Do you remember The Letter People?

If you went to preschool or kindergarten in the 1970s or 1980s, you probably do. At my elementary school, our classrooms were decorated with Letter People posters. Bright, colorful, slightly strange characters that somehow made learning the alphabet memorable.

I hadn’t thought about Letter People in years. Then my sister, who teaches preschool, sent me pictures from a book she is using with her students. And there they were again. It was like opening a little time capsule from kindergarten. If I remember correctly, once you went through the alphabet, you started combining the letters and in the accompanying videos the letter people would line up to form words and sort of bump into each other as you sounded out each letter. Like da – aw – guh. D-o-g. (I hope you are doing the pronunciation with me right now 😊)

And looking back at them now…wow. They were very ’70s and ’80s. Big hair. Big personalities. Weird faces. Goofy costumes. They looked like somebody wandered out of Sesame Street, a Saturday morning cartoon and a polyester catalog and decided to teach us our ABCs. Believe it or not, you can still find the old Letter People series on YouTube!

Funny how something can disappear from your life for 40 years and then one photograph brings it all rushing back. And for as weird and slightly creepy as they look to me now, I do have a pretty solid grasp on the alphabet, so I guess they did their job!

It only takes a few letters to spell out the season that is almost upon us: F-A-L-L. The calendar and the temperatures never quite line up here in Seffner, but as we roll into the middle of the month, we’ve got a fresh shipment of seeds to start planting cut flower and veggie gardens, the first of our vegetable starts have arrived, and hints of fall color are coming in as well, in the form of mums, crotons, and ixoras. Pretty soon we’ll have pumpkins and truly be ready to make fall happen here in Florida. Check out our events page for all the fun that is coming up!