Letters Mean a Lot

I have always looked forward to getting the mail. I used to receive several personal letters most days when my family wrote letters instead of using e-mail. I enjoy getting the e-mails also, but it does limit my daily mail to bills and advertisements. Oh yes, and the appeals for money from charitable causes come quite often too.

But some of the letters that I enjoy the most these days are letters written by some of my readers in response to one of my columns or articles. These letters give me double pleasure when they are from a friend. Even more special are the letters from friends who no longer live in Nevada, but keep in touch through the newspaper.

Yesterday Lynn, our editor, handed me a note that had been delivered to me at the Nevada Daily Mail instead of at home. It was from Margie Breneman who now lives in North Carolina, but had been a very active part of both the Nevada and Metz communities for years. She and Bill are enjoying their large family in the south, but she says she still misses her Vernon County friends.

Her letter was in response to the article I wrote about Sally Rand. Margie told me that she had a teacher at Metz (Miss Jones) who was a cousin of Sally Rand. Miss Jones, although she was a member of the Metz Methodist Church, had several pictures of the star, and talked about her to her classes and others in the community.

Margie said she hadn't thought much more about Sally Rand until the late 50s when she and Bill went to the Missouri State Fair with Howard, Louise and Keith Brown.

The women and Keith, who was 12 years old at the time, were walking around the fair looking at the exhibits while the men were looking at farm equipment. They spotted a show that said, "See Sally Rand." Because of their teacher they were interested, so they bought tickets after asking if it was OK for a 12 year old to see the show. She said that Keith was bored with the whole thing, but they enjoyed seeing how she used her fans.

I will use Margie's own words to describe it. "As best as we could tell it looked like she had on a very snug nude body suit, as she never showed the bottom half of her body. The top half, with a fast moving fan, she did show a time or two. We enjoyed the way she moved those fans. The men said they would never think about going to a show like that. We never did know if they went when we were going separate ways." As far as Margie knows, nothing was ever revealed and she said that we see a lot more skin at the beach or swimming pool all the time now.

I hope Margie won't mind that I am sharing her letter, but it so good to get follow-up on my work that I couldn't resist sharing this with the other two readers out there. It is always nice to know someone reads my stuff, but it's nicer when they aren't writing to tell me about a mistake I made. But even critical letters are welcome.

Mother Nature is revealing a little more of herself this week. We have several clusters of crocuses blooming in our lawn. But I realize that some of you may correct me to say that the word should be croci. I did look it up but I won't tell you what the dictionary said because then there wouldn't be a reason for you to write me.