Wendi Rank – August 2025
The envelope immediately caught my attention.
It wasn’t the daily mail’s usual assortment of catalogs, AAA missives, or flyers suggesting my siding needs replacing.
Yeah, I know my siding has a gaping hole from a bizarre incident involving my dog and a lawnmower. But that siding — along with the tattered sofas and unraveling carpets — will not get replaced until my teenaged humans and dog no longer reside in my domicile.
The envelope — a white, almost-square, almost-rectangle — bore a King Charles III stamp and label reading “Par Avion.” Black Sharpie spelled out my address. The only name on the envelope was scrawled across the bottom. It read “Possibly Nancy F.”
Go ahead. Check out my byline. I am not, in fact, Nancy F. The envelope’s writing was in neat block lettering. A smiley face ink stamp peered at me from both the front and back sides of the envelope.
Two things to know about me. One, I’m an Anglophile. Two, I’m a horror fan. So, yeah. That envelope looked like it came from a British serial killer and I was here for it. I opened it.
Now, I’m an imaginative girl. When I scuba dive — reluctantly — I’m on the lookout for mosasaurs swimming through the murk of New Jersey’s back bays. And I’m 98% sure a demon or malignant ghost is living in the storeroom off my bedroom landing. That I’m the one who had that storeroom built makes little difference. There’s something there, it’s angry, and it’s waiting to get me. Then there’s my elaborate theory about my dad, the film Argo, the Paraguayan presidency, and my husband’s uncle, who is clearly a government assassin.
Probably. Maybe. Or not.
Despite this abundance of fiction bouncing around my brain, I never would have conjured the contents of that envelope. Inside was a two-page letter. The author — British, not a serial killer — has a collection of fan letters written to Ringo Starr. Yeah. The Beatle.
It seems Nancy F. lived in my house back when it was first built. And one day, from my little abode, she wrote Ringo a fan letter. The author of my letter, in preparing for an exhibit, was curious about my household’s experience with Ringo Starr, as the past home of a Ringo fan. He invited me to write him back, to detail that experience.
“Well,” I said to my husband. “We’re a Paul household. I mean, I hate to burst this guy’s bubble. But Paul’s a genius.” My son, who shares a birthday with Paul McCartney, concurred. Then a thought came to him. “Mom, what about “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime?” He knows I hate that song. But I hate it because Paul is a genius. You’re Paul McCartney. Surely you can write a better Christmas song than that. Not to besmirch work I couldn’t even begin to do myself — I mean, of me and Paul, only one of us has something we’ve written in the British Library.
Apparently, writing about mosasaurs and serial killers buys you no grace from the British Library folks. Our Beatles-centric discussion didn’t stop there. “I’m a George man myself,” my husband said. Which is wrong, and I told him so. But we held a lengthy discussion about George, Eric Clapton, and the wife they shared.
My father-in-law, by the way, looks like Eric Clapton. Once, when looking for him in a restaurant, I asked the staff if they had seated an Eric Clapton doppelgänger. “Right this way,” a host said. “Is it him? We’ve been trying to figure it out!”
I decided to write back to the curator of Ringo’s fan letters. But first, I called my mother-in-law. She’s a Ringo fan. I mean, you’d expect her to be a George fan, what with her being married to Eric Clapton and all. Then I sent a letter to the UK, explaining the Beatles fandom in my house, my mother-in-law’s appreciation for Ringo, our ignorance of our home’s original owner. I thanked Ringo’s curator for his letter, for the enjoyment it provided.
I haven’t heard back. But now I’ve imagined a whole new story about Eric Clapton, Ringo, and my mother-in-law. To quote John Lennon, you may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
Contact Wendi Rank on Instagram @wendirank
