Dart begins his long letter by imagining he’s holding and kissing his beloved Dot. Then he imagines her at Lake Sunapee and hopes she’s having a great time.

He wants her to remind him to wear some of his old civilian clothes when they’re together during his leave. He’ll never forget when she saw him wearing dungarees once and she said she loved him just as much in those old clothes as she did in his sharp Navy uniform. It’s moments like those that assure him they are about to start on a wonderful, long date while he’s on leave. The date he’s looking forward to most is the permanent one that begins with their wedding and lasts a lifetime. He only wishes he knew when that “date” was.

He writes at length about the nice liberty that he, Hal Martin, Puckett and Burch made last night. They got the car greased, had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and saw the movie “Incendiary Blonde.” After that, Martin and Burch grabbed a couple of beers while Dart and “Sack” had some Cokes. Hal gave his car keys to Dart when they left the bar and Dart was thrilled to drive for the next three or four hours.

It seemed like old times to Dart as they cruised the roads of Virginia, stopping at a late-night “hash joint” for burgers and Cokes. “All we needed was you, and girls for the other guys.” Dart loves to drive and he’s very impressed with the quality of Virginia roads, with a few exceptions. They managed to locate a few washboards and some “tank-traps” (potholes), but that’s part of the fun of traveling the back roads, trying to get lost. (That line reminded me of the times Dad would take one of us kids out for a long drive, traipsing all over the countryside while we helped him navigate back to a familiar place. Driving was always one of Dad’s great pleasures.)

Their driving time totaled 14 hours, not counting the four-hour wait for a ferry, during which they all slept in the car. If Hal drives back to Boston on his leave, he and Dart may take a short detour through Washington D.C. They want to see the Capital and they want to get their traveling done now so they can settle into regular life when they get out of the service. Or as Dart says, “…crawl back into our shells and do no more traveling, thank goodness!”

When he’s not out on one of his frequent liberties, he’s been helping to scrape and clean the ship in preparation for yard workmen next week. The crew is anxious to see what color paint arrives for the Haggard’s next paint job. If it’s red, she’ll go to some boneyard, be dismantled and decommissioned. If she’s painted gray, they are either transferred to another Naval base or find room at the Norfolk docks for lengthy repairs.

Dart hopes his leave has begun by the time the ship’s fate is decided. Wherever she goes, there will be a great deal of shuffling stuff from one place to another; spare parts, tools, gear, ropes and lines must be replaced. All the living compartments will need to be cleaned again. There’s lots of heavy work to be done, and Dart would just as soon sit that out in Greenwich and Cleveland. Who could blame him?

He runs down the list of firecontrolmen with whom he served on the Haggard. There are only a few of them left at Norfolk. Some have been discharged, some transferred to other ships or to school. One was sent to the hospital because his extreme alcohol consumption has prevented his appendectomy scar from healing.

Switching topics rather abruptly, Dart takes care to spell out an important fact about himself: He rarely pays attention to conversation in a car while he’s behind the wheel. He thinks it’s important for Dot to know that she should either refrain from relating important information to him while he’s driving, or remind him later of what was said, because he probably won’t remember it. I guess that’s one of those things they’ve not had time to learn, since they’ve spent so little time in each other’s company. “Anyway,” he says, “that’s one good reason for stopping the car to talk. Another is that I love you and I need every bit of my mind to let you know that.”

He writes that he saw a cute little house while driving around the other day and he’d like to incorporate some of its features into his house plans. Would she like to have the garage connected to the house in some way?

He reminds her once again how excited he is to be engaged to her and how he is the World’s Luckiest Man. I believe he never stopped feeling that way.

No letters tomorrow, but both writers will be back on the 3rd.