“How do you comment on those men memorialized on such a vast scale on Stone Mountain — and honored today with a new First Day of Issue stamp?”
Rexford A. Bristol, September 19, 1970
After I read the first paragraph, my thought went into the Thanksgiving First Day of Issue envelopes because I find it very attractive, I should say, in terms of art. So I got drifted on that one.
Now, I continued reading the rest of the letter, and there is a word that I do not understand. I have to find it, which is called BlendTrol. That’s a word that I never known or heard before. As far as the envelope part, it said Stone Mountain Memorial Carving, Georgia. So there is that. I never know about this place in Georgia, and I do not know if it still exists to this day.
And we’ve been to Georgia a few times. Just to discover it right now, it’s kind of a late. However, upon researching, the Stone Mountain Park is still exists, and it looks like it is outside Atlanta. Apparently in 2023, there was talk of dropping its Confederate memorial label, and it’s still debated. And that’s been what? Three years. I wonder what will happen or if there’s something going to happen at all.
BlendTrol, which I didn’t even catch, left me speechless at first because I never heard the word. I never looked for a word on dictionary yet because the answer was already in the letter. What he was explaining was actually the meaning of the word I’ve been searching for.
And one thing I’ve been noticing on the past letters of Rexford was he used words that I never heard of, I didn’t know it exists. I think it is more of those more genuine letters, genuine words of the long gone era, which is more authentic comparing to generic words of today, for example… “how are you” comparing to “how y’all.”
This is a story of what he wrote about the Stone Mountain carving. There’s disagreement on it in terms of almost sounds like a politics. It is not about what he’s thinking. It’s about the history he known, which is kind of a strange, because this is, I believe, the first letter that I came across where there’s a contradiction.
Where the two sides of this letter pull apart, and what it left me feeling, is waiting on my Facebook page.
