There’s a letter from each of our young lovers today. As usual, we’ll start with Dart’s.
He begins by telling Dot of the announcement that just came over the PA system on the base. It says that liberty will commence at 1330 November 4 and end at 0730 on October 5. It set the whole place dreaming about an 11-month liberty as they await the correction that will surely follow.
It’s a cold, wet, blustery day and the place has poor drainage, so there’s standing water everywhere. Unpleasant to venture outside the barracks and downright miserable waiting in line for anything.
The huge bunch of rude, loud sailors that have been annoying Dart and others for several days just received orders for their leave time. It’s a relief to those who remain that this group is gone.
Two other big drafts were just announced: One was for duty on the Midway, the largest warship in the world and scheduled to depart on a world cruise making 40 stops. The other was for the Randolph, a former aircraft carrier being converted to a troop transport for service in the Atlantic. Dart knows the Randolph is not a “good ship” but he wouldn’t mind Atlantic duty. The Randolph nearly rammed the Haggard by getting out of place in the convoy one night. Dart recalls her captain and crew had a reputation of never really getting things right. She was damaged several times during the war, often by poor performance of her duty. “I’ll probably get some bunged-up old ship like that.”
He included a couple of quotes about Dot from his parents’ letters. They love it when she comes for a visit and would enjoy it if she’d come every weekend. They’re thrilled that he’s chosen a young lady they like so much to be his wife. His mother remarks about how lucky he’s been in many ways. That’s exactly what Dart’s been thinking! Lucky to know her and to love her. Lucky she feels the same way about him.
Yes, they’ve talked about the time when her letters will become shorter and further apart, and he’ll try to be patient. He truly wants her to succeed at school, so he’ll just tell himself when the time comes that as much as he wants her to write to him, he also wants her to study.
So, she slept in his room! He’s sorry now that he left it a bit messy. He hopes his mother fixed it up for her stay. “She’s pretty nice that way. How do you like being prodded by the springs in the studio couch?”
Having run out of things to say, he’ll head off to the mailbox and the canteen now. But first, he asks her if she’d do him a favor. When she has time, after mid-terms, would she copy the last three or four paragraphs of that “thing” he gave her? He’d like to have them because he thinks occasionally about completing it. I have no idea what he’s talking about here, but maybe Mom will remember.
Dot explains that she’d intended to write to him last night but she stayed up so late talking with his folks that when she went upstairs, “Both my good intentions and I fell fast asleep and didn’t wake up until 9:45 this morning.”
She tells him that yesterday morning they drove out to the fish house. She’s not sure of the location, but it was past Collinwood, so he knows what she was thinking. They went in search of shrimp and they found it. She knows he doesn’t appreciate how delicious shrimp is, and she pities him for missing out on it, but she and his dad really enjoyed it. Even his mom liked it more than she’d expected to.
They ate lunch in the livingroom while listening to the Navy-Notre Dame game. As he must know, it was played in Cleveland’s Municple Stadium. Dot was so excited by the game that when it was over, she was as exhausted as if she’d played in it. She takes the better part of two pages describing in detail the fantastic plays – all of which came in the last eight minutes of the game. The final play by ND was a particular thriller with the announcer screaming “Touchdown! No, wait, ladies and gentleman, there was no touchdown. Oh, now it looks like maybe they made it. I don’t know what’s happening. NO! They failed to make it across the goal line before the gun went off.” Dot says it took a lot out of her, and then says, “Golly, now I hope you didn’t hear the game, ‘cuz if you did, that last part has all been repititious and will make my letter duller than usual.” Does she really suppose that Dart has thought any of her letters dull?
Last night as she was muttering something about looking up bus schedules for her return to Kent, his father scolded her. She’s to never again buy a round-trip ticket to their house. They will always be happy to driver her back to campus – in fact, they insist on it! That gets her started again on how lucky she is that the man she loves also has parents who are so wonderful and easy to love. They are so nice to her that she feels like she could cry out of sheer happiness. She feels unworthy of all this good fortune.
Her enjoyable visit has made it that much harder to go back to studying, but mid-terms loom and she must go. She’s cheered by the thought that in 47 days she’ll be home for Christmas. If only he could be, too, life would be perfect. But just wait until next year!
She bids him so-long and turns to her English homework.
