Mendel Letters 6: Trump Plays Golf

Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.

November 22, 2020

Dear Mendel,

It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving and it’s sad because the family won’t be getting together this year because of COVID. I did run out to the supermarket at 6:30 AM this morning to get some Cornish hens. Even the birds are downsized this year. Later I will bake some apple pies to drop off with the kids tomorrow.

On Wednesday I will post my “traditional” Thanksgiving Day blog debunking the Pilgrim story as largely a myth. Maybe it will get passed on to Donald Trump in the White House, who knows, and aggravate him because he wants us to teach “patriotic” history. I’ll also send him the link as a tweet. You send “tweets” on Twitter, part of the Internet Sci-Fi magic I wrote you about.

The newspaper has a photograph of Trump golfing in Virginia while the daily rate for new COVID infections in the United States is almost 200,000 people. Somehow, 73 million people voted to reelect this guy. That’s sadder than no Thanksgiving.

Your son