Dart’s offering today is another of his extraordinarily descriptive letters. He paints a vivid word picture of the rugged scenery he can see from the train window. They have crossed through Utah and Nevada since sunrise. Dart is enchanted by some of what he sees, but he loathes other bits. “I’m writing this from somewhere in Nevada. Where in Nevada doesn’t matter worth a row of pins. I wouldn’t give you thirty cents for the whole huge state, with its endlessly rolling wastelands, millions of scrubby evergreens, and untold myriads of sagebrush bushes.”

But then he proceeds to write with reverence about the splendor of the distant purple mountains and the dazzling colors reflected in them.

He describes a typical desert town with its gray, weathered buildings, sparse population, and a smattering of horses and decrepit cars. He says the majority of businesses are either saloons, two-bit hotels or houses of ill-repute, in mute testimony to Nevada’s “wild and wicked character.”

He was thrilled to be able to experience first-hand an engineering marvel he’s read about for years – the Lucin Cutoff. This is a series of bridges and fills that cross the Great Salt Lake. He was impressed by the vast salt flats surrounding the lake, looking for all the world as though a heavy snow storm had just passed through the area. He describes the sparkling beauty of the lake itself and the ring of mountain peaks reflected in its calm waters.

To rely solely on my paraphrasing of this letter is to cheat yourself of Dart’s gift for relating the natural wonders he witnessed on this trip. This is one letter that’s worth the effort of reading the images of the original pages.

He ends the letter with a paragraph of such longing that I’m sure Dot could feel it as she held the pages in her hand. “When I’m with you, I’m enchanted into a sort of silence, and when I’m far away, I long for you to be here (or me there).  It doesn’t seem possible that we’re so far apart. My love deepens with the distance, Dearest.”

It’s a good thing, because there will come a time when the distance between them is even greater than it is now.

Dot’s letter is short, but very sweet. She’s sad to learn he’s being sent so far away, but she feels they have both been so lucky that she chooses to focus on her gratitude instead of her disappointment. “If I weren’t sure of the way I felt about you, I s’pose I’d feel differently about it. But I am sure, and 3000 miles or 3000 years won’t make me change my mind.” It’s lovely to see her  as adamant as Dart about the permanence of their relationship.

She adds, “When I look at the map, California seems very far away, and I get a big lump in my throat, but you’re still in the country and I thank God for that.”

She cautions him not to write to her when he should be studying because she doesn’t wan to interfere with anything that might delay his coming home.

Well, Dot and Dart are now as far apart as it’s possible to be with both of them still in the USA. He arrived today at Treasure Island, off shore from San Francisco.

He describes his new home, once the site of the World’s Fair, as the busiest and most war-like place he’s seen so far. Although some of the old World’s Fair buildings are being used by the Navy, everything is painted an Army olive drab. There are airplanes of every size and type passing overhead and the bay is filled with ships of every description. He’s not allowed to say much more about what goes on there, but he can talk about the weather.

“I don’t think such a heck of a lot of California’s sunny weather. Today’s been sunny enough, but the island is cold and windy all the time. One consolation to the cold is that no whites are worn, saving much time and energy in washing.” I’m sure it would get mighty tiresome washing all those white uniforms by hand to the satisfaction of the officers.

He has no complaints about the setup. There is a very liberal liberty policy (6PM to 7AM, two days out of three, and every third weekend.) K.P. and guard duty are kept to a minimum. It almost seems too easy to Dart, who says he’s going to be very careful because he wants to go as far as possible in the Navy. That’s a surprisingly ambitious statement for Dart to make about his military service.

“It’ll be a tough grind, so I’ll have to keep my nose clean and placed tightly against that mythical grindstone. That lovely liberty will probably be passed up. The time’s valuable now and the money will be valuable in case I manage to survive and ever want to buy a house, a car, or something of the like. As I’ve hinted before, you figure very prominently in those hopes and dream.”

Wow! That paragraph packs a lot of sentiment into a few words. He wants to be successful in his studies. He needs to save money for the future. He envisions Dot as part of that future. But mostly, it is a not-so-oblique affirmation that he is going into battle and may not survive. Of course that’s a constant reality during this time, but Dart’s statement demonstrates that, while it is seldom voiced, the thought is always there. It must have sent a jolt through Dot’s heart to read those words.

He writes a bit about what a perfect trip he had across the country and about witnessing the sunrise over the Sierra Nevada mountains while on early morning guard duty aboard the train.  He sends Dot his new address and heads off to bed to dream about his lovely lady.

Here’s another one-page letter from Dot. She misses him and has a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that he was with her at the beach less than two weeks ago, and now he is a continent away. She consoles herself with thoughts about when he’ll be with her on the beach again.

The only news she has to report from her side of the world is that she loves him, which is not news at all.

She was so thrilled to get a letter from him today that her fingers could hardly get it open. Because she assumes he’s at his destination by now, she wishes him the best of luck in all that he’s doing, rather than a continued pleasant journey.

This is the first day in several that we have a letter from both Dot and Dart. We’ll start, as usual, with Dart’s.

In his first letter of the day, he reports that mail call was a disappointment. Nothing from home or Greenwich. He calculates that tomorrow or Friday he should begin to receive mail from Dot.

He’s thinking of taking in some of the sights of either ‘Frisco or Oakland this evening, if his headache subsides. He didn’t get much sleep last night, substituting thoughts of Dot instead. Who’s children was she watching? What was she doing at that moment? He mentally took several little trips around Greenwich with her.

He sums up his mood in one word – lonesome.

His next letter written later the same evening has a jollier tone. He had just received an airmail letter from home with the news that his mother had already mailed Dot’s photo and some letters from her. He tells her he awaits their arrival with fluttering heart.

You can tell he’s feeling more upbeat because he’s inspired to write a lovely description of the bay that surrounds Treasure Island, summing it up with “the whole scene looks like something from National Geographic.”

Always in sync with Dart, Dottie also writes two letters today. Her first is a very quick note, dashed off in five minutes before she scurried off to work. She babysat last night, leaving no time to write, but she promises a more complete job when she gets home this evening.

In the second letter, Dot opens with high praise of Dart’s letter of July 12. That’s the one when he provides such a wonderful description of the western states, as seen from his train window. Says Dot, “If I never travel in my life, I think I will, never-the-less have a very realistic idea of what the west is like. You have the best descriptive vocabulary I have ever seen and you certainly did a great job of giving me a word picture of the country you were passing through.” Then she asked the question he must have heard countless times – “Did you ever think of writing any travelogues?”

Having received none of his letters from Treasure Island yet, she asks about his classes and activities at his new base. She also wonders if he might see some of San Francisco without spending much money. “It seems to me there ought to be places open to service men (especially such a nice one) which wouldn’t set you back much, if any.”

She acknowledges how difficult it is to save money, admitting she’s saved only $70 since returning to Greenwich to work full time. “I’ll never get to college if I don’t go at it more seriously than that.”

In other “news” – his airmail letter arrived before the ones he sent later, but she thinks if they write regularly, it isn’t worth the extra cost. The weather is getting cooler in Greenwich and she hopes that doesn’t signal the end of summer already. She wonders if he has received the letter containing the photographs she sent to his Cleveland address. “I don’t think we look embarrassed, do you? I think they look quite natural, considering.”

On her half-day off tomorrow, she plans to get to the beach. She is determined to get a tan because she hates walking around looking so pale.

In spite of her intentions of writing a nice long letter, her eyelids are getting heavy and she must turn in.

Dart’s letter today is one of his long, newsy varieties, describing  more about his immediate surroundings and activities. He’s housed in a gigantic building along with 3,000 other men. It was once used to display whole trains during the Golden Gate Exposition.

He tells Dot about the fire drill they had last night. When the fog horns and bells start going off, everybody “falls out” to their assigned duty stations. Dart’s is at the nozzle end of a fire hose in his barracks. Marine corpsmen carrying tommy guns form a line around the buildings and fire trucks arrive from all directions.

He talks about the water shortage on Treasure Island. The advantage for Dart is that his laundry duties have been sidelined to conserve water. The folks in Oakland and San Francisco fear a typhoid outbreak because one of the main water supply lines may have been compromised by the ammunition explosion a few nights ago.

Today was the first “almost warm” day in the week since Dart arrived. Talking about the weather set him on a vivid description of a fog bank rolling in across the bay between Alcatraz and the majestic Golden Gate Bridge. He described the engineering marvels of the various bridges that connect two great California cities to each other, and Treasure Island to both.

Tonight Dart must stay on the island because he has a duty assignment, but last night he went into SF and purchased one of the last seats for the new Bing Crosby film Going My Way. He had high praise for the film and it’s lead actor.

He reports that classes here are faintly reminiscent of those at Case. Although his current math classes are quite elementary, the electricity course work reminds him a bit of some of the physics he took earlier. “But the main thing that reminds me of Case is the stack of books we lug around and the fellows sleeping in class.”

He describes his electricity teacher in some detail. He’s an excellent instructor, but he has a pronounced stutter. “It’s terrible to hear him try to say ‘retentivity’ or ‘electro-magnetic force.’ When he gets excited it’s even worse. He also says ‘youse’ and ‘that there book,’ but he’s a great teacher, nonetheless.”

The men in Dart’s class are all pretty nice guys. Dart is the second youngest of 25, and one of only four who is not married. Although Dart is disappointed by how unfaithful some of them are to their wives, they’re a good group. Most of them drink and carouse more than Dart, so they’ve given him the nickname of “Gramps.” He doesn’t seem to mind at all.

He reports that he is still awaiting her letters.

Dot begins her letter by forgiving Dart for not writing. It’s been two days since she received anything from him, but she’s sympathetic. She admits to having 20 letters unanswered from friends and relatives and marvels at how time speeds by so quickly.

She finally got a little color at the beach today. She also “invested” in a green,all-wool suit from Franklin Simon, with her mother’s approval. She has come to the conclusion that if one wants to build up a savings account, it is best if one does not work in the ready-to-wear department of a nice department store. Too much temptation, and “unfortunately, my eyes are bigger than my pocketbook.”