A treasure trove

… and the start of a new ‘refreshment’ project.

Over the last few years, as I pondered starting this project, I’ve often wondered why both my mother and my grandmother kept the letters that May Emma Northcutt Hinkson wrote. May was my great-grandmother who I remember most for her sugarcoated oatmeal, her side porch swing that my siblings and I would spend hours “playing train” on when we visited, her large salt and pepper shaker collection that lined the shelves of the dining room, and her porch rocker where you would frequently find her either shucking corn or snapping beans from her garden or hand-sewing hems into the homemade dresses she made for my sister and me as she rocked and visited with family, friends, and neighbors.

I had no idea that these letters even existed until the death of my mother, Penny, in 2017. While cleaning out her apartment with my sister Ginny, we stumbled across a large box tucked away in the closet. Inside the box very carefully arranged by date were over 100 handwritten letters penned by great-grandmother and carefully preserved with the envelope stapled to each.  “Why did Mom keep these?“ I wondered. But then I didn’t have the luxury to dive into them and find out. “We probably should just throw these away“ my sister Ginny surmised as there were only just so many of my mother’s belongings worth keeping and limited family interest in paying for across-country shipping in the hopes that one of our other siblings might want the items.  But I couldn’t let the letters go to the discard pile. I was curious to know why my mother had kept these letters all these years “I’ll take them, Ginny. Perhaps there’s a family secret or two in them…. and it might be a nice little project for my retirement years.”

In August 2017 (the month that Mom passed), my retirement (or “refreshment“ as Bill and I like to say) was still many years away. So the box traveled home with me in a newly acquired oversized suitcase (another ‘mom estate’ item) to be tucked away in the corner of the basement to await the time when I would have time to relax and dive into them. 

Fast forward…

I hadn’t really thought about these letters until the spring of 2021 when my cousin Marriane telephoned me from Georgia to ask if there were any family items that I might want or that she should be on the lookout for as she cleaned out her mother‘s basement.  My Aunt Jen (my mother’s twin) was the notorious self-described pack rat in the family. She kept everything and her basement was an overflowing floor-to-to-ceiling treasure trove (I use this term lovingly, for I’m sure most people would call it ‘junk) of family memorabilia, heirloom and antique furniture, and the largest self-curated library of self-help, cooking and spiritual healing books that I’ve ever seen. She had installed makeshift shelves between every 16-inch spaced floor-to-ceiling stud in her 1800+ square foot basement to display the thousands and thousands of books that she had purchased throughout her lifetime. The entire perimeter of the basement looked like a library.  But instead of neatly arranged library tables, bibliographical index card cabinets, etc occupying the center, the interior space was piled high with boxes, furniture, and other assorted items that should’ve made their way to a garage sale years ago.

I did not envy Marriane for the task that I knew was ahead of her- as my Aunt had recently moved to Oklahoma to be nearer to family in her aging years.  “If you come across any old family photos, I’m definitely interested.” I quickly offered by habit.  But I knew even before I finished the sentence I knew that the request was for not - as Marianne also had a keen interest in family genealogy and history.  “I’m sorry, I’m taking those, but I’ll be happy to make you copies of any specific photos of interest”.   “ Thanks, Marriane.” I replied, “ That’s what I thought but it's always worth asking”.  Then I remembered the box of letters that I had found in my mother‘s belongings several years earlier and shared my plans to make the “letters from Labelle“ a small project in my retirement. “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed “You’re not gonna believe this, but I literally ran across eight or nine shoeboxes full of letters written by great-grandmother Hinkson to Mama Green this afternoon.  I had put them aside for the discard pile, but if you want them, they’re yours.”   “Wow, that’s incredible!  Yes, I’ll definitely take them” I quickly responded, not fully realizing the extent to which my planned ‘little refreshment project’ had just exploded. 

Although Marriane told me that three large boxes would be coming my way I didn’t anticipate how massive these boxes would be when they arrived on our front porch a few weeks later. Packed away in the boxes were not just the numerous shoeboxes of letters that Marriane had described. There were also four recipe boxes full of scribbled, cut-out, and annotated newspaper recipes, an old 1920s yearbook, a 1954 daily diary (written by my mother at age 14), and other assorted commemorative items from my grandmother's career at Michigan State.   My first task was to unpack the boxes and organize the letters by postmark date. And it was indeed fortunate that both my mother and grandmother had kept the envelopes with the letters, for without the postmark date on the envelopes I would have no idea when the letters were actually written. 

It took me several hours over the course of many days to go through all the boxes and assemble the letters in order and group them by year.  The dining room table became my staging area as I fought off the urge to dive and start reading them. Of course, I did peak and read a few – there were only two letters from 1953, so I had to read those to discover why only these letters from the 1950s had been saved.  After reading them it was easy to understand why  - they recorded the rapid decline and death of my great-grandmother’s firstborn and only son Robert, who died at the age of 48, still a young man in the prime of his life.

When I finally finished the organization work that I had laid out across the large dining room table, I was astounded to realize that I had a total of 885 letters written by my great-grandmother between the years 1961 and 1975- the former being the year of her death.  My plan for my ‘refreshment’ was to read one letter each day - which meant my ‘little project’ - which if executed as I had planned- would end up nearly spanning 2 1/2 years.  The thought of using my refreshment for this project greatly appealed to me, but it also felt a little overwhelming.   From the planning perspective, refreshment felt like the perfect time to embark on a such project, for I would be learning to relax and slow down in a new phase of my life, I might also be able to discover (through the letters), some life lessons from my great grandmother as she was also living out the final years of her life. 

There have been many times that I wished that Marriane had also discovered the letters that May Emma had written to her daughter during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s - when she was both a busy homemaker, working mother, and rural schoolteacher in the small town of LaBelle, Missouri.  But one can’t complain when such a gift has already been received.   And yet, I am grateful for my foresight, for had I not mentioned the letters we discovered when my mom died to Marriane during our call, it’s more than likely that this treasure would’ve been lost to the landfill. 

As I start this project, I’m constantly reminding myself to keep things in context as I read.   In 1961 (the date when the letters begin) my great-grandmother was 80 years-old and 10 years well into her own retirement.   At her age, she had already lived a rather remarkable, but small town LaBelle, MO life,  where she lived through several difficult times and tragedies, including the entire destruction of the family home by fire, the death of her husband, the sale of the family farm, and the early deaths of both her son and two son-in-law‘s- all in the prime of their lives.

As planned, I started reading the letters earlier this month on August 1, 2024, just one month into my refreshment. And contrary to my original plan– and perhaps not surprisingly – I have found it hard to maintain a pace of reading just one letter per day.  Instead, my cadence has become one of reading two, and sometimes three letters, together aloud in one sitting while my iPad captures and records the text through its dictation feature. (Thank you Apple for including this in the Pages app).   At the completion of this project, I hope to not only package this site into a book for future generations but to also publish the contents of the letters themselves into a supplemental binding.

As of the publication of this post, I am 24 letters into the tome and more than midway through 1961 (Sept 25, 1961, to be exact).  For the most part, the letters describe the happenings of an active, God-fearing 80-year-old homemaker, who was deeply embedded in the LaBelle church community and the lives of her close family and neighbors. I’ve learned a lot about her daily activities, which include tending to her garden, hosting and attending weekly CWF (Christian Woman’s Fellowship) meetings, helping her close friends negotiate aging and declining health issues- as she sometimes encountered herself, and religiously writing multiple weekly (and more often than not biweekly) letters to family members — including, Helen-my grandmother, Virginia-my great aunt, Marie-my great aunt, and Penny-my mother and Jenny- my mom’s twin sister — to maintain ties and share the small town news from both LaBelle and Knox City, Missouri.

In addition to reading the letters, I’ve also started to dive down several genealogy rabbit holes. I’m grateful to the Missouri Historical Society, which has free digital access to both LaBelle Star and Edina Sentinel newspapers - providing me with even more insights into my Northcutt and Hinkson family history. As you might imagine, it’s a fascinating journey and I’m learning a lot. I plan to share more from these rabbit holes as I continue with this project.

With that, I’ll wrap up this first entry with a bit of historical perspective shared by May Emma (as she often called herself in a self-deprecating way when writing about small-town gossip ) from a recently read letter noting her reaction to a radio broadcast of JFK’s 1961 address to the United Nations on Sept 25:

#22 Postmark September 25, 1961 addressed Mrs. Douglas Green, E., Lansing, MI

Monday a.m.

Dear Helen and Jenny,

     I’ve just turned the radio off. I hope many many of our people and other people heard the speech of President Kennedy. Every word of it suited me as I heard it, but such a profound declaration needs several hearings or readings to get all of it. My mind cannot formulate one suggestion or thought in the solution, but I am unwavering in the belief that it is still god’s world, and that if it is worth saving, some leader will appear, and some plan will be devised – if it isn’t worth saving and I can’t believe that, then we will blow ourselves to bits. Right now, and in my own surreal corner of the universe, and I mean universe,  everything is washed clean – the leaves are slick and shiny as little children-going-to-bed faces, the grass is an emerald carpet, the clothes are flopping in the sun and wind, and while I know it is only wishful thinking and a quotation, still I must quote – “God is in heaven and all’s right with the world“ Now that is certainly a page of nothing isn’t it?