I can say with pointed certainty that I don't expect anything significantly historical to come of any of these letters and the tediousness of scanning and documenting them is somewhat mind-numbing. Still I persist so as not to belittle the lives of everyday people because, while seemingly staid, the letters encompass the mood and temperament of their times.
This letter from Mrs. L. O. (Beulah) Wycoff is dated February 21, 1974. Which is 17 days after the previous letter posted so we know that the family was in regular communications via mail.
Beulah herself is seemingly ailing as she makes mention of being "still on top of the cold cold ground." There is also a shout-out to Dick (Richard) and the girls, so I'm assuming that there were daughters in the family as well.
She goes on to mention an approaching snowstorm, presumably in Sac City, Iowa where the letter was sent from, and being cold, etc. Mundane things.
As with the previous letter Beulah mentions conserving energy and turning the heat down only to jack it back up to stay warm. During a stretch of intense cold where temps -5 to -28 degrees the heating bill was only $28.
Larry had been gone four months as of the 19th. Can we assume that is the L. O. Wycoff in the quotient? It would make sense that it was except that directly after mentioning that factoid she goes into a dent in the car fender. When she got hit in the car she had been thinking of a recent earthquake in Des Moines as well as ones in California and that added levity to the matter. Though a bumping into in the 1970s generally meant a scuff or ding and not the loss of the fiberglass bumper.
A new page, another mention of a health crisis. Laverne's leukemia again and Fred's shingles. Beulah had shingles once herself back when she moved from Stewart Ave. to the pink house on Moore Street, in whatever unnamed city she is talking about. She mentions having toughed it out and then goes into getting her drivers license and mentions Garland's wife, a woman named Marge Schmidt Freeman and the passing of her husband Larry and some snarky words between them. Typical gossip then as now.
Waiting on the road to get paved? I was going to lament the tedium involved in a life which anticipates such an event but then I recall my nightmare summer of lane closures and alternate routes to work that have doubled my drive time and I'm in the same boat as Beulah! I just wish that this information was about Inkster, Michigan instead of Sac City, Iowa but perhaps there's a history seeker in that town who is looking for just such a tome and gets keyword-ed to this page. Apparently, there were also protests during this time of inflation and uncertainty which was complicated by a month of rain and torn up roads. Radical Iowans unite! Beulah lamented that it would cost her $1745 ($10.500 today) if they could get the cash out of her.
Beulah had a hound and the boys were painting on the day that Larry died, as assumed. Larry was mad about the time it was taking to paint and apparently lost his temper. Beulah believed that contributed to his death though in hindsight from a cold calculating perspective we can probably say that he was in poor health and that something, anything, was bound to be take him.
I'm guessing by the suddenness of Larry's death that he died of a heart attack while he was raging about the paint job and the duration it was taking. The painters left and went to Babe's Tavern to drink off the shock.
Muffin, the dog, was to care for her in Larry's permanent absence though he was a whiny thing. I won't go into his potty time routine because that is too Iowan for even me.
Beulah had an egg lady who delivered the goods to her door. She ate creamed eggs on toast and was trying to keep her weight between 115 and 120 as Larry fretted if she went to 128 or even 145 it would be the end of the world. Meanwhile... Larry, well Larry... ah, yes... Larry. Nonetheless, Beulah apparently had a damaged heart as well. Imagine that she was once down at 105!
Fortunately her depressed recollections were overtaken by the howling wind and she commented about that from the prairie. She was also in contact with Atha so obviously they were all related.
She had visited Louise(?) and her daughter and little granddaughter Tami were over.
The girl messed with the old Tomcat and he bit and scratched her in the cheek. It got infected and they found a broken claw in her face and the cat was sentenced to death. That's Sac City justice circa 1974 via Cliff, the obvious Judex of Iowan jurisprudence.
Just them Muffin came in and brought Beluah back to the reality that she had probably written too much. But not before mentioning that Jo Anne wanted Lucy's address and Beulah forwarded it to her. Unfortunately for continuity purposes, the next letter is from 1977 so we likely won't hear from many of the previous participants if their poor health continued as it was. Which is too bad because she apparently liked to gossip and wrote a good letter in her time.
In closing she drops the fact that La Verne (spelled differently by each), Larry's girl (not sure if this is the same Larry), was getting married March 16th. Which left Chick as the lone single person though he was twice divorced and equally shy for another.
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