You can almost hear the whistful whine in Dart’s voice as he writes, “Gee, we miss you.” He’s referring, of course, to his parents and himself. Dot is at Kent State University, about an hour outside of Cleveland, but she’s left a big hole in the Peterson household after staying there for several days during Dart’s leave.
Dart, still at his folks’ place in Cleveland describes his evening with the entire Peterson clan. That would include Dart’s uncle Guy, his wife and all their “kids”, their spouses and their children. His “second best girl” Susie Brown, is six years old. She loves to be tickled.
With a few well-chosen words, Dart describes each person there. It’s obvious he’s partial to the under 10 crowd. He describes his young cousins with tenderness and humor. “Sara Schriffler was a well-behaved and quick-witted youngster who runs around with her big bunny slippers in her hand so she won’t get their fur dirty. She has big brown eyes and chestnut-colored hair.” Or, “Young Bill Brown was a quiet gentleman all evening. He gave us each a separate big elfin, toothless grin as his huge daddy carried him in his arms.”
He seems less enamored with the cousins of his own generation. He tells about Cousin Guy, the doctor, dressed in comfortable tweeds and almost completely unchanged by the war. He sat most of it out on the sidelines of an Army Air Command sick bay. Then there was Lt. Robert Schriffler looking far older than when he left. “He has a battle star or two, but he had lovely shore duty for a long time. But the shore duty was on Leyte and Samar, so it wasn’t all as lovely as it sounds at first.”
Then Dart reveals his inner geek with his gushing, glowing report of the “newest arrival” of the Peterson’s house on the lake: “a bee-you-tee-ful General Electric oil furnace. It’s fully automatic and will be used with a circulating hot-water heating system when pipe and radiators are available. (After the factories are retooled for peace-time manufacturing, I wonder?) There’s a smaller size, which I think I like better though, for this costs $600 and heats 10,000 cubic feet of house space. Our house and budget, I’m afraid, will be a bit smaller than that, but I surly love that tiny furnace.”
He adds, “All the family, including the new furnace, send you their best regards, and they all wish you could have been there.”
Then he warns Dot that she’ll have to be there a week from this Saturday. It’s his last weekend home and his folks are hosting one of their big spaghetti parties, with only two family members “in absentia.”
His mother thanks her for the nice knife and his father asked how she thought of such a great gift. His mother responded that it’s because Dot is such a sharp kid. Groan. I guess I see where Dart gets some of his “humor.”
Turning his attentions now to that “sharp kid,” he asks how she’s liking her new abode. Will she become accustomed to the musty-smelling old palace? Is the Pennsylvania roommate with the backwoods twang as much of a goon as Dart’s first impressions of her made her seem? Is the Missouri girl as boy struck as she appeared to be, or are all those photos of the same boy? Has either of them been away at school before, or does Dot hold that edge? He wonders if either of them is nosy enough to get this far into his letter. If so, they deserve to be insulted by the words he’s written.
“Tell me lots about your setup. Visiting hours; how, what, where and when they feed the monkeys; how much or how often you can write, call, or visit us; house rules, what you found out about your program, etc. All right, so I’m nosy, but I’m interested, too.”
He tells her the trip between Kent and Cleveland isn’t a hard one, so he’s happy to make it. Before signing off, he says he’s worried about her foot and her thumb so she should take care of herself. Will we hear more about that later? Time will tell.
It’s a homesick (or might I say “Dartsick”) girl who writes today. She calls herself his bawling brat and says that although she has ceased her crying, she nearly starts up again when she thinks of what she was doing 24 hours ago, or when she compares this place to Andrews. “It doesn’t look nearly as bad to me now as it did when I first saw it, but it’s still no palace. Our room is, by far, the biggest and brightest, so we didn’t do too badly. Ah, but the bathroom! It is literally 4-1/2 ‘ x 6′, with a bath tub that is 2-1/2′ long and 1-1/4’ wide. I can see I’ll be taking my baths on the installment plan. There are 12 girls in this house and they’re all swell. The nicest one is from N. Salem, Ohio and is a Phys Ed major, too. She’s awfully cute and loads of fun.”
One of her roommates – Eleanor, is a music major and seems nice. The other one – the girl named Phil form Missouri, is spending the night elsewhere, so Dot can’t judge how she is yet.
Tomorrow she’ll take a series of tests and then register for her classes. Friday brings more tests and a welcome party. The housemother, whose name is Mrs. Olin, has told Dot that all she needs in order to leave on weekends is written permission from her mother. This strikes me as rather absurd. Here’s a 19-year old college co-ed, engaged to be married, and living out of state from her parents and she needs a note from her mother to leave the house! Good grief! Anyway, Dot will try to arrange her next weekend in Cleveland as soon as possible.
She wishes she could find a way to express her love, but she thinks they understand each other on that score. She’s ashamed of herself for acting like such a child when he brought her to Kent and her new off-campus housing, but she’s grateful that he was so patient and understanding. She thanks him for driving her all the way out to this rat hole, which she immediately says isn’t that bad. “After all, Abe Lincoln didn’t exactly live in a palace, and look at the education he got!”
She sends her heart-felt gratitude to his parents for their role in giving her the happiest week of her life. Declaring that she can’t keep the wicked hours of her youth now that she’s a college student, she signs off, using the signature “Butch.” I’ll have to ask Mom the origin of that one.
