you which each house is and suggesting a route, and then in each place they have a girl who tells you some of the history of that particular house and shows you around. We were lucky and got ahead of the main crowd, but actually it is so big that you never feel you are in a mass of people. We had lunch in the Village Inn and we were amused as they said something about old-style American food, and it was cafeteria style and we had things like tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips! There was an old village shop and postoffice, and the children loved the forge where the blacksmith was making horseshoes and rings out of horseshoe nails! We also saw a silk mill with silk worms, a pottery and a glass blowing place, but during this time it had been getting very dark and thundery and suddenly it began to pour and we had to make a rush for the nearest building. This turned out to be a very dreary place with a lot of machinery in it so after staying there about 20 minutes or so while it poured down we decided to try and dash for the next building and of course we all got soaking wet! Eventually they sent around buses to take people back to the main gate, and as it was after 4 and we were all wet we decided to give the museum a miss and go home. We went back to the Peters’ house and Pete and Cec came and we had dinner there and eventually got home around 9 o’clock – we were tired!
Linda got some dry shoes and socks at the Peters that night, but yesterday she did better still. Dr. and Mrs. Hecht from the Physics Dept. live quite near here, in fact he is the one who helped Cec get this cottage and he has been very kind about driving Cec in once in a while to let me have the car. Yesterday they invited us to dinner and came over around 3 to show us the way. They live in a most fascinating house away off in the woods. A man had this as his summer place previously and built up the land around which a little river loops, and then built a bridge, cleared the undergrowth, built the house and made beautiful stone fireplaces inside the cottage and outside for outdoor meals and even dammed the little river to make a swimming pool in one place. The Hechts live there all year round and love it, and have added a furnace and a few improvements, but are thinking they must move into Ann Arbor soon as their little girl Liz, is six and they have the school problem. It wasn’t a good day for us to see it as it was quite dull and thundering and rainy which made it very dark with all the trees around, but it cleared up enough for Ted and Cec to cook our steaks on the outside fireplace although we ate inside – the mosquitoes were wicked. While this was going on Linda and Liz went to the little river where Liz had a small plastic boat and after a little while what should appear but two dripping wet little girls – the boat had tipped up and landed them in the water! They were both giggling and we couldn’t help laughing as they looked so funny but they were well and truly soaked. Fortunately, with a squeeze Linda could get into some of Liz’s clothes, and we had brought her an extra pair of shoes along, so she was all right, but we are making quite a collection of clothes here. I laughed at Lindy afterwards, she said to me with a funny little grin, “My dignity was hurt!” This reminds me of a remark of Charlie’s that amused me – not long after we got here one day we were all sitting on the porch reading except Charlie, and he kept making remarks until finally Cec said “Why don’t you stop chatting and get something to read?” at which Charlie replied “Oh I pride myself on being a brilliant conversationalist you know!” Apparently this is a quotation from one of his comics, but the way he brought it out just made us roar with laughter. This week I don’t know if we will be doing anything much – I wrote to Mrs. Pasquier in Toledo and told her we were here and asked if she and her husband could come up one day, but they might be away for all I know, or they might not care for such a long drive. We usually have the car one day each week and we go into Dexter to the Coinwash and into Ann Arbor to the Library and any other shopping. The Peters lent us their Library tickets so we have been doing quite well, but Linda of course finishes her 4 books in the first day or so, but she doesn’t get them changed for a week. There is an ironing board here and I brought my old electric iron so I am able to do the ironing as usual – lovely!
A Family History in Letters 