Page 54 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

state; and an aged black man in Arkansas who wanted to work for his board and room. A number were lonely and wanted to be pen pals. “I get lonesome and so do you,” from Delaware.
Other samples were “With perseverance and desire would be glad to hear from you”; and “...read where you was homesteading a ranch in N.M. and was living alone and I am made to Wonder if you need a partner or have you one in viey I am a lonly man with no help mate in this life a true helpmate in this life is Worth all of this World are have you a partner in view you shurly need some hlep this life it too short to spend it a lone that far from eny one and one lonley Woman a lone may I ask you your age and Where you was raised,” from Arkansas.
Still another “I am very ConSciencious and very tender and very affectionate and tender hearted, and have no habits.”
“I am a Bapits member of church, I have some education I got to in the ninth grade and quite school and I have farme every sence. I do not have so very much but I ride a horse nearly every day.”
“I will close for this time with respect and Love.”
“You are the kind of girl I could like.” “I am putting in my claim for you.”
This was during the depression, remember, and I received one letter whose envelope was made from a grocery sack fastened together with flower-and-water paste, with Western Union blanks for paper.
Most letters were directed to me at OCW, so when some came in, the president of the college, Dr. Nash, called me into his office to get them. He was interested in their contents and I often read some of the funny ones to him to give him a good laugh. One day after I had read some especially bucolic contents to him, I said, “You know we laugh about these letters but the ones of this type make me feel cheap. I don’t know why I should react to them in that way, because they can’t be personal - people who don’t even know me. But it is true that I feel degraded in some way - shamed.”
He replied that I shouldn’t take it seriously or personally, just think of it as objectively as possible and concentrate on the types of people who were writing the letters. “Someday,” he said “you’ll really laugh at them and enjoy them without any thought of yourself as a target.”
And that’s just what happened!
I was surprised to receive a letter from a former high school history teacher, and the brother-in-law of a high school chum when I lived in Nocona, Texas, before 1921.
I received another letter from Nocona, from Frank Wood, the State Representative of Montague County. He had seen the clipping in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegraph and wanted me to know he had known my parents and my grandparents in Nocona - and was proud of me.
Ten people, all strangers to me, invited themselves to come to see me when I returned to my claim. I didn’t answer their letters. Some letters were sad but many