About Dear Mister Ward
Dear Mister Ward is a collection of complaint letters sent to the St Paul, Minnesota office of Montgomery Ward between 1932-1942. They were saved by my grandma and I published them as a book in 2021.
Hilarious, weird, and occasionally heartbreaking, the letters reveal the integral role Montgomery Ward played in the lives of those who wrote them.
Touching on topics that include fashion, relationships, technology, loneliness, debt, and toilet paper, they provide a glimpse at the daily lives and preoccupations of rural Americans from the peak of the Great Depression into the early days of World War II.
Originally funded by a successful kickstarter campaign it has been featured on KARE in St Paul, WRSI in Northampton, Mass and the BBC podcast Short Cuts. I also hosted two staged readings from the letters at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls, Mass.
I am continuing the project by researching the people who sent the letters and the places they came from, while following any other path where the research takes me. I haven’t had much time to post to this newsletter lately as I spend enough time in front of a computer at work all day. My free time is now spent on my radio show and DJ events. If you like classic and alt country check it out Twang Club.
I have also taken down the original Dear Mister Ward website because I don’t have the time to manage a clunky old Wordpress site anymore. I will eventually recreate some of the site here but feel free to contact me with any inquiries. It wouldn’t take much to motivate me to continue my research.
