Dart begins, “What better way to start a new month than writing to my sweetheart? Especially if she’s as far away from me as you are. 34.7 miles is surely every bit as far as 3,470 miles or 12,000 miles. There’s only one big difference: we can phone each other.”
He picked up an interesting hitch-hiker on his way back to Cleveland last night, in part to keep his mind off the sad parting he’d had from Dot. The guy was a volunteer for the American Field Service. This group was made up mostly of men with a 4-F draft status who, nonetheless really wanted to serve. They drove ambulances for the Allies and did all sorts of liaison work. He’s just been back home since V-J day and has enrolled at Western Reserve as a freshman. Dart thoroughly enjoyed talking with him.
This morning Dart bought his dad and early birthday gift; sealed-beam headlights for the car. “Should do wonders for night driving.”
He really must get a letter off to Ruth Chamberlain, but he’s neglected her so far. He had such a wonderful time at the Chamberlain home during his first week of leave, but he’s been so busy with Dot ever since that he’s not written a proper thank-you letter.
“Now it’s my turn to dream about what we were doing 24-hours ago. I think it all began with a few poems, but I don’t think we were fooling ourselves or anybody else when we went up to read my “poetry.” You asked in the letter you wrote here whether you kept me up too late. What do you think? But it was very pleasant and worth every minute of it.”
He says that if he writes any more he’d have to borrow a “puttng-on tool” to make the paper longer, so he must end now by sending all his love.
Dot has a proposal for the weekend; Dart could pick her up after her last class at 3:00 and they could skip the dance (which everyone says won’t be that great anyway) and have that much more time together. Or, if there’s no gas, she could take the first bus out of Kent and see him as soon as she could get to Cleveland. If he’d rather go to the dance, that’s also okay, because she only wants him to be happy.
Referring to the letter he wrote to her from across the room, she wonders why he always thinks she’s disgusted with him. She certainly wasn’t yesterday. “After all, you are on leave and should be allowed to spend your time as you see fit. Besides, I got a big kick out of watching you examine your trains. And don’t say they’ll never run again, ‘cuz they will. We’ll set up a special room in our dream house for the soul (sic) purpose of exercising those trains, and any more you make between now and then.”
She feels like college life is beginning to get underway now. She spent four hours at the registrar’s office, getting the results of her English and psychological exams. She scored average in English, so she won’t be able to place into the honors class. The good news is, she also passed the psych exam, unlike 250 unfortunate others.
She has her classes scheduled, including field hockey, archery, soccer and beginning tap dancing. She also has biology, English, physical science, freshman orientation and education. All totaled, she has 17 credit hours, which will put her three hours ahead of the game by the end of the year. She’s happy that her friendly roommate, “Mid” has all the same classes.
The housemates decided to fix up their pitiful “kitchenette” so that they wouldn’t have to stand in line on campus to have breakfast. Dot took a collection from each girl in the house and went shopping for some staples; bread, Nescafe’, marmalade, eggs, bacon, milk and cold cereal. They have no ice box, but things are keeping pretty cold in the metal box outside the window. Now the sink in their tiny bathroom also doubles as a kitchen sink. “Of course, there are some difficulties to contend with, but when we get shelf paper and a schedule of who gets breakfast when, I think it’ll be lots of fun.” Leave it to Dot to make scratching out breakfast in a small, ill-equipped space sound like fun.
The weather was so bad this evening that no one from her house went to the reception at the President’s house. Anyway, she’s feeling pretty groggy from her cold. Her thumb nail has decided to fall off, although she can’t recall what she did to it. All she knows is that it looks gruesome. While she’s on the subject, her blister is healing beautifully, but she did so much walking today that she has another to take its place. “How I managed to get a 95% on a physical exam, I’ll never know. I’m a wreck!”
She hopes Dart will call on Wednesday, but if he doesn’t, she’ll call him. If the weather improves, she’ll try finishing the roll of film they started. How she hopes the pictures his mom took of them turn out well. She wants him to tell his mother that if she avoids getting pneumonia, it’s all because of the blanket she gave Dot. She’s been sleeping very well, snuggled under it. Her roommate told her she snored, though, so she warns Dart that he may have to sleep in a hotel whenever I have a cold. “Hope it won’t be too long before you have to worry about whether I have a cold or not! Know what I mean?”
The rest of the page is filled with brief notes from her housemates, Mid and Janie, who seem to like Dot and are eager to get to know her fabulous fiance better.
