This was a rather inconsequential reporting of an inconsequential day at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. Dart had no mail to answer, hadn’t gone to church and didn’t feel like doing the washing and mending that awaited him. Instead, he gives Dot a detailed accounting of a long, chilly stroll he and a fellow patient took all over the sprawling campus. He reports seeing some attractive Waves, which is proof of how hard up the Navy is for women. In the past, they only had ugly Waves, according to Dart – the kind that made dogs howl and children run, screaming to their mothers. The two men watched streams of visitors arrive, sauntered past the golf course, stood on a high bluff overlooking the boathouse and watched cats chase some squirrels.
He broke off writing, saying that, although he loves her, he also loves chow and it was nearly time for dinner. Because both breakfast and lunch had been especially fine today, he was not holding out much hope for dinner, but he was hungry, nonetheless. His P. S. confirmed that dinner was nothing to brag about.
Dot writes her first letter from home – and a chatty one it is. She tells about walking unannounced into the livingroom late Friday night to find her mother writing a poem. Ruth just stared at her daughter, too surprised to speak. They spent two hours catching up on a semester’s worth of news and waiting for her father to return from the circus at Madison Square Garden. (Spectator, not performer!) Not able to stay awake, Dot went upstairs to bed. A little while later, she heard her father’s car pull up, so she hurried downstairs and climbed into bed with her mother. When her father came in, she popped up and scolded him about the late hour. He too was struck dumb by her surprise arrival.
The following day, Dot met her sister Eleanor’s unofficial fiance Don. He’s not very good-looking, but not ugly, either. He’s 6’6″ and finishing pre-med at school.
Dot spent some time cleaning house and planning to redecorate her room. She’s terribly homesick for the folks back at school and has already decided she prefers the Ohio personality to the Connecticut type. She announces she’ll live in Ohio after graduation. I can vouch for the fact that she was a woman of her word, because from then on, she was never a permanent resident of any other place but Ohio, to this very day.
She tells Dart that even though he is 1100 miles away, he is near to her heart. She dreams that sometime this summer, he’ll pay her a surprise visit like she did her parents.
