Snippets: February 24, 1983

Lately, I've been slowly continuing a project I started a few years ago -- transcribing old letters I'd written, with the intention of creating a searchable digital archive. Before computers, I wrote quite a few letters, and I saved copies of many of them.

What has been particularly interesting  (to me, at least) are the bits and pieces in these letters, especially from 1983 onward, which reference the very early small steps Kevin and I were taking towards creating Mirage Studios, and the gradual acceleration of events as the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" business picked up. I wish I'd written, and saved, many more letters from those early years, but as things got busier, I had less and less time (and energy!) to do so. But these small pieces are interesting, showing as they do a kind of wide-eyed, innocent energy and naivete as we coped -- or tried to cope -- with the initial "will it work?" aspect of the business, followed by the "holy cow, I guess it DID work!" times.

The letters were mostly written to my parents (who I referred to as "Mom and Pop"), my sister Chris, my brothers Don and Bruce, and a smattering of others -- friends and business contacts. I've collected these segments, and plan to post one per day (approximately), beginning now.

This first little bit is from a letter to Mom, Pop and Chris, written on February 24, 1983:

"Chris, I like the blanket a lot. As a matter of fact my friend Kevin used it when he came down from Portland last week for a visit, and he said it was very warm and cozy. Actually Kevin may be moving down to Ogunquit soon (in the next couple of weeks) to work for the sign painter he worked for last summer), so hopefully I'll get to see him more often."

This letter was written in the sixth month of our (Jeannine's and my) two-year stay in Dover, New Hampshire. I believe at the time Kevin was living in Portland, Maine, and Ogunquit -- where Kevin had a summer job cooking lobsters at the "Johnny's Oarweed" restaurant -- was about forty miles south of Portland. 

       Having met Kevin and become friends with him in 1981, in Northampton, MA, it seemed an unexpected stroke of good fortune that, in moving to Dover with Jeannine when she started graduate school, I was suddenly within fairly easy driving distance of Kevin. And having agreed with Kevin earlier that we really wanted to collaborate on something, at some point in the future, this appeared to make that much more of a possibility. -- PL