1929-08-11: ​​~TOUR STOPS~---images---audio---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
​This page is not a currently a stop in any Tour.  But it's still worth your attention!
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1929-08-11​: ​tour stops---~IMAGES~---audio---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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1929-08-11​: tour stops---images---~AUDIO~---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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1929-08-11: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
August 11, 1929.

Dear Kathleen,

This is your birthday letter even if it is a little late.  Fred, Sybil, her father and mother came Friday night.  Fred had to go back Saturday evening but the others will be here a couple of days longer.  The children are behaving very well.  They all seem very quiet, particularly Billy.  They did a little public piano playing this evening for the visitors and a girl from Nashville.  Margaret and Kathleen did fairly well but Billy seemed to have forgotten everything.  Finally he played his tango but quite poorly.  I am glad Miss Jackson did not hear it.

Margaret said to tell you that we just forgot all about dates.  I know I did.  I think it was due to not getting a daily paper regularly.  There is one that comes, besides the Monitor, but they do not seem to attract any attention.

We have had fine weather until to-day when it was rainy.  Most of the family went out for a walk and got marooned in the Fish Commission Bldg.  I thought they were on Penzance Point at the Forum and went for them in the car and got in a traffic jam on the narrow roads.  I had to back out past a number of cars parked at random on both sides of the road.  I finally got out and found them.

Billy said to tell you that he would write to-morrow.  He and I have the new bedroom together with separate beds.

We had a picnic at Nobska yesterday and all except Mrs. Hosking (Sybil's Mother) played duck on a rock, and I think every one enjoyed it.

We are expecting to go to Gay Head to-morrow and to Provincetown the day after.

I hope you had a very pleasant birthday and that you and Roger are not lonesome and will get down to Savannah soon.  I received your letter with the enclosures.  It is now 11:15 and Eva and I are going to mail this and the other letters so they will go in the morning.

With lots of love and kisses,

​Will.​
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1929-08-11: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
Will is using the Fernbank stationery.  It's fun to imagine Alma, who loved stationery, getting it printed and making it available for guests at Fernbank.

2.
This is your birthday letter even if it is a little late.
Kathleen turned 41 on August 11, 1929.

3.
​Fred, Sybil, her father and mother came Friday night.
This would be the first time Will met Sibyl.  Will can't spell her name correctly, even though he has seen it in writing.

4.
​Fred had to go back Saturday evening but the others will be here a couple of days longer.
So Fred is apparently already working at the Westboro Hospital, while Sibyl, as a Canadian citixen, doesn't have permission to work in US.

5.
Margaret and Kathleen did fairly well but Billy seemed to have forgotten everything.  Finally he played his tango but quite poorly.  I am glad Miss Jackson did not hear it.
Miss Jackson is the children's piano teacher.

6.
Margaret said to tell you that we just forgot all about dates.  I know I did.  I think it was due to not getting a daily paper regularly.  There is one that comes, besides the Monitor, but they do not seem to attract any attention.
The Monitor is, of course, the Christian Science Monitor.   I daresay Eva ordered it.

7.
I thought they were on Penzance Point at the Forum and went for them in the car and got in a traffic jam on the narrow roads.
In the late 1960s, when my family spent some summers in Woods Hole, Penzance Point was private, but I guess that hadn't happened yet in 1929.

​8.
Billy said to tell you that he would write to-morrow.  He and I have the new bedroom together with separate beds.
This new bedroom interests me.  I don't see how it could be on the upper floor, since any available space would already have been made into bedrooms.  So perhaps it was in the basement, and the bedroom that was created in the basement after The Great Raising made permanent what had previously been a makeshift situation.

9.
We had a picnic at Nobska yesterday and all except Mrs. Hosking (Sybil's Mother) played duck on a rock, and I think every one enjoyed it.
A picnic!  Alma would surely have enjoyed it, but she had already left for India.  I googled for duck on a rock, and got the following from Wikipedia:
"Duck on a rock" is played by placing a somewhat large stone (known as a "duck") upon a larger stone or a tree stump. One player stays near the stone to guard it. The other players throw stones at the "duck" in an attempt to knock it off of the platform.
Once the duck stone is knocked off, the throwers all rush to retrieve their stones while the guard replaces the stone and then attempts to tag them. If a player is tagged by the guard before returning to the throwing line with their stone, that player becomes the guard.
I don't much like the stone throwing with a player nearby.  And how do the players know their own stones?  As usual, I must be missing something.

10.
We are expecting to go to Gay Head to-morrow and to Provincetown the day after.
Gay Head is on Martha's Vineyard and Provincetown is the furthest town out on Cape Cod.  These expeditions did happen - see:
11.
I hope you had a very pleasant birthday and that you and Roger are not lonesome and will get down to Savannah soon.
Savannah was, of course, where Kathleen's parents and her sister Ruth lived.

12.
Will doesn't mention his sister Laura at all, but she was there, presumably to meet her new sister-in-law Sibyl.
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