Thank you for the See's Candies, VJ Bales!
Lately I’ve been pretty repelled by online life and, sad to say, disinterested in spending my limited free time publishing my thoughts on bigislandchronicle.com.
Today my husband came home with the mail and, in the pile, there was a box from See’s Candies. The label read, “To Tiffany Edwards Hunt and family, Thanks for everything! Velma Bales.”
Velma Bales?! Could this be VJ Bales, who was the lifestyles editor for the Laramie Daily Boomerang when I worked there as a general assignment reporter? We worked together in that newsroom more than a dozen years ago!
VJ Bales was such an inspiration to me. I flash back to her, wearing her big-brimmed hats, dark sunglasses, and thick foundation. I loved listening to her talk on the phone and hearing her hearty and infectious laugh resound through the newsroom. I flashed on images of her in the Boomerang newsroom as I read the See’s Candies label.
I was completely dumbfounded. I have not spoken to this woman in years. My brain just could not compute the fact that she had sent my family and me three boxes of chocolates from See’s, expressing gratitude to me.
I ate the candy and tried to Google information about VJ. Nothing came up. I tried variations of “Velma Bales” and “VJ Bales” and “VJ Reckling Bales” with “Laramie, Wyoming” in the search box. The most I could find via Google was a Sept. 29, 1964 Lusk Herald obituary on VJ’s father, Dr. Walter Ervin “Doc” Reckling. He was a physician and surgeon and community servant in Lusk, Wyoming, where my grandmother taught school for ranch families at one time.
I also found Velma Bales listed in the bibliography section of June Willson Read’s book on “Frontier Madam: The Life of Dell Burke, Lady of Lusk.”
Following my Internet search, I opted to try the telephone, calling directory assistance for Laramie, Wyoming. Within a few minutes, I was dialing VJ’s number. Then there was VJ answering the phone. It felt like I was calling a ghost! It was haunting but intriguing all the same. As soon as I heard her alive and well, I shouted, “VJ Bales!” into the telephone. ”You must be 94!” Oops, I aged her by 10 years with my bad math. We had a wonderful visit on the telephone, going back a dozen years, and making a connection beyond our newspapering.
I honestly don’t know how we got on to the topic but, turns out, Velma Bales knew Ralph McWhinnie, a University of Wyoming registrar who wrote, “Those Good Years at Wyoming U.” When VJ first said Ralph McWhinnie’s name, I was just as floored as I was to receive the See’s Candies box in the mail from her.
Ralph McWhinnie’s great niece is a friend of mine who I met while attending University of Wyoming in the early 1990s and who has in the last couple of months come to live out here in the islands.
If Velma was a friend on Facebook, she would have read about that in one of my status updates. But Velma isn’t connected to the Internet at all. She hasn’t even seen this website. She gave me a dismissing laugh when I teased her about not having an iPhone. She doesn’t have a computer. She doesn’t even have a working television, she said. She said she gave up technology when she retired from the Laramie Daily Boomerang. These days she uses a typewriter to work on drafts of a biography about her father. She laughingly recalled a guy I don’t remember from the Boomerang back shop about being able to revisit the lineotype machine to set type.
Throughout our phone conversation, I was trying to figure out why Velma thanked me with three boxes of chocolates. She said she appreciated my friendship at the Boomerang, things I said to her then, and my accomplishments since then as a writer. She urged me to update my address and share my accomplishmemts with the University of Wyoming Alumni Association. She said she knew my address at one time thanks to the Alumni Association, but her brother had to obtain my address “with his resources”, I presume she meant the internet, for her to be able to send the chocolates.
What a flashback from the past and generally an inspiring conversation this holiday weekend! I can picture VJ Bales, nestled in her old brick house on Park, hunched over a typewriter, trying to find the right words to lead into details about the life of Dr. Reckling. It’s nice to be reminded of Velma — or, VJ, as I know her. Her byline was “VJ Bales,” and she was the one who knew about all the births, deaths, weddings, commendations and social occasions in Laramie for decades.
VJ was actually the one who taught me about community journalism and who gave me the book entitled, “Community Journalism: A Way of Life by Bruce Kennedy.”
How appropriate that one of my long-lost journalism grandmothers contact me at this time, reminding me of how I came to get involved in journalism and what it means to me, online and offline. In recent weeks I have been questioning this writing life in the age of the Internet. I’ve had these ideations of dropping out of cyber life and rediscovering my handwriting with journaling. But then Velma reminded me of the romantic life of the typewriter! I just have to wonder, where does she get her ribbon?
I guess we can thank the internet that VJ’s brother found my mailing address. Now VJ and I are going to be pen pals, and I can rediscover the virtue hand-writing by catching her up on the last 12 years. Time to get working on VJ’s thank-you card. I’ll include this writing.
Chalk it up as one of the many perils of blogging, I suppose.
