Florida

WEP and Sandra



Postcard from Mother to her Dad in Minnesota
A postcard from Florida to Mother's dad in Minnesota. The postcard has a pull-out insert with eighteen pictures of flowers and trees. I never heard her call or refer to him as "pa" and it seems so "Little House on the Praire-ish" to me. He built silos in Minnesota and would be gone for extended periods of time leaving the children at home to look after one another; he never remarried after his wife died of pneumonia. Mother remembers a neighbor wanting to adopt her so that Grandpa wouldn't have quite so many children to look after. When this neighbor would come over, Mother would run upstairs and hide but her dad said, no - he would never give away one of his kids and would manage just fine. But he didn't always manage and there were many lean times. When I read Angela's Ashes I was almost numb with the unrelenting accounts of poverty and hunger. I told my Mother and my aunt that I couldn't even imagine such desperate times but they both said they could - they lived them.

The poem extolling Florida's colorful flowers mentions a poinciana tree - it is a tropical tree with showy red, orange or yellow flowers. Florida must have seemed like Paradise after all those harsh Minnesota winters.