Dart’s letter, sent from an undisclosed location, chats about his recent dinner with two Ensigns and their wives and a movie he saw, but I can’t make out what it all means. Has he left the country? Is he on a ship or in a port somewhere?

The last couple of sentences out of the 10 or so that make the entire letter are particularly perplexing. “This morning, we go back to the yard for ten day’s availability. More trouble, of a more serious nature. Must chase off to run checks on our guns.”

Perhaps this will all be cleared up in future days.

Dot writes this rather long, lazy letter while at work in a nearly deserted store. It’s so dead that there’s not much to write about.

The family received five letters from Gordon yesterday, the most recent mailed on December 23. As of that date, he had received none of the eight packages they’d mailed him for Christmas. He wrote that the ship’s carpenter had crafted a plywood Christmas tree for the men’s enjoyment. Gordon said that he would be able to endure this Christmas so far from home by living on his memories of last Christmas surrounded by his family in Greenwich. “And to think I got homesick when I was at Andrews! I should be ashamed.”

It’s already driving her nuts not to hear from Dart every day. She supposes she’ll get used to it eventually, but she’s not happy about it. Then she thinks of her co-worker, Mrs. Crowley, who hasn’t heard from her son in over three years. He’s a prisoner in a Japanese camp and she recently got word that he’d been transferred from the Philippines to Tokyo.

She includes a silly paragraph about the store being so slow that they wouldn’t know what to do if a customer happened to walk in. Then she says that he should forgive her silliness. She’s in the mood to write a long letter, but since there’s no news, she must fill in the pages with nonsense “that would sound much better if left unsaid.”

Dot has convinced Mr. Goldstein to write Dart a letter. He was in the Navy during the last war as a Fireman 1/c (first class). To hear him tell it, being Fireman 1/c is the next best thing to being President. Quips Dot, “Most Firemen I have met could do a much better  job being president than that guy in there now.” She then asks Dart if he’s sure her letters are not run past the censors, because if they are, that last line will certainly be cut.

Mr. Goldstein just handed her the note he wrote to include in this letter. She hopes Dart can make out more than she can. Since Bob Goldstein is not much for writing letters, she says Dart must be pretty special to get a personal note from him.

She must stop now or she’ll have to make things up to fill in the letter. She tells Dart to wear his rubbers and write when he can. I assume she’s referring to galoshes.

There were no letters written on January 5, so I’ll meet you back here on the 6th.