What a difference in Dart’s tone since a few days ago! This letter is 10 pages of happy chatter and news.
With Dart’s recent deposit into their penny account, their balance has now topped $40! Judging from the number of exclamation marks Dart added, he’s very pleased with that balance.
There’s more discussion of getting Dot’s photos, returning her negatives and sending prints of his little trains. Dot will put the latter into a small book for Chuckie to enjoy.
Dart spoke with Mr. Kershner today, who told him he’d answered Dot’s nice letter with a 6-pager of his own. Dart jokes that he hopes his pastor is not “beating his time with Dot.”
He spent part of the day at the library reading William Byrd’s amusing histories. “Those pre-revolutionary writers were human, even if their style was a bit stiff. ” The book he’s reading is a history of the expedition that surveyed the boundaries between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728. “Very nicely done in two separate stories; the first one – the Secret History – sets down bare facts and many scandalous instances; the other – the History – names names, instead of nicknames, omits the scandal, and tells of the man’s remarkably keen observations about natural science (and a few sly ones about human nature.) They’re both dated day by day, with the Secret History on the odd pages and the History for the same day on the facing even pages so that the two may be compared. Either one alone would make peachy reading, and together they constitute a gem.”
Tonight brought a phone call from the “streetcar expert” from the Cleveland News. He’s the guy who once wrote a story about Dart and his model interurban cars. The journalist spoke with Dart for over half an hour. He has space allotted in Monday’s paper to report about the fan trip that Dart’s little train group has organized. Dart’s pleased that the man is going on the excursion and that his tribe of train enthusiasts will get a nice spread out of the deal.
It sounds like Dart had a lot of fun at the after-game teen rally at church tonight. There were 60 kids there, eager for food and fun. They square-danced all night, nearly wearing out the record of “Little Brown Jug.” Dart sold Pepsi for a nickel a glass and wished that Dot was by his side. He thought it was cute that all the girls wore dungarees, plaid flannel shirts over white T-shirts, saddle shoes and babushkas.
Perhaps it is the proximity to Halloween that has Dart a little spooked by Dot’s apparent psychic abilities, but he asks her if any hunchbacked crone ever put a curse on her, or did anyone ever say “abracadabra” to her when she was a baby? He advises that she steer clear of Massachusetts (which is hard to do when one lives in Connecticut!)
Referring to her “confession” about Sonny Martin’s visit to her front porch, Dart writes, “It’s nice to know that Sonny Martin recognized you for being ‘OK, Chamberlain.’ I don’t know what Miss Miller thought after I didn’t take the hint when she turned her face up and said ‘Thanks for walking home with me.’ I said that it was a pleasure and good night. Then I left. I felt good that I’d been able to refuse the hint and still not feel that I’d lost my nerve (as I’ve felt before I met you), or that I’d been foolish (as I’ve also felt before I met you).”
In a recent letter, Dot seemed surprised that all those little drawings he sometimes includes in his letters were not original with him. He thought he’d told her with the first of Kilroy’s drawings that they weren’t his. He has a whole book of them that are fun to insert into letters. “Kilroy was here in 1942 and then he left. I found his drawings in my dresser drawer and decided he wasn’t using them, so I could.”
He thought her voice sounded a little hoarse over the phone the other day. He hopes her cold hasn’t grown into a great big one, and her begs that she take good care of the girl he loves.
He ran into a former Case classmate, Bill Jackson the other day. Bill never did join the Navy and now he’s back at Case to finish up his final two classes for his degree. Dart hopes that he, Bill, and Tom Reilly can see a movie together or something, when Dart’s finances improve.
He also talked with a Shaw classmate, Bill Mathers in the line at the bank. Bill cussed a blue streak, bragged about which girl’s father might be coming after him with a shotgun, and generally made a fool of himself. Dart felt a bit smug after his conversation with Mathers.
What a sweet story he tells of a vignette he witnessed on the streetcar the other day. A woman boarded with her adorable young daughter. The little girl couldn’t see over the seat ahead so her mother suggested she sit on her lap so she could see out. She sat on Mommy’s lap and started to sing, “I can see out. I’m a big girl now.” She sang it several times and her mother shushed her. She looked up at her mother and said, very earnestly, very politely, “But I’m a big girl now and you said when girls get big they can do whatever they want!” Everyone on board snickered a little at the politeness and righteous earnestness of the little girl.
He liked her description of her walk. All the time he was at the football rally, I was thinking how nice it would be if you were there helping out. “Let’s volunteer for that kind of duty next year.”
He’s unimpressed by her glowing description of the new roomer at the Chamberlain house. “Even if you do have a minister’s daughter as a roomer, I still choose you. You have a lovely voice, you play baseball wonderfully (don’t you?), and among all your other virtues, you’re very attractive. …I think you’re swell. My judgement can’t be wrong with so many people telling me how lucky I am to have a girl like you.”
He tells her several times that he loves her. “…and you can put a string of ditto marks to the moon and back after that, and it still wouldn’t show how much I love you.”
The bottom third of the page is blank, so he fills in “Wassamatta? Ain’t you satisfied? Mebbe I should put a soot mit 2 pents on this pej to mek it not so neked, yes?” Then he draws a coat, a vest, and two pairs of pants. These are not Kilroy drawings.
# # #
Dot is happy to report that her bank book is looking a little less pale these days. From now on, she hopes to see a steady climb in the balance, not counting the $100 she plans to lend to El. She, of course, knows her sister is good for it.
She deems the phone conversation with Dart last night “swell,” even though she didn’t say what she’d expected to say. She had been so excited to talk to him that she’d forgotten he had a late class on Thursday night. By the time they finally connected, she felt a bit deflated. It was good to hear his voice, even if he did spend most of the six minutes talking about “boy noises.” She had no idea what he was talking about. (And neither did I when he went on about “boy noises” in a recent letter. It had something to do with some papers Miss Talmage read aloud in class that offended many of the students. In fact, when the big gang left together and walked to a local bar, they were still talking about “boy noises.” Because there was no explanation of what that meant, I didn’t mention that part of the discussion.)
Her cold seems to have reached a climax and she’s very tired. She’s also gloomy at coming to terms with the fact that they won’t be seeing each other until next June. She can’t get off work to go to Cleveland, and neither of them has the money for train fare, anyway.