When I was about 10, I wrote a letter to my aunt, who lived in Oklahoma. I’d never written a letter to anyone before.

For a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, Oklahoma might as well have been China.

I just knew that I didn’t see her or my uncle much, and I told my grandmother I missed them. She suggested I write them a letter. So I did.

That is, I wrote a letter after my grandmother got out her good stationery, envelopes, and ...