Hold on to your hats! Dart gets windy today, ending up with a 12-pager! (Well, actually, it’s two letters totaling 12 pages.) But what a letter it is. I’ll quote most of it here, verbatim.
“Here I sit, same location as yesterday, and the same spot I’ve been sitting on since I was old enough to sit. …The old Lake Erie wind is whistling up Superior Avenue with banshee wails, as if it were mourning the passed Summer. Once in a while it shrieks in fear of the onrushing winter. Even the trees are scared of the winter. Some are trying on old, ragged, colorfully patched disguises, and every tree I see is shaking like a leaf. ”
“That headachy gas heater in our livingroom is going full blast, and is the only warm thing around here, aside from my heart when I think of you. Mom just came downstairs, all hot and bothered about something, making a liar out of me already. Then, to make me a further prevaricator, I turned off the heater. Mom may have made a liar out of me, but she didn’t make a lyre out of me, the way you do by plucking at my heartstrings.”
“When I put the car away last night (in a DRIVING rain) I decided to do a little driving myself to test the new headlights. Boy — they are swell! Now it’ll be safer to drive 30 miles an hour at night. I took Pop to work today and drove the car back. The Green Chariot is parked out front with its 85 thirsty horses just itching to go places, and I can’t think of a single place to go. ”
“Speaking of thirsty horses, if one horse were fed 1/85th as much oil as the 85 horses in that car are fed, it wouldn’t be safe to cross the street where he’d been.”
“Yesterday I went up to see John Angel’s mother. Instead, I found his father. Mrs. Angel’s supporting the family now, I guess. Mr Angel very sarcastically, can’t understand why John, who has been in the States for three years, has to go overseas. After all, he says, there are men over there already who’ve had plenty of experience. His theory is to let the experienced men stay over there and let the young and tender John stay here. John’s ‘too young’ to go across, but I noted that he’s ‘older than most boys for his 20 years because he got married before he went overseas.’ (Pardon me while I check to see which direction the wind’s blowing.) That kind of stuff burns my…well it burns me up, anyway.”
“Other kids have gone across after only three to six months in the States, and at the age of 17 or 18. But John has to stay here three years. He just turned 21, so he’s too young. I retch, cough, spit blood, blow smoke from my nostrils, and flash fire from my eyes. There have certainly been better sports about this than the great Angel family.”
“Take, for instance, the Forbush family. Al, a classmate of mine at Shaw, recently visited Mom while he was home on a 30-day leave after spending almost a year in France, Belgium and Germany. I visited his mother after I walked out on Mr. Angel. He’s now on Luzon in the Philippines. They think it’s unfortunate, as does everyone, that men who have seen so much action should be sent to the Pacific as Army of Occupation, but there’s surely little of the same selfish, sniping, sniveling spirit that the Haloed Ones show.” (Tell us how you really feel, Dart!)
“Now for your letter: You must really have those kids at Kent trained if you can get them to listen to your tales of whoa (or is it ‘woe?’) about me. You must tell some pretty wild and hilarious whoppers. You don’t need much of a vocabulary to describe me. Just such words as lean, skinny, hollow-eyed, round-shouldered, dopey, stupid, sunken-chested, and frog’s belly would do quite well. Best be careful with that ‘frog’s belly’ though. It’s a two-edged sword. I don’t like the word ‘belly’ much either. I’ve always heard it associated with ‘conditions’: Two much beer, for one; and something else for the other. The results in the two cases are different, though. The type caused by beer is often prefixed by ‘pot’, and is also known as a ‘German goitre.'”
“Do you have any idea, Dot, how much I love you? I think you do. If you do, then you know something of how much I miss you. When we’re apart, my days and hours are as empty as the other side of this sheet threatens to be”
“G’bye for now, my Darling. I love you very much. Oh, why must things be as they are? They’re right, I guess, but I’m impatient.”
Continuing with another letter later that day…
“Boy! What a mess our house is in! When we have that little white house with the circulating hot water heat, let us always remember to check certain things before we fill the system for the winter.”
“Of course, our house here is slightly different from the one we plan to have, but what happened here today may make us a bit wiser. In our third floor store room there is an expansion tank. In Mrs. Shaffer’s house next door, there is an expansion tank. These are used to provide room for the water in the system to expand into as it gets warm. As an added attraction of some sort, these two expansion tanks are connected by a bit of pipe which runs through the wall.” (Note to readers: these houses Dart speaks of are townhomes, with a common wall between them.)
“This afternoon I checked our hot-water systems. All radiators were full, and there was the proper amount of pressure shown on the gauge on the furnace. Mrs. Shaffer, though, was absent-minded. She left the water running into her system. Then she made a phone call.”
“The water ran merrily. It filled her system, then her expansion tank. After that, it filled our expansion tank, and ran into a rust-filled and thoroughly stopped-up overflow pipe. The tank ruptured and our third floor storage room got an untimely but very thorough bath. The water continued to spray merrily while Mrs. Shaffer talked and Mom worked in the kitchen oblivious to the devil’s work going on over her head. My first inkling that disaster (of sorts) was impending came when Mom yelled ‘Turn off the water and come quick! The house is falling to pieces!'”
“Not knowing what water to turn off, I came quick. Water was cascading from the top of the frame of Mr. Kuntz’s door. Mom was placing available pots and pans to catch the dripping H2O. The tall ceiling was soaking wet. Water was dripping in a steady stream from that odd looking device which supports the hall light. The hall floor was covered with water, and it had started dripping down the stairs. Mr. Kuntz’s room was flooded. The walls were wet and water was oozing out and running down.”
“I chased on up to the third floor and came face to face with that horrible corpse-like false face Burke had hung on a hook in the storage closet. It was sedately nodding a greeting to me, as if to say ‘Come on in, the water’s fine.’ The spray was pushing it slowly back and forth.”
“Everything in the closet was soaked. There wasn’t much water on the floor. What was there had run through the walls and to the second floor. What was still spraying out the hole was being absorbed by priceless (and now worthless) heirlooms. ”
“By the time Mom had called the plumber across the street and I had returned to the first floor, the stuff had soaked through the second floor and run through the walls and was polluting the ceilings of the living room and dining room. ”
“I ran to Mrs. Shaffer’s, suspecting the cause. THEN she remembered.”
“Poor Mrs. Shaffer nearly had another heart attack when I told her about the water. Eventually the water got turned off and the plumber patched up the leak. But oh! Our beautiful (?) ceilings! Pop’s wanted a good excuse to paint the first and second floor ceilings, and now he has it. My job, when I finish here, is to place papers under the wet spots, just in case there should be an earthquake, or Burke should come home, or some other thing might happen to shake the house.”
“You miss all the excitement.”
We (Mom,Pop & I) spent a few minutes this evening discussing financial plans for us (you and me). Pop suggested what we’ve been thinking for quite a while: to begin buying a house just as soon after we get married as we can. Moving around for 25 years and not having a thing to show for it except rent receipts has sort of got them worried, now that Pop can’t work hard anymore. But they suggested one thing which runs contrary to our hopes and plans, but sounds reasonable; buy a lot with a house on it If the dream home is not available, get one which is nearly like it and has possibilities for making right. They present good argument against buying a lot with the intentions of building on it ‘eventually.’ For to buy an undeveloped lot means to pay taxes and interest on the lot as well as paying to rent someplace to sleep. That could, and often does, eventually lead to ruin, or at least to nowhere at all. To buy a house and lot is to provide space to live in while it is being paid for. What do you think? Be frank and honest. I’d still love to build that dream home of ours.”
“Another thing we talked about was insurance: how necessary it is; how much to figure on and allow for; and what kind to get. There are surely plenty of things to consider thoroughly before we are married That’s one reason I consider it wise to wait, no matter how impatient we may be right now. These things such as insurance and the means to pay for it, and a home and the means to pay for it are things which must be well-straightened out before or immediately after we are married.”
“Doesn’t the little spot on the other side of this sheet look lonely> That’s the way I feel when you’re away.”
“Good night, my Darling. I love you beyond all description. It will take a lifetime of words, music and actions to explain.”
Dot has a little breather between exams to jot off a quick letter. This morning, the new students took a speech and hearing test and a personality test. In a few minutes, she’ll take a vocational exam and then she’s done with tests for a few weeks.
“Tonight there’s a house meeting to elect a house president. I have no fears of being elected, though. Whoever wants that job is welcome to it. Oddly enough though (or maybe it’s not so odd), no one seems to want it.”
She continues later that day: She and her housemates were soaked to the skin as they returned from campus after the exams. Even though the sun was shining, the rain was pouring. Fortunately, they were rewarded with a gorgeous rainbow.
After the house meeting, she’s stunned to report that she was elected house president! She doesn’t want the job, in spite of it being a (dubious) honor. “It seems to me the president always ends up being the pet peeve of a group like this.” (There she is again, showing wisdom beyond her years.)
She’s nervous about classes starting tomorrow. She realizes she’s been away from school a long time and has forgotten everything she might have once known about studying. “Ah, well, they can’t expect me to do more than my best, which is what I’m going to do.”
She asks Dart to call her tomorrow night since she probably won’t get a letter from him. She’s eagerly looking forward to Friday when they will see each other again.
