Woody Guthrie to Arlo Guthrie

This is a letter in a book called Posterity....the whole book is letters from famous parents to their children.

Stricken with a horrific disease of the nervous system, Woody Guthrie, on a visit home from the hospital, once took his young son, Arlo out into the backyard alone. He was hardly able to hold his guitar anymore, but he knew the random jerky movements and mental imbalance caused by Huntington's chorea would only grow worse. There wasn't much time left and the "Father of Folk Music," the writer of more than a thousand songs for the people, wanted to be sure his son knew and would never forget tyhe last verses of "This land is your Land." It begins with the "ribbon of highway," the "endless skyway," and the "sparkling sands of her diamond deserts," but Woody Guthrie feared the world would forget his ending, and his original intent.

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I saw my people-
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

Guthrie was a man who knew hardship. His early childhood was spent in Dust bowl Oklahoma, where his father's business went bankrupt, his sister was killed in a freak explosion, and his mother was institutionalized with the same hereditary disease with which Guthrie himsself was later afflicted. He had lived in poverty, had troubles with alcohol, three times failed at marriage, and suffered the death of his four-year-old daughter, Cathy. And yet there was always an enduring optimism to Woody Guthrie and his work. To the wage earner, to the laborer, and to the ordinary American he said, "I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work."

Here fourty-four year old Woody Guthrie writes from a state institution to nine-year old Arlo, who was born with a weak eye. The letter was written in September. By December Guthrie had send his last piece of correspondence. He survived in the hospital for another eleven years, suffering the rampages of the disease that eventually rendered him immobile, unable to speak, read, or use his hands.

Deary Arlo Davy,
Of course now concernign you adn the weakerly nearly blinded eye of yours all that I or all that anybody cood tell you is for you just to pray your very head off for god your heavenly father your maker and your creator to heal you to heal you the same as I do pray every minnit here for god to heal me of all my bad wrongs I've done in my lifetime for god to heal me of all my sicknesses I have here just as bad as you have there god hits us all god makes us all every living man and woman among us all just every bit as baddy sick as you are with your weakedy blinded eye your're not the only one god has knocked down sick with your weaky eye all of us when you come right down to it all of us are just every bit as weakened here in some way or the other maybe lots lots blindeyer sicker weaklyer than you are no person living is ever perfect we are all as weakledy sickedy as you are so don't feel like you're teh only sicky one here on god's earth Don't whine to god Don't even complain one little bitsy word back to god Be silent Be quiet Be thankyful Be faithyful Be grateful Be gaylyful Be Joydyful Be thankenful to god for giving you your very very life on gods earthy here anyhow I do lovey you all just the same if you are halfways blind halfways dead I do love you all the same no matter how good not how bad you do or you don't do in all your sports in alla your schools in alla you labors goody baddy up or down I love you all the very same Richy poory I love you all the very samey sicker Well I love you just the very sam in and out I love you all the very very same I lovey lovey lovey you Arlo Davy Arlo Barlow just because you're my boy because you're my boy because you're my son because you're my own pore 1/2ways blinded humanly flesh all my humanky fleshedy folkes I see around me here are all of us so blinded we have only one wee smallyful hope to be cured one little halffa chancey to all or any of us all to be wholy and permantly healer a here If we all love and all pray all just believey in god like Jesus died to tell us to tell you

lovey me
daddy Woody Guthrie
Sept 1956
Ward forty
Graystone Park N.J.