1975, March 10: Letter from Jay to G&H
The first letter written by Jay!
There had been others that were presumably dictated by Jay and transcribed by Marcy, but this appears to be the first one that he personally wrote. In my transcription below, I’ve regularized the capitalization and spacing between words.
Jay had just turned five. This is impressively well-written considering that he was still learning to read; it even almost entirely uses punctuation correctly.
It was written on the clown-and-balloon stationery that I’ve mentioned here before. The fact that we were still using that stationery three years after first receiving it may suggest that Jay and I weren’t writing enough letters to George and Helen. :) (I suppose I have to take most of the responsibility for that, given that Jay wasn’t writing letters at all before this one.)
Dear Grandma & Grandpa in Tacoma,
Thank you for the clothes. I like the Snoopy shirt the best.
Also, thank you for the puppet book--I just made one today I’ve been learning to read but I’ve been out of school because of measles.
love, Joaquin
For more about the measles episode, see previous letter.