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A hundred years ago and a little more, when my Uncle Ralph Cummings was nineteen or twenty, he wrote a little letter to his seventeen-year-old sister and closed it with a five-word remark that I find enigmatic: “...add the same as always.”
If you, my readers, would tell me what you think Ralph meant, I shall be grateful. And I will also appreciate it if you, in 2020, can help me make some sense of a murky malice marring this month of March in modern-day America.
San Antonio, Texas
October 16, 1918
12:30PM
Miss Alice Cummings.
514 W. Washington Ave.
Madison
Wisconsin
Dear Sister: I just got your letter and as I
am writing home, will dropt you a card. I am
in the hospital now, had the Spanish influenza
but am up and around now, and hope to be back
in my company soon. I wish I were to be
home also Thanksgiving, for we havnt been to-
gether on a thanks giving day for a long while
But next year at this time I expect to be
home. Well I must close now for I shall
run out of writing space directly, add the
same as always. Bye Bye for now. Ralph.
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In Wyocena Cemetery,
Wyocena, Wisconsin,
a granite stone
is inscribed:
RALPH E
CUMMINGS
1898 — 1918
Co F 312TH
MOTOR TRUCK Co
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♦
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