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The Spiker Gazette |
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| Oxford, WV | Volume 15 | Issue 7 | July 2021 |
| In this Issue: | Letter Closings and Postscripts It's in the Mail Announcements |
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Letter Closings and Postscripts
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Written by: Bobbi Spiker-Conley Editor's Note: The following is part of a SERIES of articles (that began in November 2020) about Jake Spiker and Gay Zinn's courtship letters. Links to view previous editions are found below this article.
I recall from elementary school that “Check-Yes-or-No” letters were regularly passed between classmates. Most were signed with one or more “kisses” – XXX. Some were stamped with the initials “S.W.A.K.” – sealed with a kiss. I thought, gosh my friends are pretty smart to come up with that one. But then I learned my mother already knew what the letters stood for, and that she and my father had signed their own courtship letters that way. Wait. What? So, if my friends hadn’t made it up, and my parents had used it when they were teens, just how long had this writing expression been around? From what I can tell, no-one really knows. Most internet theories state it was a tradition started by WWI soldiers. Hogwash. My grandparents were using these “emoticons” before that. I guess the “when” and “by whom” do not matter. What is interesting is that so many generations have been expressing themselves in similar ways.
Here are a few acronyms and poetic declarations that closed many of Jake and Gay’s Courting Letters.
The following postscript was written on a separate sheet of paper and tucked into the envelope postmarked 31 Oct 1905. It sounds like Jake was a little jealous (but what a poet!!!)
“Well as this is the night when all the witches sail forth, I will not do any more mischief than writing you a few lines extra and my subject shall be, what happened on the night of October 21, 1905, and it and it reads like this. Mr. Mood Eheret and Roy Bee, |
It's in the Mail
I also recall from elementary school learning the five parts of a letter and the proper way to address an envelope. At that time, my parents' address was simply "Route 1," Lost Creek. But so was everybody else's along that strip of road. No house number. No box number (those came later.) And we didn't even live in Lost Creek. That was the location of our post office — not the location of our Good Hope home. So, we all relied on our letter carrier to recall the names of every resident in every household along the route for accurate delivery.
Similarly, the "courting letters" were originally penned with only a name, city and state. But over time, the Post Offices regrouped, Rural Free Delivery came to the area, and street names and housing numbers were added. The one thing that remained consistent over the last 115+ years, however, is our habit of complaining about delayed, misdirected, and missing deliveries.
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20 Oct 1905 – Gay wrote, “This evening I will endeavor to write you a few of my many thoughts. I would have answered sooner, but they have moved the P.O. and have been having so much trouble that they haven’t sent out any mail, nor can’t receive any. We are all sick over this.” 5 Nov 1905 – Gay wrote, “The rain is falling fast, and I am very lonesome this afternoon. I will spend a few moments in writing to you. I received your letter all O.K. Our mail is all right again. I am awful proud of my Halloween letter. You are quite a poet.” (referring to the post-script above) 10 Nov 1905 – Gay wrote, “Received your letter last evening and read with pleasure this morning. I went over to Oxford to meeting last night and I didn’t know that we had got the mail last evening. Our P.O. is gone again, and we don’t know what they will do next. But I trust we will get our mail some way.” 11 Dec 1905 – Jake wrote, “I have not heard from you for a month. I came up here [to Clarksburg] before I received your last letter. I left word for them to send my mail to me and I have not received any yet so I thought I would write and let you know where I am at.” 14 Dec 1905 – Jake wrote, “I had begun to think that I never would hear from you again. I left word for them to send my mail to Clarksburg but they was so slow that I got tired of waiting, and Tuesday I sat down and wrote a letter to you and directed it to Holbrook for I thought maybe you had got back home by this time, and now I will direct this one to Newbern and surely one of them will find you.” 28 Jan 1906 – Jake wrote, “You wrote last Sunday, and I never received your letter till yesterday. But I don’t blame my little girl for it. I don’t think that she would do anything that she thought would cause me trouble. But I do blame Post Masters and mail carriers.” 6 Jun 1906 – Gay wrote, “I received your letter this evening and was much surprised to learn that you hadn’t received my letter. I wrote you the same week I received your letter, and I also was getting uneasy about you. Indeed, I can’t see where my letters go to.” 21 Aug 1906 – Gay wrote, “We have been having an awful lot of trouble in regard to our mail. But I think they will get it all right soon. We have free delivery now." (referring to Rural Free Delivery, aka RFD.)
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Their complaints didn't need to travel far because the Oxford postmaster was none other than Gay's 2nd cousin, Ernest Erickson Zinn. Indeed, that may have been the reason Ernest's wife, the former Vallie Gay Calhoun, inadvertently opened a letter that wasn't addressed to her.
 Image modified from Appointments of U.S. Postmasters 1832-1971 | ||
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28 Aug 1906 – Gay wrote to Jake, “Mrs. Gay Zinn, Ernest Zinn’s wife, opened your letter Saturday evening thinking it was for her. She put it in an envelope and sealed it up and wrote me a letter and explained the matter. She said she didn’t read any of it. If she did, I bet she thought a lot.” |
As customary, Jake had addressed the envelope to "MISS Gay Zinn." However, the newly married (14 Jun 1906) "MRS Gay Zinn" didn't detect the title when the letter arrived at the post office and she tore open the seal. On 28 Aug 1906, Mrs. Ernest Zinn wrote to apologize:
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“Dear Gay, By mistake I opened your letter, but never took it out of the envelope. Ern [Ernest Zinn] was here and stopped me before I got it out of the envelope. I had forgot about your mail coming here and I thought it was mine. The whole crowd saw that I did not read it and are watching me put it in the envelope. I made Ern stay and watch me so he could prove that I did not even look at the beginning. I am sorrow [sic] I made the mistake. But I did not look inside. Please pardon me. Yours as ever, |
I agree with Gay. If Mrs. Ernest Zinn had read the letter, she probably would have "thought a lot" because there was "a lot of misunderstanding" going on between the author and its intended recipient.
It all began when a mutual female friend of Jake and Gay's moved to Clarksburg that summer. Gay asked Jake if he had seen her.
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13 Aug 1906 – Jake replied, “Yes, I saw her Saturday night and she is just the same girl. I did not know that she was here till I went to the office and got a letter, and when I tore it open, I found it was from her, and that she was in town and wanted me to come and see her. She is not half the girl that my little Gay is, my pure truest love. You must never tell anyone that I said she wrote me a letter. You know that I am not afraid to trust you, but you know if she knew that I told you, she would be mad and so would [her beau.] …My dear little girl, you must not think hard of me for not writing sooner."
21 Aug 1906 – Gay responded, “I received your letter yesterday. Was truly glad to hear from you. Of course, I don’t think hard of you, for you won’t think of me so often now that you have her to chum with. I guess I will write to her beau and tell him to come over, ha ha.” |
Gay was joking, of course, but as we all know, the written word can be easily misinterpreted. And without the benefit of verbal and physical cues, poor Jake discovered it can be difficult to distinguish the sarcastic from the serious. Even when the writer includes a token "ha-ha."
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24 Aug 1906 – Jake wrote, “Dearest love. This evening I will try to answer your short and cold letter which I received this evening. I just began to think that you had clear forgotten me. And to think you would accuse me of forgetting you for anyone else. I never cease to think of my dear. Indeed, I am not chasing around with [our friend] every day. I have seen her twice a little while. Gay you said once that you would be true to me as long as I would be to you. And did I not tell you that I would always be true to you? Now you write as though you thought I was not as good as my word. Dear, I never think of you in that way. I never think of you as being anything else but true to me. Maybe it is because I think so much more of you than you do of me...I am sure we can make everything all right.”
28 Aug 1906 – Gay wrote, “I received your letter yesterday. Was truly glad to receive your letter but wasn’t much pleased with the contents. You are always getting the wrong meaning of my letters. I believe you are a little cranky. I want you to cheer up and don’t come out here with such a melancholy look as you had when you wrote that letter. I am just as Gay as ever. P.S. if this gets cold, stick a match to it, ha ha.” |
Announcements
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♦ Submitted by Melanie Spiker Fouse - My great nephew, Derek Gifford, finished his Eagle Scout project and donated it to the West Milford Park. With training from his grandfather, my brother Jeff Spiker, who you may remember from his wood carving booth at the Jane Lew Fire Hall on Labor Day/ Jubilee weekends in the past, Derek carved and made this Welcome to the Park sign. I'm so proud of him!
Pictured are Jeff Spiker and grandson Derek Gifford at the park in West Milford, WV.
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