Penpalling - A Way Of Life

I grew up on a farm in northwestern Missouri where "country" was the name of the game and that word described nearly everything in my young life. St. Joseph, Missouri, where many of our relatives lived, was the largest city I had ever visited.

We, of course, had a radio and a newspaper, which were the bulk of our input from the rest of the world. The newspaper was called The St. Joseph News Press (which still exists today), and each Saturday there was a page simply titled, "Boys and Girls Page". I read it religiously. It was made up of letters and drawings from youngsters within the radius the newspaper served. I loved words, reading or writing them, even way back then, and also enjoyed drawing simple pictures.

However, the best outcome of the Boys and Girls page was the opportunity to write to some of the other youngsters who also made submissions. I don't remember how many pen pals I had way back then, but I was never more thrilled then when I received letters from new friends or answers to mine. Several pen pals in Missouri kept me always watching for mail time.

But what was really thrilling to a young girl who had rarely been more than 30 miles from home, were letters from France, Australia and England. This continued until I entered high school, when I, and I suppose my pen pals too, found other interests and our pen pal friendships sort of fell by the wayside.

However, my love of writing never ceased and during high school, through classmates. I acquired a number of new pen pals - all wearing military uniforms, and some of their letters traveling from foreign locations. At that point in life, I found those "pen pals" made for great romantic fantasies with which to put a teen age country girl to sleep at night - dreaming of far away places and handsome faces wearing white sailor caps.

As I aged, so did they, and again my pen pals fell by the wayside. Only two weeks after graduation, I met the young man I was to marry, and pen pals became a thing of the past as the immediate demands of being a wife and soon a mother, and eventually a secretary, put everything on the back burner. I still loved writing, but with the exception of a correspondence writing course in the early 60s, now it was mostly family letters that flowed from the pen or typewriter. Pen pals became just pleasant memories of my youth. Somehow the years whizzed by much too fast, and before you know it I was approaching retirement age.

Somewhere I read when preparing for retirement, think about what you enjoyed in your youth and young childhood - chances are you would enjoy the same thing now. Naturally writing came to mind, and about six years before I retired, I sent in a pen pal request to "Reminisce Magazine" and for that short request received 40 replies, including one regarding tape correspondence.

Again some of those fell by the wayside and some have passed on, but the remainder have been good and faithful pen pals since that time. And still, with the great anticipation I felt as a youngster, I look forward to mail, be it letters, tapes, or e-mail. My! My! How things have changed since the Boys and Girls Page was one of the highlights of my week!