A letterfrom AP Holly to Holly and Alice Walpole

Written to Holy and Alice Walpole when our family lived in Sunset Cliffs

Please tell your Pa and Ma that they kno best what to do about coming home this summer and I shall agree with them in any decision. Meanwhile you mall all kno that if you all were to come so that ll our 6 children could be with us once more and our grandbabies too it would fill our cup of joy to overflowing. Your grandmother is not able to take an auto ride any distance east to meet you.

Now – where are those two boys? If you girls catch 'em failing to do the dishes and sweep the floors and run the errands just summon the cops and have them apprehended.

Out here hard times have caused honey raisers to cross their bees with lightening bugs so they will work all night too.

Helen is such a big beautiful girl, bigger than her beautiful sister Mary. Alice will be big too. Forrest has big feet anyhow.

Warm weather, myriads of flowers with their fragrance, the ocean, this fairy home are too lovely to describe. The mountains, orange trees, lemons, dates, avocados, olives, Eng. Walnuts, almonds, eucalyptus, acacias, and others past numbering surfeit one's capacity for enjoying. But after all there is rarest charm in your early crocus peeping courageously thro the last covering of snow, the modest violet in shady retreats, the tulips, apple blossoms, peach and cherry blossoms, wild daisies and buttercups and all the flowers of your latitude that never venture down this way. You kids will be like your mother who has always been awake to beauty everywhere.

Tuesday evening the children got hold of my scrap-books containing little letters my own children had sent me years ago, pictures of them and their playmates, letters that some little sweet-hearts had sent them, and such fun we did have. It was in that big front room looking toward the ocean seven hundred feet down the mountain The fireplace was cheery and warm and Cousin Ned was here. Some one read a little note aloud from some first-grader to Helen declaring his eternal fidelity and you should have seen Helen blush then try to hide her pretty face behind a geometry book.

Two paraquetts (I named Cecil & Sally) are in the sunny patio with the two canaries close by the fountain where the gold fish dart about in great fun. The birds sing much. Once in a while a road-runner or a quail or mocking bird comes by to pay them a visit.

O – O – here come the girls from school – the little car halts near the garage out jump the hungry school girls, run down the patio steps and with one hop and two jumps are in the kitchen with designs on the food in the refrigerator. All talk at once and its fun to see and hear them. The telephone rings no longer for he old folks – we have no business answering its ring – for if we did it would only be to hear -- “Is Mar there”? Or Helen or Forrest or Alice.

“Who is really Boss in your house?” asked the abrupt person. “Well” replied Mr Meek “Of course Henrietta assumes command of the pug-dog and canary, but I can say pretty much what I like to the gold fish.” So it is in our house.

Now seven pm. Alice washing dishes. All will listen soon to Frank Waternobbe and the Hon Arthur Chizzlebury – to me the funniest ever.

Hoping you are the same

Grandad