Nowadays, a hand-written letter's a rare gift indeed

By JON HAHN

Tuesday, January 25, 2000

Maybe we're all gonna have to sit right down and write ourselves a letter, if we expect any personal mail. Judging by what I saw on a recent day at a local post office -- following one residential mail route from the time it was sorted to the time the mail was delivered -- nobody's writing anybody anymore. Maybe the Ink Spots had it right.

Maybe we're all gonna have to sit right down and write ourselves a letter, if we expect any personal mail. Judging by what I saw on a recent day at a local post office -- following one residential mail route from the time it was sorted to the time the mail was delivered -- nobody's writing anybody anymore.

Steve Conover, a 23-year veteran letter carrier in ZIP code 98033, said he was a little concerned that "nobody seems to write letters anymore. Even Christmas cards weren't a big deal this year."

He's not complaining, mind, because mail volumes are up substantially. Everyone seems to get more pieces of mail. But not what we like to call "real mail," the handwritten or typed first class missive from your cousin Katherine in Kalamazoo or Aunt Esther in Perth Amboy, N.J.

Oh, we get our electronic fill of e-mail. And we add to the Internet traffic by passing along mail that, judging by the signature addresses at the top, seems to have been forwarded by, and through, several dozen friends, contacts and you-name-it.

And much of it is quality communication. I get wonderfully written e-mail from some very gifted writers. But whatever happened to first class communication, handwritten on paper at the desk or the kitchen table or on a footlocker? What are we doing with all the time we're supposed to be saving by shopping on the Internet or telecommuting?

Comes pretty soon Valentine's Day, which underscores how many of us send -- or, used to send -- cards. The greeting card industry is megamillions worth of communications. But I'd wager that more Internet cards are sent daily, on average, than all the Valentines. Maybe more than all the Valentines and Christmas cards.

I am a big buyer and believer in cards, both commercial and hand-made. But every once in a while, I get a real, handwritten letter, and it makes my day. On the day after my postal route ride-along, I got a wonderful letter from an old family friend back in Illinois. She's in her mid-80s and in a nursing home, but she has the beautiful flowing calligraphy she probably learned when students used real ink pens and all the school desks had inkwells. There is an elegance in her hand that speaks gentility and graciousness.

Another friend, my closest guy-type friend, is quite computer literate. But he and his wife, who happens to be my cousin, write some of the nicest letters you could imagine. They are written on a sort of his-and-hers basis, sometimes on alternating pages and oftentimes over a period of several days. She may write a couple of paragraphs if there is a slow time (not often) on her nursing shift. And he might add his thoughts on the back, or on a separate page.

Still another shirt-tail relative, an Iowa farm wife, writes just occasionally, maybe twice a year. But she's such a strong, natural writer that I read and reread her letters over a week or so, just because they are so well crafted.

My relatives and faraway friends almost unanimously plead for me to type my letters, because my self-taught italic script looks as though it should be on cave walls in France or the Ural Mountains. But occasionally I push all the accumulated "RESIDENT" mail and bills aside and force myself to write a real letter. It's sort of like making yourself balance your checkbook with a pencil and paper instead of a $4.95 calculator.

Penmanship was my almost-failing grade in grammar school. In high school, my typing teacher gave me a red "F" (a fail warning) and said she wasn't failing me because, after all, I did have perfect attendance and I seemed to be trying hard. "But whatever you do in life, Mr. Hahn," she advised, "try to find something that doesn't require any typing."

(Note to editors: You see? I told you some of us need more time to turn in copy!)

Perhaps our reluctance to put pen to paper stems from those childhood experiences when the parentals sent us off to summer camp with the preaddressed, stamped envelopes, telling us that if we didn't write, there'd be hell to pay when we got off the bus. And like all that clean underwear they also sent along, the envelopes came home unsullied, untouched. I know, having recently found in a desk drawer some stamped envelopes which, judging by the postage, must have been sent off with the Heir Apparent more than a decade ago.

Old letters, if you're lucky enough to find any stuck away in a box somewhere, are amazing windows into the lives and times of our parents and grandparents and beyond. Those letters from soldiers at boot camp or in faraway places during long-ago wars are amazing documents that reduce a world war to the common denominator of the common man.

And letters from a loved one away from home, for whatever reason, seem to crystallize those thoughts and emotions that are sometimes hard to actually say.

That's probably why love letters are often kept for years, hidden away in some special place because the thoughts they express are so very, very special.

I once told a friend that in a way, many of my columns are love letters. Sometimes I reach down inside myself and share something personal. And it becomes a shared personal experience with you . . . sort of a love letter.

And sometimes I write a column that is, pure and simple, a love letter.

But only she knows for sure.

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