Dart begins his letter with “Dear Ripple.” Dot has also made reference to “ripple” in a recent letter, but I find no clue as to the origin of this inside joke. Perhaps Dot can enlighten us by commenting on this blog.

He begins again with the standard “Dearest Dot,” salutation.  He goes on for a bit in empathy for her retun to the old salt mines. and then launches into his own amusing “vocabulary-rich” paragraph. Not knowing that relief is on its way in a letter from Dot, he daydreams of a far off time when the two of them might go over these letters together and then she will finally tell him the meaning of B.B.S.O.C.Y.K.

He asks Dot for the latest in the saga of her room mate and her beau. The ‘pee dee” he refers to in this paragraph is the “Plain Dealer,” his beloved newspaper from Cleveland.

He promises – rather reluctantly, I think – to tone down the mushy stuff he’s been piling into his letters of late. He’s trying not to overwhelm her, but I suspect if he cut that stuff out completely, Dot would sorely miss it.

He complements her recent poem and inserts a limerick of his own.

There once was a sailor named Pete/Who met a nice girl he thought sweet/He went off to war/And saw her no more/Until Hirohito was beat.

Will it really be that long until these lovebirds see each other again?

He reports that more of the long-timer patients like him have been released to active duty and returned to boot camp. He curses his wound that won’t heal because he’s desperate to get back to his life beyond the hospital walls. To distract himself from these discouraging thoughts, he asks for a description of her formal that she’ll wear to the February prom and of her new winter coat.

In his P.S., he urges Dot to write often, but not too often during exam time.