My parents didn't get AC and color t.v. until after I joined the army, in 1975. In the south it's rough trying to sleep with the heat, humidity, and the 'skeeters coming through the window screen, but at least you could still hear the whippoorwills.

We always wrote letters, to stay in touch. These cell phones can be a burden sometimes, but I do remember my brother and I having to walk seven miles when we ran out of gas one time. I wished that I had a phone then.

 

Long distance cost more then than it does now. Cards were sent for every occasion with letters attached. Mostly with how the family was doing. Thank you letters were a big deal when I was young and my friends had the same chore after birthdays. We used to get a lot of post cards.

Yearly family reunions used to be popular years ago and I remember the parks being pretty full in the summer. Guess email and IM took care of that.

I think about how the founding fathers wrote so eloquently, in ink - with no spelling errors. Today it would be something like, "we the ppl of the us in order to from a more purfect..."

 

long distance back then was outragous, we wrote letters when we could but most of our family were lazy when it came to letters, so when we got together we talked every night til 2 am to get caught up, then go back home for another year or 3.

 

Ok guess this is as good a "segway" as I can ask for to tell how PeeWee and I met!

It was back in Nov 1983 if memory serves - way before the 'Net and email. We both had had our share of bad relationships and we had decided to give that whole romance thing one more try. PeeWee and I met through a "pen-pal" club we both belonged to. I got her "ad" in a copy of the magazine this club put out and decided to write her. She must have liked what I had said about myself because she went ahead and answered my letter, even though she probably felt it was another waste of time.

We wrote to each other a lot over the next three months or so - probably three or four times a week or more! Long letters too...I remember writing seven and eight page letters to her and getting the same in return. After a few letters PeeWee worked up the courage to call me on the phone...that is till I answered and she hung up on me real quick! LOL! Guess she didn't expect me to sound like I did! But she called back and from that time on we also talked a lot on the phone - for hours sometimes! We racked up quite a phone bill in those few months!

After about three months we could no longer be satisfied with letters and phone calls. We had fallen for each other in a big way and so one day I went into my bosses office and handed in my badge. I quit my job and moved down to California to be with this girl I had never met, but knew that I was made for. Everyone we knew gave us about three weeks but we showed them...this Dec. we will have been married for 20 years! I had finally found my soulmate...she was a "mail-order bride", but I found her!

 

well, that does remind me of my own experiences that way, I had most of the letters my future wife to be had sent, can't do that very well with email. But anyway, the funny thing is we had not seen each other for years after we dated the first couple of times, but the letters still were there... well, when we did get back together 3 years ago, I still had those letters... and she has seen them....

 

by the uspo or by phone every week . took a drive every sunday to see the gp's 12 miles away. and a 2 hour drive 1 time a month to see the rest

 

When I was young we didn't have any money, so we had most of my mother's side of the family in one house. 13 of us. My father's side lived near by all in one area about 20 minutes away. So we went for a visit once a week or so.

Now the ones that are still alive are scattered all over the country. We only call once or twice a year.