"Get a Good Learning ..."

Lewis Thompson Travis sits in the barn door of the family home in Keene in October 1952, sketching ideas for the birdhouses he made and sold by the road to bring in a little extra cash. That's four years after he wrote this letter.

In the year 1905 your Dad was fourteen years old, and he was working ten hours a day for 10 cents per hour. My work was on a saw and buzz planer, a most dangerous job even for a man. We had wheelbarrows that would hold half a cord and if I staggered wheeling it the boss would swear a blue streak.

The little gift I am giving you would be one day's pay in those days. Just think this little matter over and try to realize what it was like in those days. Sure I bought a shotgun for $65.00, the gun Russ has got of mine, and that was sixty-five days work.

This is just for fun Stan, but Dad has worked forty-three years very hard, now if you can get a good learning this won't happen to you.

Dad.

(This letter was written by Lewis Thompson Travis, the father of Frank Travis, my dad, and his brother, Stan, on the occasion of Stan's fourteenth birthday in 1948. I'm guessing he included a dollar in the envelope along with the life lesson he shared. The lesson stuck. Stan grew up to become a veterinarian and my dad an electrical engineer. Russ was their half-brother.)