It’s been quite some time since Dart wrote such a long, leisurely letter. This one is a real gem.

After a brief but frustrating drought of letters from Dot, he finally received a nice one today. Strangely, it was postmarked just one day after the previous one, but took much longer to arrive.

He spins a fine yarn about the chickadee he’d mentioned in an earlier letter. This little bird was once a resident on Alcatraz, but he was caught by the fierce wind that blows in these parts and was carried three and a half miles across the bay where he slammed into the side of Treasure Island’s Building G.

“The experience so unnerved the little fellow that he’s never had the courage to fly outdoors again.” If the story had ended there, I may have believed it, but Dart embellishes with relish. “Once he tried crossing Bay Bridge, but before he even got to the bridge, he developed the sorest case of bunions a little bird ever had. So he stuck out a feathered wing, ruffled his tiny fluffy breast and bummed a ride back to Bldg. G on a bus. The bird’s nuts. He’s got wings and doesn’t want to fly away. I wonder how he eats. As far as we know, there are no worms crazy enough to try  to live in the face powder they pumped out of the bay and dumped here to make this island.”

Dart uses this opportunity to announce he will never live in the west. He may someday come here on a trip, or honeymoon or with children, but the prices are too high to live here. He claims they are 20 to 100% higher than back east.

I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d never heard of the film Dragon Seed. Dart too was unfamiliar with it.

He seems impressed and humbled by Dot’s report of doing a back dive. Considering his struggles in the pool, it must seem like an impossible feat. He says he has a limit of swimming just 15 feet before he sinks.

He reports on his efforts to gain weight. When he misses chow, he buys two sandwiches and a milk shake. Then, right before bed time, he runs to the Ship Service and buys another sandwich and shake. Last week he hit his all-time highest weight of 152, but was quickly back to a stable 148. Remember, this guy is 6′ 1″! It’s no wonder he sinks like a stone – he doesn’t have enough surface area to float.

He happily agrees to send Dot some copies of his official Navy portraits, as per her request. “I hope you like them well enough to keep them. There are only a few in existence, and there are many girls who’d just about swoon if I gave them a picture of myself. Take that any way you want, but I’m afraid the swooning would be from fright.” Now he’s beginning to sound like Dot!

In this letter rich with humor, news and imagery, I think the following is my favorite paragraph:

In a way I envy you being able to sit in an uncomfortable pool of perspiration. It’s a shame we can’t both travel toward each other til we reach a place where I’m warm enough and you’re cool enough and a man points to my uniform and says “What’s that funny suit you’re wearin’, son?” There we should settle and spend the rest of our days.

Yes, it’s humorous, but also sweetly revealing. It exposes a man who pines for a simple, anonymous life where he can enjoy basic comforts and the companionship of the woman he loves – a place where war and military life are unknown.

Treading carefully around the “taboo subject” of a recent letter, he tells Dot he’s been dreaming a lot lately. Dreaming of their next meeting; when, where and how they will greet each other. He says that when and if he is ever able to ask her a certain question, he wants to ask it when they are together. He wants to hold her in his arms, feel her breathing, see her face and hear her voice. He doesn’t want to ask it in a phone call or a letter, sent from a strange, far off place.

He answers her question about the moon the other night. Yes, he saw it and was hoping she had enjoyed it three hours earlier. He tells her of a bright star that shines in his window, low in the northeastern sky. He wonders if, by chance, that same star twinkles into her window, too.

With regrets, he ends this charming, intimate letter in order to write a few quick lines to his parents.