After such a long break, Dart says it feels strange to be writing to Dot again – “Almost unnatural.”

“Another hundred-dollar payment arrived this afternoon, in time for deposit in the bank. Now there’s only the final installment of my mustering-out pay, and then my checks from old Uncle Sugar’s Navy will be no more.”

“This evening I visited the Singers. They have just bought the cutest little black velvet spaniel puppy you every saw. I don’t know how old she is, but I do know she’s not housebroken yet, and that she’s very playful. Eats her little belly full until she looks like a cantaloupe on furry pads, and then wants to eat shoelaces, sox, fringe from bedspreads, and hair from legs.”

“I left you yesterday evening with a ruddier glow on the inside than I’ve had for a long time. I really enjoyed our afternoon and evening  more than I usually enjoy my evenings with you. And I enjoy them all so much more than I’ve ever enjoyed evenings before, that yesterday evening became one to remember above all others. I don’t remember whether I thanked you for it all or not, but even if I did, it was not enough, for I’ll never be able to thank you enough for being my companion and my fiance in such a lovely way.”

“Something you said to Nancy hadn’t occurred to me before, but it sent nice little chills up my back to push my chest way out. It was that ‘We bought the first piece of furniture for our home’. Gee – that was swell – and you’re swell, and all things are just unbelievably rosy. (Maybe it’s the pink wall paper.)”

“Anyway, due to my evening ‘out’ and the fact that it’s 0100 and I must arise early to greet the Dean of Admissions, I think I better quit. Dot Darling, I miss you so much, especially now, when I’d be kissing you goodnight instead of writing about it.”

#          #          #

Once again, these two lovebirds are on the same wave length. Dot writes, “It seems rather strange to be writing to you again, having been where I could talk to you for ten days. However, such are the vagaries of life, and one must learn to take the bitter with the better. I shall be eternally grateful to you and your kind parents for making those ten days about the best ten days of my live.”

She tells Dart she’s writing from her new bed, which is a huge improvement over her previous one. “Oh, such luxury! Even when I spread out as far as I can, I still can’t touch the sides. ‘Swonderful!”

Her first day back at Kent was a very busy one. She’s moving rooms, doing laundry, applied for a job at the Robin Hood restaurant, and bought a tennis racket for her upcoming class. She’s exhausted, and classes haven’t even started yet.

Her roommate Ellie had told Dot that there were swarms of new men on campus. Out of 2050 students on campus, 750 of them are WWII vets, just starting back to school. Dot’s typing class has 2 women and 18 men and she’s heard of one English class with 2 women and 86 men! “So many men it makes one’s head swim. …But the dizzy drips around here would make anyone’s head swim.” Dot has found her one and only, and no other man will ever turn her head!

“If you come down earlier on Saturday, maybe we could learn to dance before the dance. I’m going to social dancing tomorrow evening and try and learn something. Are you really trying to learn, I hope?”

“Thanks for giving me such a super vacation, Dart, and for making last night so perfect. I love you very much and will  be thinking just how much when I turn out the lights and sink into a beautiful sleep. Wish you were going to wake me up tomorrow morning instead of Kate.”

I wonder if Mom remembers why she switched rooms in the house and who Kate is. I would guess that’s her new roommate, but I don’t recall her mentioning a Kate in earlier letters.

Dart had a very disappointing day.  The dean of Western Reserve said he shouldn’t count on getting into that school any time soon. The June class is nearly full and September is filling quickly. They give admission preference to the students who attended there before the war, so transfer students have very little chance. Then he went to Case to inquire about his chances for re admittance; the news there was grim. Case has a policy of never readmitting students who left because of academic performance. The dean will look at Dart’s war records and decide if he will make an exception, but Dart was told not to expect anything.

What Dart wants most in life is to marry Dot. To do so, he must press forward with his education so that he can support a family. Today didn’t move him one inch closer to the goal, and he is deeply discouraged.

This afternoon, Dart and Homer hung out and ran some errands. They picked up some silly photos of Dot from the Eastman Kodak store, one of which shocked Dart. Hmmmmm…that certainly makes me wonder what could have been so shocking. Was it a “come hither” look in her eye, or did she hike her skirt above the knee?

He goes on at length about his and Homer’s visit to the home of Mr. Blum, a wealthy lawyer and model train collector. Dart seems to feel an unnecessary degree of contempt for the man’s layout. Mr. Blum brags about spending over $50,000 for someone to design the layout, someone else to build it, a third person to wire it, and numerous companies to hand-craft his $200 (each) locomotives. What seems to irk Dart the most is that Mr. Blum doesn’t even know how to run the controls, relying instead on his 10-year old children to do the job.

Switching topics, he writes, “How do you like that big, soft, lonesome bed by now? I sure wish it weren’t so empty. I have a remedy in mind, but it’d be best not to state it here. Gee whiz, Dot — what are you blushing for?”

Since he’s gravitating to small talk, he thinks it’s time to wrap up this letter. The big talk is that he loves her very much. “The fact that we love each other so much more after we are acquainted sort of proves the old biz about love at first sight. Proves it can be, at least. Dot, I miss you terribly. Please come home.”

#          #          #

Dot skipped social dancing tonight because she had a headache and she wanted to get more settled into her new room. The girls just burst into her room to regale her with tales of all the new men on campus. Last night when she practiced dancing with Mid, she learned she’s a good follower. Now, if Dart can learn to lead well, they should have no problems.

She had her first class in naval history today. If she thought it would be an easy class, she was mistaken. Meeting three days a week, the class must read 100 pages of outside reading before each class. Notes must be taken in ink, and at any time, students must be prepared to take over the class and lecture for one hour on the topic at hand. Also, the professor announced that he never gives A’s. She’s feeling discouraged already, but the subject matter is fascinating to her. In typing, she’s doing fairly well, and is eager to work hard so she can become a proficient typist.

A note in her mailbox today summoned her to a three-hour test session with the psychologist tomorrow. Among other things, they will be looking at her musical aptitude. She’ll give Dart the full dope when she gets the results.

She promised her mother that she’d write tonight, so she’s enclosing a teensy bit of the love she feels for Dart into this letter, in hopes that he’ll feel how much she does love him.  How she misses him!

Dart’s letter continues with his theme of discouragement. Case University firmly and flatly turned him down. After a long phone conversation with the dean, Dart learned that he was below the average Case man on “quantitative aptitude” (mathematics) and far above the average Case man on “analytical aptitude” (words and drawings), and on general intellect. Because Case is a technical school, the balance tips to the quantitative side. That, plus his two failures in physics and calculus have barred him for life from Case. Now he must start applying to any and all colleges in hopes of being accepted somewhere. (It is notable that the English department at Case had high praise for Dart’s abilities.)

In response to Dot’s recent letter, he notes that she began it with a sentence nearly identical to his; the idea of it feeling strange to be writing again, instead of talking. He’s happy her big bed is so comfy. Does she think they could make a deal with Holly and Miss Olin to buy it? He hopes she’ll get a favorable response from the Robin Hood restaurant, but he also hopes working there will not curtail her visits to Cleveland. He believes that if she’d seen him in college, she would have deemed him a “dizzy drip” too and he would never have had a date with her.

Now comes his big confession: He is not trying to learn to dance. He can’t learn anything from his pal Homer, who dances as badly as Dart does. He’ll try to get to Kent early on Saturday so they can practice a few steps together before the actual dance starts.

He reports that after spending a couple of hours shining the car, he cracked the whip over his folks and urged them to take a long drive with him. They roamed over to Chagrin Falls and stopped in to visit his cousin Jessie, her husband Gil and their three little daughters. Dart obviously has a soft spot in his heart for those little girls, all of whom were excited to have company so close to bed time.

He closes with a note of longing, saying he hopes they can have other evenings as wonderful as last Monday before she returns to Greenwich for the summer. These two are getting lots of practice at a long-distance relationship, but I know they both want this phase to be permanently behind them.

#          #          #

Dot also commented on the similar openings of their recent letters, saying “What they say about great minds running in the same channels must be true.”

She hopes his recent $100 deposit stays in his account longer than the last one did. She can’t imagine how it could disappear any quicker. (Is that a gentle hint that perhaps he’s spending too much money?) Also, she’s glad the Singers got another dog so quickly. The new puppy sounds delightful, and reminds Dot of a little black spaniel her family had when she was younger. His name was Jet, and although he was killed shortly after they got him, she’ll never forget that cute little rascal.

Not knowing his bad news about school admissions, she frets a bit about the short time between when she goes home for the summer and he would start classes. “You’ve just got to come to Sunapee!”

She’s kicking herself for catching another cold and promises to be better in time for the big dance. She had a late idea that she hopes he’ll be able to help with. Would it be possible for him to bring one of his pals as a date for Joyce? She and Bill have broken up (!) and Joyce is a great dancer who needs to get her mind off Bill. If Dart’s able to pull off a date, it would be good if he’d call on Saturday morning so Joyce can get ready for it. It would also be nice if Dart had some company for the long drive back to Cleveland after the dance.

She bids him goodnight and sends all her love, forever.

Dart didn’t write last night, and has no excuse except that he was too tired. He’s learned the news of her confinement through a phone call she made earlier today, and he’s disheartened. He knows they were both so excitied about finally going to a dance together, and he’s sorry they have to wait. He, too, is still nursing a cold that seems to be hanging on for weeks.

He had a brief foray into job-hunting today, putting in has application as a draftsman at a local company. There were no openings, but the company spokesman wasn’t at all discouraging. He accepted Dart’s application and told him he’d keep him in mind for the next opening.

He and his folks did a better-than-average house cleaning yesterday, and then he attended another railroad club meeting tonight, returned home early and promptly fell asleep on the davenport. He awoke hours after his folks went to bed, climbed the stairs, and promptly went to sleep again. I suspect his cold, fatigue, and discouragement about school are all intertwined to cause his general malaise. I hope something breaks loose for him soon.

Tonight, he and Homer went to several movie theaters before finding one that had standing room available for a mediocre film. They stood through “Because of Him,” which Dart deemed just good enough to keep them from leaving. His letters give a sense of an apparent population explosion going on around the Cleveland area. Jobs are hard to come by, colleges are near capacity,stores have no stock, and theaters are sold out all over town. Had the city adjusted to the reduced population when the boys all left to fight the war, and now must readjust to their return? Are the returning servicemen trying to catch up on years of deprivation by snatching up all the merchandise and movies, attending college, moving into their own homes, etc.? Maybe some guys from smaller towns outgrew their childhood homes after having “seen the world,” and are flocking to the larger cities. In any case, these letters give a sense of shortages and crowds and an urgency to get on with things.

He tells Dot of an interesting conversation he had with Gil the other night when he and his folks paid a visit to Jessie, Gil and their little girls. Gil is very interested in the prefabricated houses that are beginning to pop up around the country. There’s no distributor of such homes in Cleveland, but Gil’s company is vying for the chance to become one. He was telling Dart of the practicality, efficiency and adaptability of the designs, and Dart seems to have hung on every word. He always thinks of Dot, no matter the topic of conversation, but even more so when it involves things they’ll be personally involved in as they move forward.

“I’ve been moping around here almost lost since you went away. It’s as though you were permanently far away, instead of a mere 35 miles and 1-1/4 hours.”

He must pull himself away from his “chat” with her in order to write to her mother and to Miss Palmer.  “Oh, how I wish I could tell you how much I love you and miss you, Dot. The feeling’s more intense, and more sure, and more deeply-rooted after each time we are together.

#          #          #

Dot is feeling pretty sorry for herself, stuck in the infirmary, trying not to see the fellas arriving at the dorm outside her window to pick up their dates for the dance. But some good news from Joyce turns her mood around right quick. Dart is coming to see her tomorrow!

She has spent her day reading women’s magazines and a historical novel called “The Victory of Salamis.”  She’s enjoyed the latter much more than she though she would, but all this passive reading is making her restless.

She couldn’t help but notice that Dart used the word “huge” in a recent letter, underlined and circled. She assumes that was his not-so-subtle way of telling her she had once again misspelled the word in her letter. (She often uses an h in place of the e.) “I guess I’ll blame it on love, so it’s really your fault. Why reprimand me for it?,” she quips.

She ends her short letter with a very supportive paragraph: “No matter what school you go to you’ll make good, and then won’t Case be sorry they passed up such valuable material. OK, so you can’t master physics or calculus. Kindly tell me how many physics or calculus masters could write about a navy yard in such a way that their readers are not only wide awake, but are very much interested in what they are reading? And, after all, does the average American spend more time solving calculus problems or reading newspapers and magazines? All I can say is ‘They’ll be sorry.’  Remember, Dart, there are lots of us who know you can write, who are with you 100%.”