Letters From New York
Monday November 13th 1967
Dear Mum,
Thought I’d help Bill out a bit tonight and start your letter. He has gone to Carnegie Hall so expect he will have a pretty late night. Your letter arrived on time last Friday. It is always good to hear from you.
I have had Cathy & Phillip home from school today with bad coughs. Michael has been coughing tonight too. The rest of the family are well and little Helen is growing day by day. She is gorgeous. Thank you for Cathy & Anthony’s birthday cards they were very pleased with them. Both parties went off very well & they got some lovely presents. Bill and I are going out this week looking for Christmas presents for all the Children. With 6 of them now it is going to be quite a task. How is Margaret? Hope she is feeling better now that she has left work.
Bill didn’t do any good in the Melbourne cup. He ran a sweep at the U.N. & Pat Travis won it. Wish we could win it one year. Well, I will leave the rest for Bill. I am very tired & it is nearly 10:30 now. God bless and look after yourselves. Lots of Love Joan xxxxxxxx.
Must have missed seeing Joan off to bed. I have just walked in and the household is quiet except for the occasional cough or two now and again. The weather has been quite bad for coughs which fortunately have not settled on our chests. Everyone except Joan and Helen had a bout of the splutters caused from a dry ticklish throat and Phillip and Michael have had particularly bad bouts. [text cut – Jenny & Michael had a gastric thing – apparently due to too many party goodies]. Both birthday children had magnificent parties. Cathy scored well in the clothing line (and was perfectly happy with that) and really looked quite beautiful and is growing up into quite a flowering young lady; the fussing mother type and regular fashion plate. The girls at her party had quite a Ball, the party being celebrated on Wednesday, the day before her birthday as four of her guests were unavailable for THE DAY. Joan made her a lovely quilted nylon dressing gown; we had, of course also brought her Brownies uniform and, on the Thursday, we surprised her with a quite lovely plastic tea set.
Anthony’s day on Saturday went off quite nicely with some eight of his schoolmates in. It was quite a houseful but they were very well behaved and he fared exceptionally well. Loads of art supplies, of course, a model kit of the USA’s Gemini Spacecraft; a fine book and a couple of model cars in which he’s recently been showing interest. We got him an art set ourselves plus a miniature microscope & helped him to finance a dissection kit all of which were very well received. To get them out of Joan’s hair for a while before the party, I had the four “oldies” out in the morning doing the rounds of the stores – shopping for Xmas ideas. They had plenty!
[Text cut – Dad talks about his night at Carnegie Hall – he seems to have enjoyed it]. …and out we went to see a leading N.Y team do battle supported by all sorts of sideshows, bands, dancing girls & cheer leaders etc. It must have been effective, however, as despite rain, they won.
Have a meeting tomorrow night – short but sweet, I hope, and parties to attend on Wednesday & Friday nights. Wednesday I’m taking Joan out window shopping for Xmas presents and on Thursday she’s coming into town to browse around. The time is fast getting away & seems it won’t be any time before it’s next year. [More text cut out – I think we had another social gathering at the Dwyer house] …it insisted we be their guests the evening before. What with those two nights; Joan’s Wednesday party doings for Cathy & Anthony’s party on Saturday we were quite wrecked by Sat. eve. Now midnight so will close. Oodles of love & best wishes from all of us, Bill xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx