Ben and Calvin

Before you embark on this journey, I want to tell you a few things about myself

and my family. As I said in the heading, I decided to read Dad and Calvin's letters

again last winter. I had read them 2 or 3 times before, but not in recent years, and not ever in any order. Once I started reading them this time,
I thought it a shame that my family couldn't read them too, but how?
It would be impossible to pass them around to everyone.
I needed to find a way to share them electronically.

It was too much to email copies to people. Facebook wouldn't work either.

I already write another blog about living on a small farm here in East Tennessee,

and from that came the idea of sharing these letters in a blog of their own.

I have to say that neither blog would exist had it not been

for my best friend, my mentor and my coach. Always encouraging and cheering me on.
Love you friend.

First, I hope I scanned these letters and posted them in order, but some of them may not be. If you see one out of order, please let me know and I will try to fix it. In order for them to appear on the blog in chronological order, I had to start at the end and work my way backwards to the beginning, because when you post something to a blog, the most recent thing you post is the first one you'll see at the top of the page.
I have literally read these letters frontward and backward.

Second, I scanned all the letters and their envelopes because I just like envelopes.

It meant more work, but I like the different textures of the paper, the stamps and postmarks. When I first started I couldn't figure out why the postmark date was

always a day or two behind the date on the letter. I then realized it was because the censors were reading them first before sending them on. Both boys mentioned the censors in their letters.

Third, I learned a lot about my dad and my uncle. And myself.

I get my handwriting skills from my father.
In the beginning, he wasn't very good about writing home.
In fact, there is about a 3 month window where either he didn't write home,
or the letters are missing.
According to Calvin, my daddy went to the movies every night that he could.
Which seemed to be every night.

A few other notes of interest:
Their birthday is September 11th.
My dad passed away in 1980 at the age of 55.
Oh, and my mother's name is Ruth, not Virginia.

I must have gotten my love of farming not from my Dad, but from my uncle.
I wasn't raised on a farm, but spent my childhood around theirs.

Both boys wrote home asking about their dog.
Best I could figure his name was Bow. (That handwriting thing again)

If I text or message someone and I'm being flip or making a joke,

I like to insert a "Ha" in my message.

At some point I realized my Dad does that
repeatedly in these letters.

After finishing this year long emotional journey, (that's an understatement)
it's left me with hundreds of questions.
Sadly, I have no one left to ask as all the siblings are now gone.
I wish I knew why Calvin called Dora Belle 'Chig'.
That thumping sound you hear is me kicking myself for not listening when I was
young. And for not asking as I got older. I will tell you that I remember the day I found out my daddy had a twin brother. I thought I knew all my family members, and I remember being shocked that I had an uncle I didn't know about.
Nobody, my dad included, ever talked about him.
Some things in life are just too painful.

Most of their neighbors and friends mentioned in these letters had
children that grew up to be our friends and neighbors. Some names I redacted if I felt
they were not speaking about them in a positive light.

Having said that, I want you to remember that
it was a different time, a different war, and a different enemy.
In June of 2018, it will be 75 years since these two set out on this
life altering journey, so their terminology may offend some,
but I left it in to remain true. To them, to their story, and their war.

According to Blogger, there are 195 letters posted here. There is an archive on the side of the blog to help you return to the last letter you read. The months and weeks they are listed under, however, are the months and dates that I posted them, not the date they were written by the boys. If you click on a week, a drop down list of the letters will appear and show you the dates of their letters. When you get to the bottom of a page, if you will click on 'Older Post', it will automatically take you to the next letter. I hope that helps you navigate your way through and helps you find your way back to where you left off. I don't know how long it took to scan them all. I built the blog last winter, but I didn't post anything until June or July. Lots of bugs to work out. Days that I had time to work on them were far and few between. Some days I posted 1 or 2 letters. One day I posted 28.
Some days I left my desk laughing.
Some days I left in tears swearing that I just couldn't finish it.

For the mobile phone users, there's an option at the bottom of the page on my phone to let me view in 'web version'. It shows the blog as it was originally built, and allows you to see all of the pictures I've posted on the blog.

Oh, and now everytime I raise the lid on my scanner it let's out a scream.
Ha.

Dave and Anna Hargis had 5 children.