1972, May-ish: Letter from Jed to G&H
This letter is in Marcy’s writing; presumably I dictated it, though as usual Marcy may well have cleaned up some of my phrasing.
It’s on fairly heavy lined paper preprinted with art showing a clown (and a small dog) being lifted up by four balloons. The balloons were preprinted as dashed-line circles, and I then put a circular blue sticker on each one (which is how the stationery was designed to be used).
The stationery was also designed to be folded into thirds, and then sealed using two more balloon stickers. On the other side of the folded-into-thirds paper (not shown here) is space for the address and return address, so this stationery needed no envelope.
The letter is undated and has no postmark, but the stamp on it is the 8-cent Old Faithful commemorative, issued on March 1, 1972, so this letter was presumably mailed sometime between that date and June 16, the graduation date that Marcy mentions at the end of this. She was presumably referring to Peter’s graduation from UC Berkeley; the “English requirement” was presumably the one that Peter wrote a letter/paper about, asking to be excused from it.
Dear Grandma and Grandpa
Thank you for the stationery with the balloons on it. I really like them. I pasted all the balloons on myself. My friend Jeremy has a new house. He used to live in my courtyard. One day he brought a story of the Red Balloon over to my house, and then he brought a football. But it wasn’t for me; it was his. The Red Balloon is about a little boy named Pascal. And he found a balloon one day on a lamp post. So he put down his wunch bag (oops—lunch bag) and climbed up the pole and took the balloon down with the string in his mouth.
Love,
Jed
p.s. I have a lunchbox that has astronauts on it. They are riding up in a rocket ship up to the moon.
J.
p.s. from mama: Graduation is June 16 at 4 pm. English requirement ok!