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Henry Dallimore found true love in Pottsville, Pennsylvania and emigrated there in 2006.

These are his messages back to Shorelink Community Writers.

Henry's First Message

I am quite elderly really I suppose (72 to be exact) and have recently emigrated to Pennsylvania and got married in June this year. I shall be sending "Letters from America" from time to time (in memory of Alistair Cooke), but we have been having a nice summer and fall and I have not got into the rhythm of sitting at the computer and writing. I joined Shorelink in the summer of '03 and write both prose and poetry, I started on my first novel in January 2000 but all I have written is the prologue and first paragraph of chapter one! So I doubt if it will ever get completed. My interests are railways together with most forms of transportation, digital photography and video making (no not that sort Missus!!). Since coming to America I have become a volunteer at our local library giving lessons in computer basics, digital photography and video.

Henry's "LETTER FROM AMERICA"

#31

August 1st 2010

The dog days of summer do not lend themselves to the pursuit of creative writing! We have been enjoying something of an exceptional summer with many days in the nineties and even a few in triple digits. If the humidity is up, all you want to do is sit under the air unit with a cooling drink; however today it is rather cool (74.8f on my weather station) and cloudy with rain earlier today. We are promised normal heat by Tuesday again!
Anyway, that’s my excuse for not having written a letter for the past two months and I’m sticking to it!

So what’s been going on I hear you ask; well not much as far as we are concerned. POW! is shut down until September and the schools are all out. The Gulf oil spill has been stopped and as usual it transpires that the media reporting has been somewhat exaggerated as usual. Now they seem to have “lost” several million gallons of oil somewhere along the way.
We had to let our old cat, Tinker, go last month. He was 17, a good age for a cat and it appeared that he suffered a stroke depriving the use of his legs. He is buried out at Bobby’s so we can go and visit whenever we want. In the meantime we have adopted another Maine Coon, who Joanie has named Pumpkin, from the local ASPCA. He is about a year old and has settled down well in his new home.
America has an extensive system of Interstate Highways (motorways). It was started when Eisenhower was in the White House. To drive coast to coast took over a month before the Interstate, now it is possible to drive from NY to LA in just over three days. The numbering system is that east - west routes have even numbers and north - south the odd, anything with three digits is a route connecting either main routes or a spur leading somewhere. The lowest numbers start in the south and west and the highest in the north and east.

There was an exhibition by Gear Grinders, a local car enthusiasts club yesterday. There was a lot of interesting cars to see except from one thing which seems to be missing over here; after WWII 90% of UK car production was exported to the US. The only two examples that I have seen are a ‘50’s MG and a ‘63 Triumph Spitfire. I cannot make up my mind if they either rotted away or that Americans simply didn’t bother to keep them. Having said that there weren’t that many very old cars yesterday, the oldest dated back to the ‘30’s (Ford Model A) and most were from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. I guess this was due to the American culture of planned obsolescence which existed up to about 25 years ago.

Well the clouds are breaking up and the sun will soon be out, so I’m off to get my drink from the ‘fridge and turn the air on.

Until next time.

BFN
H

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