Thomas Arcala - Letter from Missouri

My dad and his wife Penny moved from California to St. Peters, Missouri, during my senior year of high school.  He said the hardest part of selling his Long Beach home was painting over all my "art" work on the walls. He said that it used to make him so mad when I would color on the walls, yet it broke his heart to have to paint over it all to sell his house.

As a child, I would get punished for that artwork, which included all my family names (I love Dad, I love Mom, Mimi, Jeri, Tommy, April).  I drew pictures as well as scribbled, used stampers and stamp pads, added stickers, etc.  I had my pencils and crayons taken away from me, and still found ways of adding graffiti to the house using other objects like quarters, the chain from our "oil lamp" and the chain from our hanging living room lamps.  I made stars, hearts, swirls and lines.  I drew with lipstick, too.  Imagine the horror of being a parent of a habitual graffiti artist child!

When my dad moved, we didn't talk a whole lot on the phone.  I've never been a phone person.  My dad was the type of person who could talk for hours and hours, phone or in person.  It was better to just write me a letter, because I would be sure to pay attention to each and everything that was said.

My dad wrote me a fairly long letter, and over the years I've lost the rest of the letter.  I keep this page behind a picture of him in a photo frame.  This was the first page.