ALAN writes:

Dear Grandma,

Many years have gone by since we last spoke. I remember that you were always there at home every day of my life; well, at least until I got to be seven years old, when you went away through no choice of your own.

I remember that my mother asked our good friend Betty to look after me for several hours on that day in 1957. You and Grandpa are pictured in a photograph from 1945 that I keep on my bookshelves, and I have often talked to you there.

I know that in the 1930s-‘40s, you and my mother enjoyed listening to Kay Kyser’s radio program and that its theme song was “Thinking of You”.  So tonight I am thinking of you, Grandma.

I miss you terribly and I miss any chance to express to you the gratitude that seven-year-old boys are too young to understand.

Any number of things prompt me to remember you, from Christmas photographs to flowers in the back yard, from the unbearable heat of summer days to the night in 1956 when we watched television news reports about the sinking of the Andrea Doria.  The Homer Laughlin “Tulips in a Basket” chinaware in the cabinet across the room from me reminds me of you and how you chose to use that china only on special occasions.

One evening in 1994 I happened by chance to hear the 1920 song “Love Nest”. Its melody reminded me instantly of the comfort I felt when you sat there with me on nights in the 1950s and we enjoyed the comedy of George and Gracie on “The Burns and Allen Show” on black-and-white TV, for which “Love Nest” was the theme song.

And this offers me a chance to show you an example of how stupid modern Americans have become:  You would consider it the nuttiest idea you ever heard—which it is—but modern Americans believe that boys can become girls and men can become women.  By contrast, consider the following lines from the Burns and Allen radio show of Jan. 17, 1946.  George and Gracie are talking about orchestra leader Meredith Willson and a women’s club called the Beverly Hills Uplift Society.

George:  “You women even took him into your club”

Gracie:  “Well, it was perfectly legitimate.  We made him an honorary woman.”

[Laughter from studio audience]

Then they try to make announcer Bill Goodwin an honorary woman, too, but he resists.  So they coax him:

Gracie:  “Aw, c’mon.  Be a woman.”

Meredith:  “Yes, join us, Bill.”

[Even more laughter]

Americans in 1946 could laugh heartily at such obvious absurdity because they had their heads on straight.  It would take Americans today a formidable philosophical struggle to achieve that distinction.  If you knew that they now applaud themselves for having “unisex” bathrooms, you might conclude that Americans willingly have gone to Hell.

Earlier this year I got to thinking about how different life is today from what it was in, say, 1954.  I am now the age you were that year.  I know now the weariness that you must have felt at this age.  I know now what a challenge it must have been for you “just” to get from one week to the next, because it is now the same for me.  I know how you must have felt when you knew your life was winding down and mine was just beginning; when you had a lifetime of memories and I had virtually none.

Daily life for you and Grandpa was far less complicated than it is now.  It was more brutal in some ways but more pleasant in others.

I am thankful that you are not here today because you would not recognize the nation in which we were born or the city of St. Louis.  If you saw them, you would conclude that you are on some alien planet.  The country and city that you would remember from the 1940s are long gone.  You left us at a time just before the most pampered generations in history would inherit the civilization their ancestors built—and then fail to keep it.

You would remember downtown St. Louis as a thriving business district.  It is now a ghost town run by feminists and feminized boy-boobs.  If you could see it today, you would be at a loss for words to describe the ugliness, the degradation, the abandonment, and the official excuses.  It is common to find elevators and escalators not working at Metrolink transit stations.  It is common to see motorists drive at whim through stoplights.  Huge buildings are abandoned.  Storefronts remain empty.  Daily life is a festival of insults to decent men and women.

You would recall America as a free country run by proud, confident White men. They are gone. That their descendants would surrender it to feminists, Communists, and assorted agitators would have been unimaginable to you and your generation.  But they did.

You and the telephone were young and innocent in the 1890s.  It was still a simple, useful device in the 1940s when you had a black telephone on your kitchen wall.  And doubtless you remember seeing telephone booths in stores, hotels, and train stations.  But you would be astounded (or worse) if you could see how Americans today use, misuse, and over-use their telephones, to say nothing of their appalling lack of good manners.

Don’t even think about what they have done to the Catholic Church that you remember so well and to which you were so loyal.  If you could see what it is today, you would conclude it had been made the target of calculated subversion as vicious as anything we could imagine.  It is now common in Catholic cemeteries to see people walking their pets, in complete contempt for signs at the entrance reading “No Pets Allowed”.

You would remember listening to the news on radio or TV reported invariably by men–like John Daly, Douglas Edwards, and John Cameron Swayze.  Today you would hear women’s voices.  Ride public transit vehicles today and you will see women driving and hear women’s voices (or computerized voices engineered to sound like women’s voices) telling you how you must behave.  Americans now agree to take orders from feminist mayors and governors.  It is a prelude to the coming Feminist-Communist regime in which Mommy Government will instruct a nation of sheep what they may and may not do, say, write, and think.

Another thing that would astound you is the difference between shopping for groceries at supermarkets today and how we shopped at corner markets in the 1950s.  As you remember, we shopped every Saturday at Hejlek’s Tomboy Market, across the street catty-corner from the parochial school I attended.  It was family-owned and my mother got to know the three Hejlek brothers by name.  On some Saturdays I “helped” her do the shopping.  That must have been amusing.  Our transit time was minimal:  Five minutes to the market and five minutes back—accomplished by walking.  I can picture us walking with our two-wheel shopping cart through the alley on our way back home.  The pace and texture of life then and there now seem to me just about right.

I know you remember the time in or about 1955 when Hejlek’s Market offered chances on a wagon-full of groceries.  Apparently my mother bought three chances, one for you, one for her, and one for me. That I held what would prove to be the winning ticket was a result either of you or her having rigged the drawing (which I doubt) or a weird stroke of luck.

In any case, the market owners promptly delivered the red Radio Rancher wagon filled with groceries to our house at the other end of the block.  But before we unpacked it, my mother took a snapshot [above] showing me, looking rather bewildered, standing by the wagon filled with canned goods and cornflakes and pretzels and crackers and Jello and potatoes.  I didn’t know precisely how to look because I didn’t do anything to win all of that; it just happened.  Actually I was worried that all those boxes and canned goods might be crushing my chocolate cupcakes.  But I imagine that you and my mother were delighted with all those free groceries.

As to shopping today:  Imagine shopping in a building the size of an armory.  Imagine other shoppers around you talking in alien languages and looking at little screens they carry.  Imagine screeching, blaring noise called “music” pounded into your head as you try to select groceries.  Imagine trying to navigate through an obstacle course of automobiles outside on a parking lot the size of a football field.

You have no idea how thankful I am that you and Grandpa lived in an era long before such things—and how thankful I am to have lived in the tail end of that era.

It has been wonderful to talk and reminisce with you, Grandma.  I will close for now and bid you farewell “….till we meet again”, a song I imagine you can remember hearing when it was new in 1918.

Meanwhile, I believe I will go outside to greet my playmate Sharon from across the alley and we will play on the swings in our back yard.  Or we may decide to put on our holsters with cap guns and round up villains in the Old West as I become the sheriff and Sharon becomes my trusty deputy.  As you know, it is now Summer 1957 and Sharon is my current flame.  I am cuckoo about her.

The author with Sharon, his heartthrob in 1957

As I close this letter, I am listening to a 1950s recording by Joni James of  the ballad “Something to Remember You By”.  It conveys just the right mood for me to remember you.  It all goes back to that living room where I spent so many hours in the world before 1960 with the two most important women in my young life.  You did indeed give me something to remember you by, Grandma:  Your daughter, who became my mother, to whom I owed every moment of happiness I ever knew.

All my love and gratitude,

Your grandson, Alan

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