March 5

"Ahh spring. There's little sign of it here, only no doubt the days are getting longer." Like I said almost every letter starts with a weather report. My dad writes that there is still snow on the ground and the town has not done a very good job clearing the roads. He really hates the cold of winter. Living in California I have to agree it is a much easier life not having to deal with cold and snow. Dad and my mom went to a local park FDR (Mohansic) to walk on the roads there which are plowed. I did this same thing with my dad when I was home over Christmas, it is a nice walk as the park road winds through the woods and there are few cars. The park was called Mohansic Park when I was little but was changed to FDR Park maybe fifteen years ago. My dad usually refers to it as "FDR park, what they used to call Mohansic" as if maybe I don't know the name had been changed.

Dad goes on to note the sad state of the economy and the unemployment rate of 7.6%. That would actually be low for California which is near 12%. He grew up during the depression so has a deep understanding and fear of just how bad things can get. I think this also causes my dad to have sympathy for me in my unemployed state since his father couldn't get steady work for several years. They are talking of closing the state parks and he notes that one park they are thinking of closing is Wonder Lake and doesn't see how that would save money. My brother, my dad and I were there three years; the park didn't even have a trail then. We bushwacked up a hill looking for the lake and used a GPS and map to finally find it. Completely lost we eventually came upon an abandoned road my dad thought we should try following. My brother argued for continuing on scrambling through the barberry covered woods. Seeing that my dad appeared fatigued I thought the road was a wiser choice and we had a heated argument about it. We did end up following the road out. A month later my dad had congested heart failure. I think we all occasionally wonder what we would have done had his heart given out in those woods.

The news at home is that a large limb fell off a locust tree and blocked part of the street. My mom is getting the gardeners to chop it off. Dad says she "has got a thing on" that the tree will fall and hit her on the head or do a lot of damage to the house. He must mean that she talks about it nonstop which she is known to do. She once had a tree fall on and smash her car, everyone has seemingly irrational fears often rooted in some prior experience.

My dad's last paragraph talks about how he used to visit Oakland in the spring to escape a week of winter. In fact he had a ticket out to California three years ago when the doctor sent him to the hospital and two days later he had heart surgery. Travel since then has been more limited but he would like to renew the habit of a week in Oakland.

Love, Dad.