My mother was around eighty years old when she ordered a little portable mechanical typewriter from Montgomery-Ward and taught herself to type. The project she had in mind was preserving what our family has called the “farm letters”, which had been packed away in our attic for more than 40 years.
These were the letters that my family exchanged over a two year period during the Great Depression. My mother, brother, and I lived in a tiny cabin on a farm in northern Minnesota, while my father worked in Minneapolis as a streetcar driver to support us.
She was concerned that our letters, written on cheap coarse-textured pencil tablets, would turn into illegible flakes in the attic heat, destroying words that memorialized a vital time in our family’s experience.
For more than a year, she sat at her dining room table in Minneapolis, and typed out each letter in chronological order — over 700 of them — and traced all of the drawings, maps and sketches my brother and I made to send with our letters.
By the time Mother began this project, I was married and living in Toledo, Ohio. Every month or so I would receive a colorful folder labeled with the dates of the enclosed letters.
Reading each installment stirred intense emotions and forgotten memories, which I began to record in my journal. It evolved into an obsession to document our two-year odyssey — beyond the letters — complete with historical references, details, and personal insights.
I never mentioned this project to Mother, but shortly after my father died, during one of her Christmas visits to Toledo, I presented her with a draft copy.
She covered her face and began to cry, “I wish he could see this….”
“Oh, but he lived It, Mother.”
Clearly, she viewed our time on the farm, despite the miserable living conditions, as something very special. It came at a crucial era in our nation’s history, and was a memorable time for many other families as well. So here is our story.
– Ruth Anne Linsley Forman