No mail for Dart today and he’s feeling a little let down. Sure, he has the big stack of letters that have been arriving this week, but he’s hoping to save answering them for the coming days when he won’t have any news he can tell from the ship and when no new mail is arriving from the States for days or weeks on end.
The film they’re showing on board tonight is “Meet Me in St. Louis,” with Judy Garland and according to Dart, “a whole slew of nice tunes.” If he can’t think of much to write, he may take in the show – his first aboard the Haggard.
He asks Dot if he ever told her how this ship feels in a moderately rough sea. He doesn’t have to explain it if she’s ever ridden a Euclid Ave. street car during a rainy rush-hour. The only differences are that here, the water washes over everything, the lurching and swaying lasts much longer, and there’s not as much of a crowd.
He wishes she could see him in his foul weather gear. (I think it should be called “fowl” weather, because he’s always talking about the duckings they get.) He wears a big jacket and nice, padded ski-pants, just like the girls back home wear; also galoshes. “A day’s not complete without a ducking while we’re under way, and if we get ducked more times than we have dry suits of clothes, we wear wet ones. Salt water ruins shoes, too. I bought another pair today.”
A lot of guys out where he is wear white sailor hats that have been dyed blue. He dyed two of his today, so he must be getting “real salty.” Some destroyers have tight rules about uniforms, but his ship is quite liberal. In port – such as it is – the uniform is blue hats, dungarees and black shoes. On the ship, just about anything goes for the head and feet. He says baseball caps are quite popular among the boys, as are heavy rawhide Marine shoes. When some destroyers are in port, crew members are required to wear regulation white hats, and some are even forced to wear their white uniforms. Still, the Haggard is one of the cleanest, best looking “cans” around and the crew is mighty proud of that.
He had is picture taken today by the ship’s doctor. At the time, Dart’s hair was a mess, his face was dirty and sunburned and he had paint on his hands, arms, face, shirt and pants. Although cameras are forbidden out here, a few officers have them. He hopes he’ll get to see the photo when it’s done, but it’s hard to get film developed way out where they are. New film has to come all the way from the States.
Well, he’s surprised by how much he squeezed out of a no-news day. He’s solved the problem of the second floor of their house. How he wishes he had his drafting tools with him to make better drawings. Now, they’re just sketches. “But there’s nothing sketchy about my love for you.” I’d say after a line like that, it’s time to close this letter. And he does.
Another weekend’s passed and Dot fears she’s neglected Dart. Friday night was spent at Nancy’s house, talking about…Dart! She says Nancy may have mentioned some guy she’d known once in California, but, says Dot, “I’m afraid I was a much better listener to what I had to say.”
All day Saturday, this girl WORKED! She scrubbed her bedroom floor, windows and woodwork, vacuumed the entire third floor and stairs, cleaned up the front lawn, washed all her clothes and did three sets of dishes. At bedtime, she crashed.
This morning, the light coming through her clean bedroom windows nearly blinded her, but it allowed her to make a remarkable discovery. She actually has a cozy, comfortable bedroom, when it’s clean. She enclosed a sketch of the layout of the room, complete with a photo of Dart on every horizontal surface. That way, nearly anyplace her eyes land, there he is! She says she plans to tape another one to the ceiling so when she wakes up in the morning, that’s the first thing she’ll see.
She and El recently saw “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” and she hopes Dart gets to see it. (I’m not sure why a guy who is actually living in the war would want to see a movie about that same war, but maybe…) Anyway, she was so taken with the actress who played Mrs. Ted Lawson that she came home and cut her hair very short, like the woman in the movie. Then she tells Dart, If you do see it, notice her eyes. They sparkle like diamonds.”
She has no more paper with her at work, so she’ll have to end the letter. She added a P.S. that she got a letter from the Marine she mentioned a year ago. She got his last letter in May and never answered it, but he thought it was his turn to write. He’s in the Philippines, ‘bombing the hell out of the Japs.’ Dot says that since Dart is writing to a Marine, she thought it would be okay if she did, too.
Then, as has become her habit, she enclosed a few cute cartoons, which I’ll save for a day when no one writes a letter.
