There are two interrelated stories I like to tell. I will tell them both here if you give me a few seconds.
Honestly I think why I write a lot here is cause in my DNA I like to tell stories. And for me until the Internet and Daily Kos there was no way for me to do that. Well there was I guess one other option, letters :). My other family members are prolific letter writers.
Below the fold maybe a nice story or two.
My dad dug up this letter from my great, great grandfather. And since this is a site about politics, well this is a letter he sent out to everybody in his town in 1914 when he was running for office.
I was born in the Torrance of Campsie, Sterlingshire, Scotland, on the Tenth day of March 1854, of poor but respectable parents. I followed the trade of mechanical engineer from the time I was sixteen years old, until I came to America in the Spring of 1881. Worked in Pennsylvania three months, and came to Osage County August 4th of the same year.
Business on the AT & SFRR being very dull that year, I failed to secure a position at my trade. Having a large family to support I betook myself to coal digging for a living. Dug coal for fifteen years, and commenced farming in 1894 and have been farming since.
[....]
I am a Candidate for the Office of Probate Judge of Osage County, Kansas, and I sincerely solicit the support of Osage County, and if elected will guarantee the highest degree of efficiency, and your interest well taken care of. I take this means of letting you know who I am, but will endeavor to meet as many of the Voters in the County as possible between now and August Fourth.
I don't think I will ever run for office, but if I did I might just use that letter as a template. Maybe I like it more cause it is a family member. But I just love how straightforward and to the point it is.
Oh he won BTW :)!
Now the second story, somewhat painful to write.
I recall the first week I was in college and getting a letter from my dad. I opened it and it ran a few pages. It would follow the same format of his letters he'd send me at least weekly for the next 15+ years. Nothing important in it. Stuff like it rained a lot this week. We had pasta for dinner last night, your mom burned the sauce. The Cardinals look to be good this year. But always a little story at the core that tied everything together.
Now my parents are my best friends, but this wasn't always the case.
For all those years he sent those letters to me I wasn't close with my parents. I might not see them for years at a time. The letters never stopped.
When I reconnected with my parents a few years ago I openly told my mother when she asked why I didn't communicate with them more, I said I didn't think they loved me. She had a lot to say about that, but she came back to the letters. Asking me if I didn't get that my father is like me, maybe not the most open person (I am here, but not in my personal life), and that each of those letters was a love letter to me.
That he might have written me close to a thousands letters, I never responded to a single one, but he kept writing them.
Well that isn't totally accurate, I responded to my dad's first letter.
He mailed it back to me marked up with a red pen. Spelling and grammar issues. That pissed me off on many levels. Then a few years ago I got his Dissertation. All 679 pages of it. The copy he sent to his dad. It was marked up with red pen. My dad got his PhD in a topic where his major professor was like you studying Physics and your major professor was Stephen Hawkings. That had to be painful.
Not a note saying "good job" but instead just taking it apart. In hindsight it isn't strange to think my father would do the same to me.
I've never said any of the above to my dad. We don't roll that way. But we have an understanding now that is very nice. And from time to time when my dad isn't forwarding me a video of a cat doing something cute, he still writes me.