Pen Pal Letter - 1957

Me with "Gindy" the cat - 1957

Digging through my Letter Box yesterday I came across this pen pal letter that I sent in 1957.  Of course I don't have original copies of my hundreds of pen pals letters, they are probably long gone scattered as they are over the continental United States and a few in Germany and Japan.  The only reason I have this original copy of my letter was because it was returned because of an invalid address.

I don't know about you but I find this letter very interesting on several levels.  First was that I wrote it on PINK stationery!  Hey, I knew I was gay in 1957 when I was 16 years old.  Sixteen years old?  Was I ever that young?  Wow.

Secondly, note that I wrote in PURPLE ink.  What was THAT all about?  How GAY WAS I?

WHO IS THIS PERSON?

Reading the letter one wouldn't think I was gay.  I'm full of compliments for "Eleanor."  Hey, I was trying.

For those of you who can't read my backward slant handwriting of 55 years ago, here's a translation:

Miss Eleanor Gonzales
502 West Main
Ulvade, Texas

South Chestnut St.
Downingtown, Pa.
November 25, 1957

Dear Eleanor,

      Hi.  I don't know quite how to start of this letter.  I gues there is one thing I'd better say though, I would like to be pen pals with you.

     All of this I am doing now is completly (sic) against my rules of course.  I have enough pen pals to do me but when I saw your picture in "DIG" I thought maybe there was a slight chance.  To me, yu looked like the nicest girl on all the two pages of "Paper Mates."  Man!  I bet I really sound corny!

     The main things for you to remember about me is that I am 6'3", 160 lbs., brown hair & eyes and just turned 16.  I have a fairly good sense of humor.  I like "Rocknroll" like most teenagers.  I also like to ice skate, play baseball, and basketball.  I don't play football beings I'm in band (which I think is more fun)  I am sports editor of the Blue & Gold newspaper)  I have also been class president for the Freshman & Junior class (one I'm in now). Don't ask me what happened last year.  All I know is that I got beat!

     My religion is Protestant (Baptist).  I have two brothers Isaac 14 and John 13.

     Well, I know you have a lot of letters to read and write so I won't hold you any longer.

                                                                        In sincere friendship,

                                                                        Ronald Tipton
                                                                        (Ronnie)
P.S.
You promised to answer all letters but if you don't like me then by all means don't answer this letter. O.K.?

P.S.

I lied about being class president and ice skating and playing baseball and basketball.  I never ice skated in my life unless you can count that time I "skated" on my ankles the first and only time I ice skated.  However, I did play in band and was the sports editor of my high school newspaper.  To be quite frank I'm surprised that I felt the need to lie about being class president.  I tell it like it now baby, like it is.

Ron the Writer - 1957

Ron (me) - 1957 - "pen pal" picture

Regular readers of this blog know that I LIKE to write.  Do you know how long I've been writing?  A LONG TIME!

When I was in high school I had fifty-seven pen pals around the country and the world.  Some of my friends and relatives thought I was a loser because I had pen pals and no friends.  They were wrong.  I had friends but I also had a curiosity about other people who lived in other parts of the country and world.  Not much has changed has it?  Now I have a blog that I write and make friends with in other parts of the country.

Recently my friend Larry sent me a copy of a letter that I wrote to him.  I wrote this letter September 12, 1957, 57 years ago!  That's older than most of the readers of this blog!  Wow, I am one OLD DUDE.  I wrote to Larry about my new pen pal named "Chico" in Los Angeles, California.  I remember nothing about "Chico" or this letter now but I do remember I had a load of pen pals.  I always looked forward to checking my Post Office box 212 to see how many letters were there from my pen pal friends.

That letter is below.  Read it and tell me if my style has changed.  Do you think?

(Click once to enlarge)

Letters

When I was sixteenyears old, my father built me a wooden box to hold my pen pal letters.  The year was 1958 and I had been writing to pen pals since I was twelve years old.  I had a lot of letters.  There was nothing fancy about the box but I so appreciated him building it for me.  It was one of the few times in his life that he showed he cared for me.

Over the years I have used this box to store my letters.  For the past fifty-four years I have rarely gone into that box.  Why did I save those letters?  Now I know why.

A few months ago my longtime friend Larry and I decided to write our autobiographies.  Larry and I are the same age.  We became friends when we were in third grade in elementary school.  We were best friends until 1963 when we had a disagreement (mostly my fault) when I came out.  Larry is straight, I am gay.  I won't go into the details of that disagreement at this time, that is a subject for another blog (or several).  We renewed our friendship again after Larry's mother sent me a Thanksgiving card in 2001 suggesting that I get in touch with Larry because he was feeling pretty low after losing his banking job.  Since I had also lost my banking job (I worked in Philadelphia, PA and Larry worked in Wilmington, DE), she thought I could uplift his spirits.  I contacted Larry and we have renewed our friendship.

Ron Tipton 1959 Graduation Photo

Larry Meredith 1959 Graduation Photo

I am very happy to say that today, with the exception of my Bill (my spouse), Larry is my best friend.  Larry knows me as I am, the good and bad.  What makes him my good friend is that he accepts me as I am.  He doesn't run for the exits just because something I did offended or angered him.  Larry is a True Friend.

Larry and I talk to each other almost everyday on FaceTime.  A month ago we decided that now is the time to write our autobiographies as blog entries.  Both of us have separate blogs specifically for our autobiography entries.

Larry Meredith - Civilian 1962

Ron Tipton - Army Private 1962

Both of us were having some trouble remembering names and dates for certain events early in our lives.  That's when I had the wonderful idea of copying Larry's letters to me and sending them to him by e-mail.

This has turned out to be a very interesting endeavor.  For one thing we are coming up with names and dates to match those names.  The downside is we are also reliving experiences that were best forgotten. Indeed, this is proving to be a very interesting experience.

This morning I took out the box that my father built for me lo those many years ago to hold my letters and took all the letters out and spread them on my bedroom floor.  Wow, what memories.  I have letters from old affairs.  I have letters from girlfriends who are berating me for "dropping them like a hot potato".  Ironically, most of the girls I don't remember.  However, I remember all the guys, ALL OF THEM.  Now that tells me something.  What it tells me is that I am 100% gay.

So here is the deal.  I will eventually scanned all these letters (or at least most of them) into my computer.  I realize that when I die, whoever goes through my things will throw out these letters.  I know they are of no interest to anyone but myself.  But I still feel the need to memorialize my past history.  I plan to eventually put all those letters in book form.  Who knows?  Maybe fifty or hundred years from now someone will find them of interest.

Ron Tipton - Retired 2012

Larry Meredith - Retired 2012

I remember well when I worked in my bank trust department and I came across a series of letters written by an old farmer who wrote about his childhood on his farm in the late early 1900's.  He wrote his history on a dozen pages of notebook paper in longhand.  I found reading it fascinating.  After reading it, I wanted to read more.  At that time I decided that if I ever wrote my personal history I would provide more detail.

I feel good about this.

Pen Pals

Mamie Van Doren - one of the perfect beautiful women of the Fifties

Back in my Previous Life, aka prehistoric times, I used to be a teenager.  Yes, I too was once young.  


Back in those teenage years I was one of many Lonely Teenagers of the Fifties.  And being gay (known as 'queer' or 'homo' in the Eisenhower Fifties) I was doubly lonely.  So where did I seek friendship?  It was through pen pals.


I was a newspaper boy.  I loved that job.  I will have to write about my paperboy days in another blog.  Every day after school I would pick up my 60 or so Philadelphia Evening Bulletin newspapers for my paper route from the Same Charles News Agency in downtown Downingtown (a suburban town of 5,000 thirty-seven miles west of Philadelphia).   I was 15 years old at the time.  The year was 1957, right smack dab in the Oh So Conservative Fifties.  


When I would pick up my allotment of Evening Bulletin newspapers I would also peruse the comic book and magazine display which was directly above where the newspapers were stacked.  I was a comic book whore.  I collected all the comic books.  In fact, most of the money I earned as a paperboy was spent on either comic books, candy or developing black and white pictures that I took with my $5.00 Kodak Brownie camera.  Yes sir ree, the Fifties were MY TIME.  I LOVED IT!


One day I spied a new teenage magazine.  It was called 'DIG.'  I flipped through it and was immediately drawn to the pen pal section.  Hey, here was something I could get into.  I always liked writing plus I liked to receive mail.  Hey, I would put my own ad in this magazine!  


I read over the other ads and tried to get the wording just right so I would catch the attention of the maximum number of potential pen pals.  I guess what I was hoping for was to find someone like myself.  Much like I'm doing now with this blog.  I was look for another me.  


I got my wording down and sent in my ad.  Then I anxiously awaited the publication of my ad.  For the next three months I would buy the new issue of Dig only to see that my ad wasn't in the magazine.  I remember how disappointed I was.  But then it happened.  The four month after I sent in my ad they published it!  

Oh excitement!  I still feel a rush of butterflies in my stomach to this day when I remember how thrilled I was when I saw my ad in print.  In the next week the letters started to pour in.  Wow!  How exciting.  I had my address as our family's post office box (P.O. Box 212, I still remember it to this day!)  


When my family and friends found out that I was receiving letters from pen pals they either mocked me or asked "Why? Don't you have any real friends?"  I remember very clearly my good friend Bill B. rarely missed a chance to make fun of me for having pen pals.  That hurt.  What really hurt was my great-aunt Grace asking my Mother "Why does Ronnie need pen pals?  Doesn't he have any friends?"  Well, actually I didn't have a whole lot of friends.  I always worked after school.  I was a paper boy from the time I was in the third grade.  At one time I had three jobs after school:  

1. Paperboy - every night including Sunday morning
2. Clean offices - every night
3. Butcher market - I worked the front counter at the farmer's market on the weekends

I was a busy teenager.  I didn't have time to hang out at Guinta's, the local soda fountain which is what most 'yon teens' did during my high school years.  Not that I'm complaining, I'm not.  It's just that any money I had I earned.  I never received an allowance. I wasn't one of the Fortunate Sons like my classmate who liked to make fun of me for having pen pals.  Yes, I know he reads this blog but that is what happened.  Sorry Bill, the facts are the facts.

Just a Lonely Boy and his Cat 1958

So my big excitement was pen pals.  At one time I had sixty-eight pen pals.  I faithfully answered all the letters that I received every day.  Most of my pen pals were young girls.  I guess I was the Justin Beiber of my day because I was very popular with the girls.  I was sort of cute in a dorky kind of way in those days just like Justin is today.  Plus I had a nice smile, even if I did have one small tooth right in the front which I was always self conscious about (I got that fixed when I was an adult hence the toothy smiles of my later years.)  

Every now and then I would get a male pen pal.  Two that I remember clearly was Wolfgang.  He was my pen pal from Germany.  Somewhere I have a picture of him that I haven't scanned into my computer.  He wasn't cute.  

Toshio Obo 1958

I had another male pen pal, his name was Toshio Obo.   He was from Japan and very cute (although I'm not into Asians).  Toshiba would write to me partially in Japanese and English.  He sent me a very nice devil's head pin with diamonds in the yes as a gift.  I still have it.  I don't remember what we wrote about.  Mostly what we did that week.  Nothing earth-shattering (no pun intended considering the situation in Japan this past week).  

I had another pen pal in Wisconsin.  I think he was gay because he always wrote about how he wanted to be a woman's hair stylist.  I missed my gay card on that one too.  I never wanted to be a hairdresser so we had nothing in common and I stopped writing to him.  

Nancyi Jo Stoker 1958

I enjoyed my 'girlfriends".  I had a favorite.  Her name was Nancy Jo Stoker and she lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  I wrote to her long after I discontinued writing to all my other pen pals when I left high school and joined the Army.  Sometime during my three years in the Army our correspondence dropped off too. I don't know who stopped writing first, the relationship just drifted apart.  Maybe someone will do a Google search and find her name in this blog posting and contact me.  That would be cool.  I always liked Nanci and wondered what she did with her life.

My last picture of Nancy - sent to me while I was in the Army

After I got out of the Army I looked for my stash of comic books and Dig magazines.  Much to my distress I discovered that my Mother had burned all my comic books (many of which were of the 'Crypt Keeper' variety) and Dig magazines.  That was my Mom, deciding what I should read and not read.  As much as I love her, that is one reason I left home as soon as I could and why, when I got out of the Army I didn't live at home.  I needed my freedom.  I vowed to never again have anyone censor me or make decisions for how I live my life.  

The picture of the Dig magazine pictured on this blog was supplied by my good friend (and former boss) from my working days at Girard/Mellon Bank in Philadelphia, Bill P.  This 'Bill' appreciates the value of collection.  He has an extensive collection of Do-Woop 45's from the Fifties.  This Bill does not mock my predilection for pen pals or any other type of collections. He understands.  He has never mocked me.

Thank you Bill, I will always value your friendship to the end of my days.  Through our twenty-two years working together and now our continuing friendship in retirement you have made my life so much richer.

By the way, I only intended this posting to be a few paragraphs but I do seem to run on and on don't I?  Well, that's me.  Now you see why I like to write and why I love to blog.  I will do this until my fingers no longer can tap out the letters on my keyboard.  

I love the new friends I have made through my blogging.  I may be an old geezer now who talks too much of my past but I still have a very active life and I plan to keep writing about it.  Thanks for stopping by for the visit and reading about my life.  

Why I Blog

This evening Bill and I had dinner at our home with our good friend Bob C. While many subjects were covered, the subject of my blogging came up. Bob C. stated that he wouldn’t blog. He didn’t see the need for it. I understand that. Bill also doesn’t see the need for him to blog. I also understand why Bill doesn’t feel compelled to blog. I tried to explain to them why I like to blog. It’s very simple, I love to write. Both Bob and Bill said they don’t want the world to know about their lives. I’m different. I do want the world to know about my life. Some may see that as arrogant or selfish. I see it as a compelling need within me that I am required to fulfill.

While I’ve never had formal training in writing (and it shows), I have always had that need to write from the time I was a teenager. At one time I had 57 pen pals around the world. One of my special joys was to check my Post Office box (212) and see envelopes with the different postage stamps from my friends across the country and even some from foreign lands (Japan and Germany.) Looking back on it, I don’t remember anything special that I wrote about except my daily activities, much as I do now. But I did get a great deal of satisfaction from writing my letters and receiving them from my many friends from far away places.

When I joined the Army at 18 years old I had to give up most of my pen pals. I kept one, Nancy Jo Stoker of Waterloo, Iowa. I continued to write to her most of the three years I was in the Army, but at sometime I even let that correspondence lapse. While in the Army I received letters from my Mother, and my three best friends, Bill B., Larry M. and Bob Mc. I still have those letters. After I left the Army those correspondences ended.

In July of 1964 I met my life partner, Bill K. He lived in Pennsauken, New Jersey and I lived in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. We would meet on the weekends. During the week I would write him a letter….every day. I did that from July 1964 to March 1, 1965, when I moved in with him. He still has those letters. On occasion I have read those letters. The content was the same, an accounting my daily activities. It is interesting now to read what was my concerns back then in the 60’s. Also interesting is how my handwriting has changed over the years.

During a ten year period from 1972 to 1981 I kept a personal diary in one of those dated year books I purchased at the Woolworth store on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. I recorded the years I lived in center city Philadelphia. I faithfully recorded my daily activities in that diary. I would feel incomplete when I didn’t make a daily entry. It was rare that I missed a day. I stopped keeping a diary when an acquaintance, who I let stay in my apartment in Philadelphia, discovered them. This was someone who was homeless and I let stay in my apartment (which I had leased for a year while my house in Pennsylvania was being built) until he found another home. Unfortunately, I had to ask this person to leave my apartment when found out he was stealing from me. A few weeks later he attempted to blackmail me by divulging the contents of my diary. He was unsuccessful in his blackmail attempts but I did stop keeping my diary.

Last year, in July, I decided to start a daily diary (or journal as the cover of the book says) again. I’ve been making daily entries in it since that date. I can’t explain exactly why I feel this need to write. Maybe it’s because I’m at the end of my life now. I do know it gives me a feeling of completeness and that I matter. We all matter. All of us lead interesting lives. There are no dull lives. I often think that maybe someday in the future someone will read my journals and get a feel of what life was like here in the beginning of the 21st century. I read my journals that I kept back in the 70’s and I get the full flavor of what life was like in the 70’s. It was a wonderful time for me as a gay man in the full prime of my youth. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the 70’s were a time of liberation for gay men and women. With the onset of the 80’s and the AIDS epidemic my world changed forever. It was only by coincidence I had already decided to move from center city Philadelphia to a suburban home in Chester County, Pennsylvania. That period ended a chapter of my life.

The whole time I lived in Pennsylvania, twenty five years (from 1981 to 2006), I didn’t keep any journals of my life. That period of my life exists now only in my memory. No written record exists of it unless I decide to write about it before I pass from this earth.

Retiring and moving to Delaware is probably the last chapter of my life. This blog of mine, Retired in Delaware will give someone in the future of what life was like for this one person in Delaware. Some paint a beautiful picture and leave that as their legacy to the future. Some of those artists are not formally trained but their art is just as appreciated by many as well as full filling a personal need within themselves. While I may lack formal training, I forge ahead. Writing full fills a deep need within me. My writing is proof that I existed, that I mattered. Writing is my legacy to the future.