Dorothy: A funny story, I had a penpal, so-called, in those days. You probably don't even know.

Nancy:I know what penpals are.

Dorothy: Okay. Anyway, through my mother, I had written to him all my life after my mom, I assume my mom and her mother were, those two ladies were friends.

The man's mother and my, my mother's mother. So I ended up with this fellow writing to me as a penpal once or twice a year, and he lived in Christchurch, New Zealand. So when we were in New Zealand, we had to go see him because- Wow ... and everybody thought he was my boyfriend, you know, from way back.

Heavens, no, I didn't even know him, you know? Other than a penpal. So we did go visit him. It was so funny. Um, he came to the airport to meet us, and he had a big bouquet of flowers, but neither one of us had ever seen each other, only pictures. And, uh, his wife had come, too. And she said, "Oh, he was so nervous, he couldn't sleep all night."

He was afraid he wouldn't know you and you'll never find each other. But anyway, so we visited them, and then we intended to go further down south in the South Island and ran out of time, you know? I mean, there was just too much to do and too big a place to go, but it was fun. We enjoyed [it]. It was one trip and two two countries in one trip. Which isn't a good idea. But better than nothing.

Nancy: Absolutely. That's, that's really neat that you had that penpal. So did he start, did one of his elders start off as a penpal with your mother?

Dorothy: I think my mother and his mother, or, or no, my grandmother and his mother were neighbors or something back in Scotland.

And then his mother wrote to my mother just because of the neighboring part. And then, I don't know how, I suppose my mom got too busy. I read the letters and she said  in school, that was one thing we did, grade school. We had a penpal. Well, I was really important. I had one in another country.

Nancy: That's amazing.

Dorothy: It was so funny. 

Nancy: That is quite remarkable, and I just think about how long it would take a letter with a stamp on it to get literally halfway around the world.

Dorothy: It is. And if it didn't go, if you didn't put an airmail stamp on it went on a ship.

Nancy: It would, a long journey.

Dorothy: And that, yeah. And that, I don't know, how many, how many weeks, months that would've taken.

Nancy: Did he ever come to visit you in Wyoming?

Dorothy: He came once.

Nancy: What was that like?

Dorothy: He was, I don't know, he  didn't think much of Wyoming. He just came once and stayed a very short time. Well, he was on his way elsewhere in the United States, so, it was kind of like we were doing him, you know, just a stopover.

But he finally divorced from his wife and moved back to Scotland. And then I didn't hear from him ever again.

Nancy: Wow. That's amazing.

Nancy: Yeah, it's hard for me even to know what to do with that because that's an amazing story about having that kind of penpal that started from your mother and his grandmother and his mother. Just halfway around the world. That's amazing.

Dorothy: Well, you know, I assume the reason those things were more popular, there weren't cell phones, there wasn't TV, there wasn't anything, but writing a letter.

Nancy: I remember, I think it was fourth grade, I haven't thought about it probably since then, and so my memories are very vague.

I'm almost positive we had a penpal project. That’s all that we were required, and they had lists, and you picked someone and you wrote them a letter. And then in college, I went to college right around the time that email started.

Dorothy: Oh, did you?

Nancy: And so I was in a college class where we were required to have an email penpal. 

Dorothy: Really?

Nancy: For the semester. And I want to say that my penpal might have been in Australia. Again, it's been so long, I haven't thought of it. So I've had a letter penpal and an email penpal. 

Dorothy: I've never had an email penpal, but I've certainly had a letter one..

Nancy: That's really neat.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.