Dear John Letters

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 10:32:32 -0600, paulzjoh <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM> wrote:

>Does anyone remember the country song popular during the Korean War?  "Dear
>John, I've sent your saddle home"?

There were a number of country & western songs in the early '50s on the
"Dear John" theme.  The one you're thinking of was called "Dear John" and
was recorded by Hank Williams in 1951 (written by Aubry Gass and Tex
Ritter):

-------
Well when I woke up this mornin',
There was a note upon my door,
Said don't make me no coffee Babe,
'cause I won't be back no more,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've sent your saddle home.

Now Jonah got along in the belly of the whale,
Daniel in the lion's den,
But I know a guy that didn't try to get along,
And he won't get a chance again,
And that's all she wrote, Dear John,
I've fetched your saddle home.
-------

The song is also notable for linking "Dear John" with another then-new
expression, "that's all she wrote".  Slightly earlier than the Hank
Williams song was Ernest Tubb's "That's All She Wrote", written by Jerry
Fuller in 1950:

-------
I got a letter from my mama just a line or two
She said listen daddy your good girl's leavin' you
That's all she wrote didn't write no more
She'd left the gloom a hanging round my front door

Now I woke up this morning a quarter past three
I just couldn't realize this could happen to me
That's all she wrote...
-------

"That's all she wrote" is not yet in the OED, but Googling suggests the
expression dates to the '40s, perhaps as the punchline to a WWII-era
joke/story about a "Dear John" letter.  ("Dear John" itself dates to 1945,
according to OED2.)  The two expressions were familiar enough in August
1947 for a real estate agent named John H. Whitfield to run classified ads
in the Nevada State Journal and the Reno Evening Gazette reading: "DEAR
JOHN? BUT THAT IS NOT ALL SHE WROTE."


--Ben Zimmer