Haven’t Any News: Ruby’s Letters from the Fifties

176 Pages·1995·8.84 MB·English

by  Marlene Kadar

Haven't Any News
Ruby's Letters from the Fifties
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Haven'1 Any News
Ruby's Letters from the Fifties
Letters written by Ruby Cress
Edited by her sister, Edna Staebler
With an Afterword by Marlene Kadar
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cress, Ruby, 1911-
Haven't any news : Ruby's letters from the
fifties
ISBN 0-88920-248-6
1. Cress, Ruby, 1911- - Correspondence.
2. Housewives - Ontario - Correspondence.
I. Staebler, Edna, 1906- . II. Kadar, Marlene,
1950- . III. Title.
HQ759.C74 1995 305.4'092 C95-931028-2
Copyright © 1995 Edna Staebler
Second Impression, 1995
Cover design: Jose Martucci, Design Communications
Front cover photograph: Ruby in 1954
Back cover photograph: Ruby with her family
Printed in Canada on recycled paper
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be
reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or
mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request
for photocopying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and
retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the
Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto,
Ontario M5V3S6.
Contents
Introduction to Ruby's Letters by Edna Staebler vii
Ruby's Letters by Ruby Cress 1
Addendum by Edna Staebler 157
Afterword by Marlene Kadar 159
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Introduction to
Ruby's Letters
by her sister, Edna Staebler
In our childhood family of Mother, Daddy, and my two younger
sisters, Jan and Ruby, we always told Mother everything: where we
went, what we did, and what we thought. Perhaps that is
why—when we were grown up and separated—frequently writing
letters was like talking to each other.
When Ruby married Fred in 1940 they lived in Halifax. Their
children, Sally and Billy, were born there, far from London,
Ontario, where the rest of us lived all our lives.
Ruby wrote letters home almost every week. In 1947 when
she and her little family moved to the edge of Barrie, Ontario, and
we occasionally visited one another, her letters came just as often.
She wrote about anything that came into her head: her children,
her husband, her friends, social activities, her housekeeping, food,
clothes, schemes for making money—which was scarce in her
household—her dreams for the future. She wrote: "So help me,
why don't I have talent? Why can't I write stories or paint
pictures? I'd like to do something to become famous so I could
make money and travel/' Her letters were always enthusiastic,
lively, funny, or poignant. We'd read them to each other on the
phone or pass them around. Often we saved them.
Then one day—probably in the fall of 1957 — I thought:
"Ruby IS a writer, she's writing all the time: if her letters were
edited and published other people could enjoy them as much as we
do and Ruby might earn enough money to make her dreams come
true. Wouldn't that be fabulous?"
The idea excited me. I asked Mother and Jan to save all
Ruby's letters and give them to me as they came. Throughout the
1950s they filled a carton.
/ vii
Haven't Any News
I started to work. I changed all the names of people and the
locale of the cities where we live. I didn't change Ruby's erratic
spelling or syntax. I didn't rewrite, but I did rearrange, leaving out
boring bits about household chores or some things Ruby saw
through the window when she sat writing at her kitchen table.
Many letters that were much like each other I left out altogether. I
spent over a year working on Ruby's letters. That was 40 years ago
and I can't remember everything I did or why. I just tried to make
them a good read.
Now I'm sorry to tell that in March 1959, when I was busy
with my own life and journalistic assignments, I put Ruby's edited
letters into my filing cabinet, and when I moved to my cottage on
Sunfish Lake, I burned the carton of originals!
One evening last winter after reading a prize-winning
Canadian novel about the life of a family, I was disappointed and
feeling blah. When I went to bed I took the packet of Ruby's letters
out of my cabinet drawer and started to read them. I kept reading
until two in the morning. The story of Ruby's loving, eager young
family made me feel good. The letters — intimate, cheerful, and
gutsy—made me laugh, and almost made me cry. The years since
the 1950s had given them another dimension: they were now
social history, informative, revealing, and fun to read.
I asked several English professors, a publisher, and three gener-
ations of friends and relations to read Ruby's letters: all of them told
me they couldn't put them down and wished there had been more.
Ruby didn't know I had edited her letters. Before the process of
publication could begin her permission had to be given. After she
read them she wondered if they might embarrass her two grown-up
children, if readers would think she was stupid because of her poor
spelling, if the people next door whose little boy had picked her
tulips and tomatoes might sue her for defamation of character.
Ruby was assured that all the names in the book could
remain anonymous and her family surname could be used on the
copyright page instead of her married one. With some hesitation
she agreed to the publication and now considers the book the
beginning of a great adventure. She told me, "I'll be 84 years old
and I'm not going to worry about what people say about the book.
I'm just going to dream about what I'll wear if it wins the
Governor General's Award."
viii \
Ruby's Letters
by Ruby Cress