Letters from Ava, Part 2: 4.11.1966

My mother, Mary Welton (nee Caldwell), was the youngest of nine children to Ava and Charles Caldwell of Marysville, Ohio. Mom was born in 1939, and her father died before she turned two years old, in 1941.

She and my grandmother, whom I always called Ava, were very close.

However, when she and my father married in March 1964, they moved to his home state of Oklahoma — she, Mom, didn’t return to Ohio but a handful of times after that, and not once beyond 1977 or ’78.

Mom died in 2018, and I inherited a large box full of correspondence, filled with the flavors of the era and quite characteristic of both my mother’s and grandmother’s personalities. While I don’t have any of the letters Mom wrote; I’ve got all that my grandmother wrote.

They might seem boring to you, but for me, each is a discovery into who they were and what the world was like. This letter comes from April 11, 1966.

**

April 11, 1966
Dear Mary & Bill — 

I hope you had a very happy birthday. I see on the map you have warm weather out there. It sure isn’t warm here. This morning, it is cloudy and cold, supposed to rain, looks like it had in the night.

So far, we had worse weather in April than we did in March. The nights are mostly in the 20s, and days never over the 40s. Last week, it was snow flurries. Then it would be drizzle, then back to snow flurries.

I can’t see very good. My eyes are full of water again.

Betty, Lloyd, and four of the children were here for supper on Easter Sunday. Margaret was having her Easter dinner with her boyfriend. He leaves for the Army on the 19th. Lloyd said he is a very nice boy.

Just talked to Shirley, and she said Philip was sick in the night. Had too much candy, and said she was sure he would be. We all went to Shirley’s after supper and stayed about an hour. They have their furnace all in, and are getting ready to paint her kitchen.

Hope you two had a nice Easter.

Jim has sold his home. Don’t know what they are going to do. He bought a big double last fall, but it is rented on both sides — or it was when I talked to him.

Shirley said she was in Stocksdale Market, and Marlene Sparks asked about you. She was surprised you had left Ohio. Mrs. Mathers was in Weiss Bros store. She asked about you, and said she is such a sweet, pretty girl. (She doesn’t know you are not a little girl anymore, but to me you are.)

Bill Cryder was in an accident. Ran into a truck. The driver of the truck was killed, and he is in the hospital.

I stopped my house cleaning. It can wait till warm weather.

I have about as much fire on as I had all winter, and that is too much heat for cleaning walls.

Well, honey, if this letter goes today, I better get it out in the box.

Will write again soon, and you do the same.

Love to both,
Love, Mother

***

Each letter comes with clippings from the Marysville Journal-Tribune, and I’m gathering that they’re mostly mundane parts of the paper, such as court filings, marriages and deaths. However, I’ll pick out anything that interests me from each letter and share them here.

Previous letters:

• Letters from Ava, Part 1: 11.25.1969