Monthly Archives: November 2014

October 31, 1944

13. October 1944, Dart's Letters, Dot's Letters

HE GOT THE LEAVE! The entire class got a nine-day leave which will give Dart almost exactly 60 hours in Cleveland. We can all breathe again!

Less exciting, but equally important is the news that Dart received his Seaman First Class rank and his Fire Control rating. He was only one of nine in his class to receive the first class rank. The Fire Control rating is one of the most important to have at sea, and one of the most difficult to get. As of Saturday, he’ll also be getting $12 more per month.

At the end of his leave, he must report to Shoemaker, California, “which is one of the most horrible stations ever.”

For the last two days it’s been raining so hard that Dart’s been unable to get to the Western Union office to send the telegram he’d planned for his folks and best girl. Except for a light drizzle at Point Montara, it’s the only rain he’s seen since Nebraska on the way west so  many weeks ago.

Now he’ll buy his train ticket, spend a day washing and packing, and, with luck, take his last liberty in San Francisco.

He’s coming home!

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As Dot writes this letter, she’s unaware that Dart will be heading home soon. She tells him that she’s just discovered another reason why she’s so grateful to have met him. She just ran into a former beau and he’s deplorable. Since they dropped each other, he has been expelled from most of the private schools on the East Coast and now has a criminal record! She asks Dart not to judge her too harshly because she was only 12 years old at the time. “Oh, I’m so lucky to know and love you.”

Taking the optimistic view, she asks if there’s any reason she couldn’t find her own way to his folks’ house from the station on Tuesday morning. She’s concerned that she’ll be arriving so early in the morning that she might disturb them unnecessarily if they have to pick her up. Little does she know that they will likely have been up for hours, in eager anticipation of Dart’s arrival.

She’s very proud of his ranking second in his class, because when he is rich and famous, she’ll be able to brag that she knew him when… She claims that after hearing the news, she ran right upstairs and destroyed all of her old report cards.

Like Dart she’ll also be moving this week, so she has some cleaning and packing to do.

There’s one small favor she’d like to ask of Dart if they see each other over his leave. Could he please not say too much about the election? She’s afraid Dewey won’t win and she’d hate to be subjected to too much gloating from Dart and his family.

She comments that this was a rather flat note on which to end the letter, but end it she must.

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November 11, 1944

14. November 1944, Dart's Letters, Dot's Letters

Approaching Cheyenne, Dart writes, “If I can break out of the blues long enough, I’ll try to get a letter written.”

He tells her that they have a pretty good car for their long journey. Reclining chairs, nobody without seats, soft lights, several congenial companions, including Leffman and his guitar. “We’ve had music and half-hearted comedy all day, and it’s not been as bad as it could be.”

He bemoans the fact that all day, he and Dot have been traveling in opposite directions, getting farther away from each other. He’s not happy with that fact. “I have a vague recollection of having spent a few minutes in Cleveland between trains. Tell me if I’m dreaming or if you had the same dream, too.”

He recalls they took a long drive one night and a couple during daylight hours. He remembers a few precious minutes stopping in Euclid Creek Metropolitan Park and a long conversation in his living room. It seems they had a small water fight and he owes her some ice down her neck.

He misses her.

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Having stayed an extra day in Cleveland, Dot writes a chatty letter about how she’s been spending her time with Dart’s family since he left. As she writes, she’s listening to Ohio State whip the pants off Pittsburgh in football. She tells him that she accompanied his folks to the Shaw High School football came yesterday – the first night game she’d ever seen. “The way I yelled, any bystander would think I was a regular inmate at Shaw.”

She took a bus out to Andrews School for Girls to say hello to faculty and friends. The detested Miss Hutton is about to marry a veteran of the the first world war, a fate Dot feels is far too good for her. When she stopped by Mrs. Wall’s classroom, the teacher insisted Dot stand before the class and report on everything she’d been doing since leaving Andrews. “When she found out why I was in town, she rolled her eyes and told the class she had met you and finished by licking her chops. Thus, she got the impression over to the class that you are very easy to look at. ” The girls screamed like they’d seen Sinatra, and they applauded when Dot told them Dart had made second in his class. “I better not get too enthusiastic, I guess, if I want to hang on to you (which I want more than anything in the world).”

Someone named Mr. Kuntz pulled some strings and got her a reserved seat on the train leaving Cleveland tonight. Just a note: I love how the trains have names instead of numbers. Dart is aboard the Challenger and Dot will take the Pacemaker.

“Every few minutes I glance at the clock and think about what we were doing twenty-four hours ago,” she writes. She recalls many of the same memories Dart mentioned, including the “ice incident.”

She’s decided to live by her brother’s philosophy of remembering the past, looking forward to the future and ignoring the present. “That will only hold until the war is over,” she writes. “After that, the present will be too precious to ignore.”

She reminds Dart that they cannot mourn the brevity of his leave, but only be grateful they were able to see each other. In an uncharacteristically romantic passage, Dot says “I wasn’t living ’til I met you and I won’t really live again ’til you’re home for keeps.”

Everyone misses him already, but his family’s longing is a mere trifle compared to how she feels.

In her P.S. she resurrects the silly doll Tonsillectomy, they talked about in their early letters. That doesn’t get any less weird with repetition! If anyone can explain the nonsense verse on the back of her last page, I’m all ears.

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November 1, 1944

14. November 1944, Dart's Letters

This note from Dart is a frantic plea for Dot to be okay. He’s just received the letter about her physical exam and need for surgery, and he’s in a near panic. “I’m worried if anything should happen to you my whole life would be shattered. I love you so much that I couldn’t tell you all about it in a lifetime.”

He’s desperate to see her in Cleveland but doesn’t want her to travel if it would put her health in jeopardy. From her cryptic note, her ailment could be anything, but he prays it’s nothing serious.

“Good night, my dearest. Keep your chin up, little one. You’ve got lots of people pulling for you.”

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November 2, 1944

14. November 1944, Dart's Letters, Dot's Letters

This hastily written note continues his theme from yesterday. He’s very worried about Dot. He’d planned to write a proper love letter today, reminiscing about their date in Cleveland a year ago, and discussing plans for what they might do on his leave. But he has little time and too much worry to be able to concentrate on that kind of letter.

“The news surely came as a shock to me. It isn’t anything really, terribly serious, is it? Oh, please say it isn’t so I can eat again.”

Again, he begs her to come to Cleveland, but only if she can do so without risking her health. He tells her there’s no sense risking a lifetime of happiness in the future for a few hours of happiness now. But, still, he wants to see her.

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While Dart is fretting over the state of Dot’s health, she dashes off this exuberant note. She declares herself the happiest girl in the world since his telegram arrived yesterday before she left for work. “I was of absolutely no use to Franklin Simon’s, you may be sure. Everyone there is happy for me too, which makes it even more exciting.”

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November 3, 1944

14. November 1944, Dart's Letters

As Dart begins the last letter he will ever write from Treasure Island, he’s sitting in the classroom, waiting for the instructor to arrive and orchestrate a clean-up. The sweet potato quartet is improvising some nice arrangements of old standards and Dart compares the sound to the calliope at a circus.

He returns after the cleaning is done, and he’s mighty angry with a certain officer. The guy managed to pick on the fellows who had done all the work, selecting them for additional chores, while the loafers were given more free time to pack. Dart’s finely tuned sense of injustice caused him to get mouthy with the officer, so he was, predictably. swept into additional work duty.

After being in the Navy for 23 months, he has at last acquired a set of dog tags. These are usually issued a few days after a man goes into uniform. Dart’s have been chasing him across country since he left the V-12 unit at Case many months ago, and arrived here yesterday.

There’s been no let-up in the rain, making laundry more difficult and creating muddy paths the men must tread while finishing up their tasks. His gear is packed, except for the dirty duds he’s wearing. He hopes the showers will be open tonight or tomorrow so that he can wash off the accumulated grime before adding an additional 3,000 miles of it on his cross-country train trip.

Having received no letter from Dot in a few days, he’s hoping to get one before leaving. He’s eager to read better news from her than the last letter contained. Again, he tells her how her recent news of a mysterious ailment requiring surgery really threw him for a loop. He tells her not to worry, admitting that sounds like pure hypocrisy, coming from him.

There’s a long section of the letter in which he gets into a deep discussion about dealing with health concerns. He tells her that when he had the surgery on his cyst, he was risking paralysis, disfigurement and impairment of his bodily functions, but he decided to go forward with the surgery anyway. Otherwise, he would be crippled by extreme pain, which had already begun to set in. In spite of all the illnesses and complications following his surgery, he’s still happy he took the risk. He hopes Dot will be brave with whatever she might have to face, and take whatever risk would be necessary to be well and whole. “Things often look very black and discouraging, and I hope this isn’t one of those times, but keep your chin up, Dottie. I want to see you come out of it smiling. I like your smile and I want to see it for the rest of my life and for all eternity.”

With yesterday’s paycheck, Dart’s account totaled $95. He withdrew every cent and promptly mailed his Uncle Guy a money order for the balance of his college loan. He feels great to be a “free man.” He’s eager to see how fast the savings will pile up now that he’ll be making an additional $12 every month. He tells Dot his top spending priorities after the war are an education, a wife and a home. The home will come last because the wife will need to be included in that decision.

On page 9 it looks like he’s casting about for material that will get him to page 10. He’s happy about the successes the Navy has been having recently; might end the war faster. He’s eager for the two of them to spend some time with the family Ford when they’re in Cleveland. And he tells Dot that he’ll wait until the end of the letter to tell her how much he loves her, but he’s afraid he still won’t be able to find the words to express it, even then.

He wants to correct the wrong impression she has that he always knows the right things to say and do. He tells her that he makes so many social blunders that he’s always embarrassing himself. She couldn’t possible be as awkward as she claims to be, but if so, he thinks it’ll be fun for them to blunder through life together. Referring to Dot’s sister-in-law, Betty B and other women who are at home while their men fight in the war, Dart does a nice little riff on how courageous and strong women are during wartime, keeping things going at home.

After an affectionate sign-off, he adds a P.S. that she’s just gotta see his new Seaman First Class stripes.

We don’t have another letter from either lovebird until November 10 because they were en route to Cleveland and then spending time together. I trust they will fill us in about how their time together went as soon as the letters start up again. Meanwhile, I’ll spend a little time each day filling the reader in on things that were happening in the wider world during this week in 1944. Stay tuned!

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November 4, 1944

14. November 1944

Because Dot and Dart frequently mention favorite songs to each other, I thought I’d fill in some of the “off” days this month with a couple of the hit songs that were playing on their car radio as they cruised around Cleveland in the old Peterson family Ford.

Top on the hit parade this month is “You Always Hurt the One You Love,” by the Mills Brothers. They happened to be from Dart’s home state of Ohio. I’ve included a link so you can hear their original version of the tune. Be sure to listen all the way through and you’ll notice the whole rhythm and mood change mid-song. Great slow and fast dance number.

Mills Brothers “You Always Hurt the One You Love”

The second most popular song of that month was “I’ll Walk Alone,” by Dinah Shore. It seems to me that there were so many songs of that era that spoke of loneliness, longing and a desire to be with loved ones. I can see Dot sitting in her bed on the third floor of 115 Mason Street listening to the tunes and lyrics that reflected her feelings and those of so many men and women all over the world.

Dinah Shore   “I’ll Walk Alone”

Driven in part by the Academy Award winning film “Going My Way,” Bing Crosby also dominated the music charts throughout 1944.

One news item of note is that the Axis forces in Greece were forced into surrendering, thus hastening the end of the war in Europe.

I could find no specific information on action in the Pacific.

November 5, 1944

14. November 1944

Again, we have a sort of blackout on personal news from our two young lovers. Nothing on the international front, either.

I was looking at a list of top films for the year 1944 and was struck by how many of them remain classics today, known by film buffs and the general public alike. They run the range from screwball comedies to war propaganda to melodramas and feel-good stories.

The top movie of the year was “Going My Way,” starring Big Crosby. We’ve already read that both Dot and Dart were quite moved by this story. They were not alone. It received the Best Picture award from the Academy that year.

Other titles of popular films include:

  • Arsenic and Old Lace
  • Double Indemnity
  • Lifeboat
  • Meet Me in St. Louis
  • Since You Went Away

October 26, 1944

13. October 1944, Dart's Letters, Dot's Letters

This letter is even shorter than yesterday’s. The final was today and tonight Dart is taking his first liberty in over two weeks. He’s given up his pass for the upcoming weekend because a classmate needed it more than Dart. The other guy’s wife and baby just arrived from Cleveland a week ago, and the little family needs time together.

He won’t offer a prediction of the exam. He knows he missed 18 questions out of the first 155, but there were 145 more questions. The results will come tomorrow and the whole class dreads to learn what they’ll be.

His family answered Dart’s telegram assuring him that everyone was okay. His worries were useless (as worries so often are.)

He tells Dot he’ll be the most disappointed sailor in the Navy if he doesn’t get that leave. They should know for sure in less than a week. I can sense his loneliness, despair and tension in every line.

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Dot has missed two days of writing due to some mysterious ailment. She tells Dart that her mother has just written all about her illness in a letter to him, so she’ll not repeat the news.

She wonders if Dart left Treasure Island before Bob Hope came to do his show there last week. She listened to the broadcast and paid close attention as she tried to pick out Dart’s laugh from among the thousands of men who were in the audience. She’s sure he must have missed the show because she knows if he’d been there she would have heard his laughter.

How disappointed she is that her illness has caused her to miss out on a good, long visit with Cynthia, including a luncheon with several girls Dot used to go to school with. She hopes she’ll still catch a quick visit before C. leaves on Monday.

She again asks for his suggestions about what to put into a gift box for him. It seems that cookies would be a good choice for a 20-year old boy, far from home.

As we might expect, the topic turns to Dart’s leave. She claims the suspense is killing her. If she could be sure he’d get a nice long visit home, she could stand being away from him for a few more days, but not knowing is driving her nuts.

She pauses the letter when her mother brings lunch upstairs for Dot to eat in bed. When she resumes writing, it is well past dinner. This was apparently the first time she’d been up for a meal in a few days, and her mother made it worth the effort – steak, potatoes, carrots, string beans, apple pie ala mode and real coffee. “Needless to say, I went very light on what I did have, but it sure tasted like a ‘pre-war’ dinner.” Her folks must have spent a week’s rations on that spread!

Guessing that he’ll get this letter around October 30, she wonders if he recalls what was happening a year ago that day. That was their double date in Cleveland when they saw “Phantom of the Opera” and Dart tried to teach her to shift gears. “Best of all, it was the first time you ever kissed me. I don’t know if I’m still in a daze from that kiss or from the ones I’ve had since. Anyway, I’m still in a daze when I think of you, which is about 59 1/2 minutes out of every hour.”

Sometimes when she’s dreaming of Dart, she wonders if he has any inkling how much she loves him. Then she realizes he couldn’t possibly, because even she can’t quite belief it.

There’s nothing left for them at this point but to hope and pray for that leave to come through. “It doesn’t do any harm to have faith,”  she says. Ever the optimist, our Dot.

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