Henrietta Hay's Column

For some odd reason I look forward each day to the arrival of the little white mail truck. The chances of my getting anything interesting are about 27 and a half to 1, but there is always that one chance. What we used to think of as "mail" has practically disappeared from the scene, to be replaced by what might politely be called "stuff."

Men on horseback with big leather saddlebags carried the letter from Abigail Adams to her husband John when she asked him to "remember the ladies," while he was deliberating independence in the Continental Congress. In the west the Pony Express riders galloped across the prairies, and later stagecoaches carried the mail. The Iron Horse came along and pulled the mail behind steam engines. By the days of my childhood we had two mail deliveries a day. Letters from my grandparents in Illinois arrived, I think, a week or so after they were mailed with two-cent stamps on them.

Today my mailbox is filled with bills, requests for money, and advertisements of all kinds, and catalogs, lots of catalogs. I often wonder how many trees have given up their lives to fill my mailbox for just one year. The occasional personal letter would have used up one tiny pine sapling.

People's lives are recorded in their letters and it would be tragic if that kind of personal history disappeared. But although the hand written communication, sent by mail from one person to another has pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird, intercommunication has expanded.

The invention of the typewriter doomed pen and ink. Come to think of it, as I remember the Palmer Method penmanship, which I was taught as a kid, that is probably a good thing. The computer with its word processor mortally injured the typewriter. And now the fax machine makes airplanes and trucks unnecessary for hauling most personal mail. Hey, what is this world coming to? Well -- it's not all that bad!

Although the flow of ideas from the brain through the fingers to paper sounds glamorous, the actual writing is hard work and is slow. About all I write in longhand today is the grocery list. With the word processor, ideas (if I have any) can flow from brain to machine with very little physical friction. And thanks to printers, there is still a paper trail so we can leave our thoughts for posterity even if the hard disk crashes.

When my two sons went off to college they wrote wonderful letters, which I have kept and still read occasionally when I'm feeling sentimental. They are hard, solid evidence of the value of personal correspondence, but they quit coming when the kids discovered the telephone and the phrase, "Reverse the charges."

But now, many years later, I am receiving long, beautiful letters, which were written 35,000 feet in the air. My son Dave does a lot of flying. He spends most of the time on the plane with his laptop computer, running his business and occasionally writing to dear old mom. When he gets home he either prints the letters out and mails them, or faxes them directly to my Mac.

It's hard to decide whether that is the closing of a circle or progress in a straight line, but I'll stick with the progress theory. Letters are usually longer and far more personal and detailed when they are written with the aid of a computer, simply because it's easier and so much faster. They're also a lot easier to read than most people's handwriting.

I can wax nostalgic about the good old days when we wrote by hand, but I don't really mean it. I dug out the fountain pen I wore around my neck in college and the rubber bladder is completely rotted out. That's OK, though. I probably couldn't buy any fountain pen ink anyway. This may come as a surprise to everybody under 50, but that pen had to be filled with ink out of a bottle!

People still write to each other in one way or another. I still watch for the little white mail truck and hope for a personal note hidden in all the "stuff."

Sorry, I have to quit now. I want to write a letter to my kids.