Charlotte, Jan 8, 1928.

Dear Lillian,

The great event has occurred. At 6a.m. today in community hospital a baby boy weight 6lbs with blue eyes and red hair was born to Mr. and Mrs. Gaffery, both mother and child right as can be. Don was sick half of last week, I had to treat him four times. His grandfather died Wed at Saranac¹. His new man, Mr. Kimball, I believe, took his mother to Saranac for the funeral², wore out a set of chains on country roads. Don’s mother planned to keep house while Mary was in the hospital. I don’t know if she returned.

We’ll try to mail your uke³ in a couple of days, soon as I can get the pillow made for Mabel. Theo came over and helped me all day Friday so I finished the brown coat and wore it to club. Mrs. Carrick spoke on “The New Education”. Sadie made Helen’s sleeves Wednesday. She had a hard time getting home, three cars were behind hers and men pushed to get her out of the way. When at last corner this side of home she sent Paul after a horse to draw the car through the rest of the drifts⁴. When he was putting the horse in the barn she fell in deep snow in such a position she could not get up. She yelled for help. Harry, in the house heard her and thought her voice was the yowling of a cat. Paul had to go to the rescue again. What she said when she entered the house was plenty.

She and Harry furnished excitement for the family and neighbor again Sat morn. She rose at 5 o’clock and started for B.C at six to get her best. He was released from work an hour early and took a bus for Charlotte. He came here not finding her here as he had expected, went to a phone and tried to call her. He could get no one at home or at Coopers and came back here for breakfast cussing the phone service. Later he found out she had gone to B.C.⁵ and rode home with the milkman.

Meanwhile, she had tried one after another the homes of all the relatives in Battle Creek, Madeline, Alvary, Hallo ect, without any luck. About four o’clock both walked in here I asked them if they had really found each other? I bought two and one-half dozen eggs of her and paid her $3 for the sewing she did on your dress.

One Charlotte teacher had an operation during the holidays and resigned. The sub was sick on acct of vaccination, hence they hired some one immediately available. Don’t know what subjects she has to teach High School work, I believe. Here’s hoping later. Dad is anxious to know if you and Pauline had work last week.

I did a whopper of a mashing yesterday. The girls cleaned up and got meals. Helen⁶ mopped the kitchen later.

We had a veal roast for dinner today. Geo asked Helen to bake him a birthday cake. She made a super chocolate, white layer with chocolate icing. He roasted the way the girls cleaned up so while talking to Theo Friday that they did a much better job Sat. Don said his picture was a gross exaggeration. By the way she saved another of those “ for you.

Henry asks me to go to church with him. It is time to get ready if I do so. Hope you got the letters Geo and I sent in to you last week. Helen and Doris have been playing duets with xylophone⁷ sounded pretty good. Henry sat right down and ordered a mouth organ⁸ for Helen. Guess I’ll get a jew’s harp⁹ for George¹⁰. Expect to help make exercise interesting,¹¹ We expected Ann today but she didn’t come tho she wrote that she might.

Lovingly,

Mother

¹Saranac- City in Michigan and New York, Believe to be Saranac, Michigan.

²By the 1920’s funeral homes were no longer located at the back of furniture stores and livery stables. They had established themselves as viable members of the business community. Yet, the public had no method for determining a firm’s reliability or quality of service. So, in 1928, a group of funeral directors concerned with identifying and honoring outstanding funeral firms throughout North America and beyond, formed The International Order of the Golden Rule. This group, commonly know as OGR, embarked on a mission to seek out, by means of a carefully devised screening process, dependable, ethnical funeral homes in every community and to establish a quality identity for those firms in the minds of families they served.

³A subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four strings, or four courses of strings.

⁴Referring to Snow Drifts

⁵Refers to Battle Creek, Michigan

⁶Helen Glasner

⁷According to Wikipedia, a xylophone is musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of wooden bars of various lengths that are struck by plastic, wooden, or rubber mallets. Each bar is tuned to a specific pitch of musical scale. The xylophone is tuned to different scale systems depending on the origin, including pentatonic, heptatonic, diatonic, or chromatic. The arrangement of the bars is generally from low (longer bars) to high (shorter bars).

⁸According to Wikipedia a Mouth Organ- Refers to a Harmonica. A free reed wind instrument. Tone’s or notes are made by blowing air into or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes (reed chambers) or multiple holes. The pressure caused by blowing or drawing air into the reed chambers causes a reed or multiple reeds to vibrate up and down creating sound. Each chamber has multiple, variable tuned brass or bronze reeds which are secured at one end and loose at the other end, the loose end vibrates and creates sound. Reeds are pre-tuned to individual tones. Each tone is determined according to the size of reed. Longer reeds make deep, low sounds and short reeds make higher-pitched sounds. On certain types of harmonica the pre-tuned reed can be changed (bending a note) to another not by blowing or drawing air strongly into the chamber.

⁹According to Wikipedia, a Jew’s Harp is thought to be one of the oldest instruments in the world. The instrument consists of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue, or reed attached to a frame.

¹⁰George Spinning

¹¹George Spinning is being treated for Polio.

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