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- | Hello Marian and Paul. | 0:01 |
First I apologize for sending another tape. | 0:05 | |
But I would never get this to you if I wrote it longhand. | 0:10 | |
Even if I did some abbreviating | 0:15 | |
I probably wouldn't get it done. | 0:18 | |
So Paul can find the tape record--or tape | 0:21 | |
cassette again and I'll tell you about my trip to Berlin. | 0:26 | |
First I am driving from Buffalo | 0:32 | |
to our plant which is up near Tawas, Michigan | 0:37 | |
which is about sixty miles north of Saginaw Bay City area. | 0:42 | |
And tonight I am going to attend a | 0:49 | |
venison dinner at our hunting lodge up there | 0:53 | |
with the people from that plant. | 0:59 | |
This is an annual affair. | 1:02 | |
I've been three or four times. | 1:04 | |
I enjoy it a lot, but it's too far to go | 1:08 | |
but I don't have much excuse because they, | 1:11 | |
or rather I don't have any way of getting out of it | 1:16 | |
because they changed the date to accommodate me. | 1:18 | |
And um, | 1:21 | |
next time I'll be a little smarter | 1:23 | |
in my reasons for not going. | 1:25 | |
Anyhow, | 1:27 | |
I went to Berlin. | 1:29 | |
Left, I... | 1:31 | |
switched my car with the plant manager's car. | 1:34 | |
The plant manager's at Clarence Center plant | 1:41 | |
where my office is. | 1:43 | |
He has a company station wagon | 1:45 | |
so this made it a little easier for me. | 1:47 | |
And | 1:50 | |
I drove | 1:51 | |
to Grand Rapids | 1:53 | |
and was there a day | 1:54 | |
and then I went on to Berlin. | 1:56 | |
Everything is fine there. | 1:58 | |
I picked up all the things that I was supposed to pick up. | 2:02 | |
And... | 2:06 | |
this... | 2:09 | |
consisted of the setee | 2:11 | |
which I have to repair. | 2:15 | |
And another chair | 2:17 | |
that was straight-backed. | 2:20 | |
I guess it's an antique. | 2:25 | |
It also was in poor condition. | 2:27 | |
But I can fix that too. | 2:30 | |
Then I got the china | 2:34 | |
and though the Wedgewood was quite nicked. | 2:37 | |
Nevertheless, we came out with something like, | 2:41 | |
ten good plates | 2:45 | |
and cups and saucers. | 2:47 | |
All the soup dishes were in good shape. | 2:50 | |
And... | 2:54 | |
some of the other plates. | 2:57 | |
In other words I'd say we got a good, | 2:59 | |
enough for a setting for eight easily | 3:03 | |
and a few dishes over. | 3:05 | |
Unfortunately the platters were not only chipped | 3:07 | |
but were cracked so, | 3:10 | |
we can't use them. | 3:12 | |
I think some day Flo may try to pick up a Wedgewood | 3:15 | |
platter that goes with this set | 3:19 | |
because it is a nice set. | 3:23 | |
Anyway, we're appreciative of it | 3:25 | |
and we also picked up the silver pol-- | 3:29 | |
silver service which I told Flo | 3:32 | |
I absolutely would not polish | 3:36 | |
so she polished it. | 3:39 | |
I am not lazy, but I don't go for things like that. | 3:41 | |
Things that don't go in dishwashers | 3:47 | |
I don't really care much about. | 3:48 | |
I will say this, it is very pretty | 3:51 | |
and I'm sure she'll be able to use it | 3:54 | |
and hope she can find time to polish it. | 3:58 | |
I got there about two thirty or three | 4:02 | |
and Leone had taken the day off. | 4:06 | |
Or rather had switched days with her counterpart | 4:11 | |
at the nursing home. | 4:14 | |
So we got everything packed and I got everything in the car. | 4:15 | |
And it's a good thing I had that station wagon, | 4:21 | |
although I could have gotten it in my car. | 4:24 | |
But this made it a lot easier. | 4:27 | |
I found the bible, | 4:31 | |
and there is some information in it | 4:33 | |
but I don't think anything that you don't already know. | 4:36 | |
And then Leone gave me several other bibles so, | 4:39 | |
I guess you can read | 4:43 | |
passages from the Bible to your heart's content. | 4:47 | |
I also picked up a lot of pictures | 4:51 | |
that she gave me. | 4:54 | |
In fact, she gave just about everything there was | 4:55 | |
in the way of pictures and when I finally got home | 4:58 | |
I found she gave me some things that were really of more | 5:01 | |
interest to her, such as Ken's high school diploma, | 5:04 | |
than it is to me. | 5:10 | |
However I'll bundle these up and sometime after Christmas | 5:11 | |
I'll send them back to you. | 5:16 | |
To Leone I mean, to Leone. | 5:18 | |
Now the things I have for you | 5:20 | |
I'm going to hang onto at least until after Christmas. | 5:22 | |
And then I'll either send them to you or | 5:27 | |
if we decide to come up to Boston | 5:30 | |
then I would bring them. | 5:35 | |
We have several pieces of furniture | 5:38 | |
that we, | 5:41 | |
might be willing to give to Diane | 5:43 | |
if she wants them. | 5:47 | |
And if so, I may switch cars | 5:50 | |
again with the plant manager | 5:53 | |
and bring them up there. | 5:55 | |
Diane is coming home for | 6:00 | |
Christmas, so we'll see her then. | 6:04 | |
That'll probably be the first time we will | 6:08 | |
hear from her too as she hasn't written us | 6:10 | |
in I don't know when. | 6:13 | |
Leone could not find the two chin ties that you spoke of. | 6:16 | |
Now she gave me quite a few chin ties | 6:21 | |
which I have and which I will let you look at | 6:24 | |
and you can pick out any of them that you want | 6:26 | |
or all of them. | 6:30 | |
Unfortunately some of the people in there I don't know | 6:31 | |
and I don't know whether you know | 6:35 | |
and they aren't marked of course. | 6:37 | |
I think when we come to Boston | 6:41 | |
I will bring all that stuff with me | 6:43 | |
whether you keep it or I keep it | 6:46 | |
and we'll try to figure out who some of the people are. | 6:49 | |
The only person I can really recognize when she was young | 6:53 | |
is Flo Scobee and I don't know why I recognize her | 6:58 | |
because I wouldn't recognize her when she was old. | 7:02 | |
But I remember some of those people in those pictures | 7:04 | |
and maybe between us we can remember a few more. | 7:07 | |
I tell you one thing, | 7:11 | |
I have resolved to go through all my pictures | 7:12 | |
and write everybody's name on them on the back | 7:14 | |
and also the date. | 7:17 | |
That way our kids can throw them away more systematically. | 7:20 | |
When they get them. | 7:25 | |
I took Leone and Susan to dinner. | 7:28 | |
She didn't want to go to Green Lake. | 7:32 | |
Which was okay with me, | 7:34 | |
I was going to go take her to the Heidel House | 7:36 | |
instead of Norton's for a change | 7:38 | |
but she said she'd rather eat downtown | 7:40 | |
so we went down to the town whatever it is | 7:43 | |
house restaurant and we had a surprisingly very good dinner. | 7:48 | |
I shouldn't say surprisingly | 7:53 | |
that's a pretty nice restaurant. | 7:56 | |
And then we walked down and walked back which was | 8:00 | |
invigorating and... | 8:04 | |
fine. | 8:08 | |
I got up real early the next morning by myself. | 8:10 | |
In fact, I left about | 8:15 | |
five thirty because I wanted to get as far as | 8:18 | |
our plant in Lorain, Ohio | 8:22 | |
which is just west of Cleveland. | 8:24 | |
I was going to stay overnight with some | 8:29 | |
real good friends of mine who worked for us there. | 8:32 | |
Not so much that I wanted to stay overnight with them | 8:35 | |
but I didn't want to park that station wagon | 8:37 | |
with all those things in them, in it, | 8:40 | |
in the ah... | 8:43 | |
in a motel parking lot. | 8:46 | |
Because then I would have to unload everything | 8:49 | |
as I certainly wouldn't leave anything | 8:52 | |
exposed in a motel parking lot. | 8:54 | |
Well, as it turned out I got to Lorain about | 8:57 | |
three thirty and I thought, ah hell with it | 9:02 | |
and I drove all the way to Buffalo. | 9:05 | |
This is a little long drive | 9:08 | |
for me | 9:11 | |
although I used to be able to do it without any problem | 9:12 | |
but, | 9:16 | |
I'd rather be in home | 9:17 | |
than I would sitting in some motel somewhere. | 9:21 | |
So anyhow, I drove all the way to Buffalo. | 9:24 | |
It's about 750 miles | 9:29 | |
and it took me 13 hours. | 9:32 | |
I also could not find any letter from | 9:35 | |
the Rays on their trip west. | 9:41 | |
I have seen that letter and I should have done this | 9:44 | |
before I send you this tape | 9:47 | |
but I have a lot of those papers | 9:50 | |
and I'm going to go through them this weekend | 9:52 | |
and I'll see what I've got. | 9:54 | |
I really don't think I've got that letter though | 9:56 | |
but I've got a lot on the genealogy of our family | 9:58 | |
and as I said I'll make a copy of it | 10:02 | |
and that I'll send to you in very near future. | 10:04 | |
Maybe in lieu of a Christmas card or something like that. | 10:08 | |
Not really, not really. | 10:11 | |
Leone is fixing up the house | 10:13 | |
she is going to have the ceiling | 10:15 | |
in the kitchen redone | 10:19 | |
which of course is in terrible shape. | 10:22 | |
She is going to have | 10:25 | |
gypsum wall board put over the entire ceiling | 10:28 | |
and then that will be finished and painted | 10:33 | |
and none of the cracks then of course will show. | 10:36 | |
In fact she wants to have the crack by that fireplace fixed | 10:40 | |
so I told her how to do it, | 10:44 | |
which is simply have the drywall man tape that crack | 10:48 | |
as he would a joint in drywall | 10:52 | |
because otherwise if you just patch that plaster crack | 10:57 | |
it'll come back, especially one like that. | 11:00 | |
I did make the mistake of saying that, | 11:03 | |
she asked me what it was caused from | 11:05 | |
I said, well movement in the house, | 11:07 | |
and of course now she thinks the house is going to fall down | 11:08 | |
but I reassured her that with the older movement | 11:11 | |
was because of probably her fireplace | 11:14 | |
which changes the heat in those walls | 11:17 | |
and... | 11:22 | |
undoubtedly cracks that place. | 11:24 | |
The whole house is cracked actually, | 11:26 | |
I thought many years ago, | 11:29 | |
if that house was ever left to me, | 11:31 | |
which it wasn't and which I'm glad it wasn't. | 11:32 | |
The only way you could ever fix it | 11:35 | |
would be to put drywall over every wall | 11:37 | |
and every ceiling and paint | 11:40 | |
and, you know, repaint it. | 11:42 | |
However, I don't think Leone can afford that. | 11:45 | |
Although Leone is going ahead | 11:47 | |
with fixing things up as she gets money. | 11:49 | |
For example, she had the garage doors extended | 11:54 | |
out towards the street about two feet | 11:59 | |
so that she can get her car in there. | 12:01 | |
I mean, everything she does is very logical | 12:05 | |
except that you wonder whether she has to do it | 12:08 | |
because she hasn't had it that way for several years. | 12:12 | |
However this business about the car | 12:15 | |
she couldn't get her car in the garage. | 12:17 | |
Now she could overcome that by having a compact car but, | 12:19 | |
I don't know. | 12:24 | |
I'm not going to get into a discussion on this tape | 12:26 | |
about how people spend money | 12:28 | |
because everybody spends money differently. | 12:30 | |
And... | 12:33 | |
it's so easy to criticize someone | 12:36 | |
but if they pinch in one place | 12:39 | |
so they can spend it in another | 12:40 | |
that should be their prerogative. | 12:41 | |
I think I'm a little tight so maybe I, | 12:47 | |
I pinch a little more than I spend | 12:52 | |
but nevertheless I enjoy saving money. | 12:54 | |
I guess I could be a miser | 12:59 | |
if I had enough money to be a miser with. | 13:00 | |
However, I am not as bad as brother Jim. | 13:03 | |
I'm sure. | 13:07 | |
Well that's about all the news I have on the trip to Berlin | 13:09 | |
and I don't have a great deal of news about us | 13:15 | |
other than that we are now really socializing | 13:19 | |
and going to lots of dinner parties and living it up. | 13:24 | |
When Thanksgiving comes Ginger will come over for dinner | 13:31 | |
and no one else. | 13:34 | |
We are getting a very small turkey | 13:36 | |
about nine or ten pounds | 13:38 | |
and then we don't have to freeze too much of it | 13:42 | |
because at Christmas when both Ken | 13:46 | |
and Diane are with us | 13:51 | |
along with Ginger | 13:53 | |
we'll get a big one | 13:54 | |
and we don't mind | 13:56 | |
eating that a little bit more. | 14:00 | |
Well I'm going to close. | 14:02 | |
It certainly is a beautiful day. | 14:04 | |
In fact, we've had a beautiful November | 14:06 | |
I have to say it's probably | 14:07 | |
the nicest month we've had all year, | 14:09 | |
except that of course it's a little bit on the chilly side. | 14:12 | |
But the sun is shining brightly, | 14:15 | |
there isn't a cloud in the sky | 14:18 | |
and it has been that way for the last four or five days | 14:20 | |
and it's supposed to be that way | 14:23 | |
at least through the weekend. | 14:26 | |
So the longer we do not have any snow | 14:28 | |
the better I like it. | 14:31 | |
Well, | 14:33 | |
someday I'll have to come up there | 14:36 | |
to collect all my tapes that I keep sending to you. | 14:37 | |
But I look at it this way, | 14:40 | |
I'd buy you a martini someplace | 14:42 | |
so I guess I don't mind buying a tape. | 14:44 | |
Well, that's all. | 14:52 | |
We're all fine, hope you are too. | 14:55 | |
Jack. | 14:58 |
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