Here’s a quick, newsy letter from Dart. He and Hal and Cotton will leave soon for a 72-hour liberty to Weston. (I think that’s Hal’s home in the suburbs of Boston.) Dart explains that the latest policy on 72-hour liberties is that they begin at noon on Fridays but if things align properly, guys can sometimes leave on Thursday night after their duty. That means that the three pals should be able to drive all night and get to their destination before their liberty officially begins!
He writes that the Haggard has been marked up all over with red paint to show wher the hull will be cut to remove built-in equipment like the computer and the gyros. They’ve spent lots of time this week indexing all the tools and equipment. Anything that was deemed surplus was piled on the fantail and available to be hauled away on a first-come, first-served basis. Officers and enlisted were on equal footing in the “grab-and-go” marathon. Dart snagged himself some small motors, tools and electrical parts. He could have had some telephones, too, but those he would have had to steal. “What robbers and scavengers we all turned out to be!”
He warns that letters from him may be scarce this weekend while he’s on liberty. He adds cryptically that her friend Janie sounds sensitive enough to be a good writer. “That’s why your letters are so good.” Whatever could he mean by that?
Dot’s letter is also brief. There’s a quick explanation about her only mail being a letter from herself to Dart that was returned for more postage.
She has to study for an English exam tonight. The only reason she cares about her grade is that she wants it to be as high as Dart’s grades always were. As she tries to cram grammar into her brain, the girls in the house are having a jam session downstairs, practicing their jitter bug to the loud phonograph. Dot expresses the hope that she’ll someday learn to jitter bug because it looks like such fun.
From now on, Dart can call her Robin Hood. She had all seven arrows hit the target today in archery class, and two of them were bull’s eyes. She likes archery more than soccer, but the real thrill is tap dancing. She claims that she and Mid are looking more and more like the Rockettes every day. (Followed by a sarcastic laugh.)
She writes a paragraph about the bank proposition; it’s working better than she thought it would. People are putting lots of pennies in, almost always with a comment about what the penny should be used for. Maybe it’s some sort of money-raising scheme for improvements around the house. I’ll see if that’s something Mom recalls from her 70-year old memories.
