Dart is in a funk. “I have nothing on Earth to gripe about , except that you’re away, and I feel grumpy and dissatisfied.

He stayed up until 3:30 last night working on his prose assignment. He’d written a humorous treatment on “Why my hobby?” and called it The Iron Hobby Horse. “By the time I typed it this evening it was cold and dead. It was 400 words too long but I don’t feel like cutting it. The feeble humor was sour. I expect to be severely criticized for wordiness. Oh well, I can afford a punk one, once in a while.”

Generally, it was a good day at school. The American lit class had lots of fun and Dart was able to contribute salient points to the discussions. He read his industry chapter on the streetcar and it was the first chapter he’s read that he could understand. He even contributed to that class discussion, which he’s never done before. He even ran into his old friend Elmer Manley today and learned that Elmer and his fiance have moved their wedding from 1948 to 1947. (Perhaps they’re having similar difficulties to D&D trying to wait so long.) Anyway, Dart hopes the four of them will be able to spend some time together after they all get married next year.

Suddenly this evening, his happy bubble burst and he found himself blue and lonely. How he misses Dot.

His cousin Jim and wife Dot will be getting a baby within the week. They began the adoption process before the war and were approved on Dec. 9, 1941, days before Jim was to be shipped out. They put off the adoption at that time, but now they’ve learned they’re getting a brown-eyed baby girl on Thursday. She’s just a few months old.

He hopes Dot will forgive another brief letter, but he’s too tired to write. Also too tired to proof-read, so he advises her to take caution while reading.

Tonight was the organizational meeting for Skyline, but Dart wasn’t there. He had one of those killer headaches – so bad he couldn’t walk, talk, think, or eat. He will try to call Miss Talmage to see who he can talk to to learn what he missed.

He thinks the headache was caused by wearing a hat. He hadn’t worn one for ages, and as the day wore on, it seemed as though the leather hat band was pulling ever tighter around his skull. He could feel his eyes bulge with every heartbeat and he was blinded with every step. He says if these headaches continue to lay siege to him, he’ll have to see as many doctors as it takes to find a cure. He fears the cause is psychiatric, and he blames his “habit,” which he cannot seem to break. (I thought it was the hat that caused the headache!)

There was a wild wind that swept through Cleveland today, bringing much cooler temperatures with it. There must have been some sort of precipitation as well, because he describes two-foot icicles hanging from eaves.

Before being struck down by the migraine, he went to the airshow. He tells Dot to forget about her motorcycle – he thinks they should get an airplane instead. They build them so small, though, that he and Dot would take up three seats and they’d have to pile the kids into the fourth.

From out of the blue, he asks Dot if she’d heard about the rabbit. He went into the woods and had a hare-raising experience. Ouch!

Another mouse met it’s end in the trap his dad set in Kathleen’s room. They’ll keep setting them until the mouse problem is solved. Dart is rather sympathetic toward the mice.

He says his cousins have beat them to the draw on baby names. They have named their new daughter Gay Rebecca Peterson. She was born on February 9 of this year.

His father told him today that if he gets a job, he’ll get the car fixed up. Dart wonders if they could use it next June on their honeymoon. His father also asked if Dot’s father was aware that his handmade lamps would probably sell for $25. Dart actually thinks they would sell for more.

He got his Spanish midterm grade yesterday and was pleased to see an A.

Then he tells her she may want to burn the following pages. Thanks goodness, she didn’t. He begins by saying that when she first left, what he missed the most was her physical presence and the intimacies they shared. He couldn’t stop aching for her and thinking about when their bodies could be fully joined. “For a while my desire for that complete physical, sexual union overwhelmed me. More and more, though, it’s been returning to its proper weight in my thoughts. I’m returning to a better balance; a desire for all of you; your smile, your tenderness, or your singing in my ear when we’re driving. I miss the pretty little noises you make when I tell you I love you. I miss your exasperating reluctance to go to bed on time. I miss the way you thank me for everything we do. I miss watching you at the dinner table. I miss swinging your hand as we walk together. I miss your quick expressions. I miss our long talks. I miss lying down with you on our davenport and on the couch at Sunapee. I miss the warmth of our kisses and caresses as we lie as closely entwined as our clothes allow. I miss the way those warm, tender embraces become so passionate so easily. I miss going to the store with you. I miss going to concerts with you. I miss the way you used to say ‘yes’ when I’d ask if I could do certain things, and the way you’d respond so lovingly, so endearingly to those caresses. I’m yours forever, if you want it.”

Dart got Dot’s wonderful 8-page letter tonight, and it must have been an amorous one, because his paragraph about it was littered with !!!. And he wrote, “See, I have ! on my mind, too!!”

Today he was reading through some of her old letters to him, including the ones she wrote so long ago when he was a long-term patient in the Naval hospital at Great Lakes. Does she remember the dress she was making for the leave he never got?  Even back then she was chastising him for being so apologetic, but he has no idea what he was apologizing for that long ago.

“Have you ever missed me so much that you felt you just couldn’t write about it? That’s how I feel now, Dot. I, too, have X and O and * and ! on my mind.”

“Good night, Darling. There’s a tight feeling across my chest and my back that can only be relieved by holding you in one of our squeezing contests. If I go to bed now, I know I’ll dream about you.”

He adds a PS which says he hopes she’s over the worst of her bad days, and that they’ll never again be as bad as the best of the bad days she’s had. He adds three rows: seven Xs. seven Os, seven *s and three !s, saying “That’s enough for one night.”

Dart’s shift at work tonight was “one BIG merry chase.” Every time he sat down, he’d be called to run some errand. He drove out to the wire photo shop twice, and out to the heights once to pick up an obituary. The last trip added 20 miles to the 46,000 that had already been run in the 1946 Plymouth he drove.

He was the only “serviceable” copy boy on duty because the other one over slept and came in 4 hours late. He left almost immediately when he ripped the seat out of his pants. He had to leave because there’s a girl telephone operator in the office.

Dart was able to catch one of the new interurban streetcars at 12:34 and was back home by 1:05 AM. There’s a new game on the streets of Cleveland. The streetcars can get up to 50 mph in a couple of blocks, and they do it regularly, even though the speed limit is 35. Knowing that the trolleys can stop in half the distance of automobiles, the cops leave the motormen alone. However, they lie in wait for the drivers who try to pass the trolleys when they’re going 50, and then slap those drivers with a hefty ticket. Because the streetcars can stop so quickly, there have been several rear-end collisions of cars into streetcars. The motormen barely feel the bump, and their trolley isn’t damaged, so they just continue on. Meanwhile, the drivers are stuck with a busted up front end.

Cryptically, he wonders what Old Eyebrows will say to the Judge in court today. Dart’s sure they’ll all be watching. That statement will be another little test of my mother’s long-term memory. I wonder if she’ll be able to shed light on what Dart was talking about.

My guess is that Dot wrote something about how cold her house has been. It must have had something to do with coal – either there’s a shortage, or it’s so expensive that Arthur won’t buy much, or it smells, or something like that. The reason I guess this is because Dart extends an invitation for all the Chamberlains to come west, to where folks heat their homes with gas. He says the brick homes of Ohio don’t stretch as much as those wooden houses of New England, but he’s certain they could find room for some of the Chamberlains- one in particular!

Even though there are “millions of pages” of Dot’s letters he’s not answered, they’ll have to wait a little longer. He had no time to study at work, so he’ll be up all night doing it now.

Along with two letters from Dot, Dart’s mail also brought his Terminal Leave bond and check. The bond was for $50 and the check was slightly over four dollars. But the biggest thrill in his mailbox was Dot’s coded message: ” XXX OOO *** (to be continued)”  Dart thinks they’re terribly clever to have come up with their secret code.

He has just spent a leisurely evening – completing his English assignment, reading Life magazine’s 10th anniversary issue, and listening to beautiful music on the radio.

In his Spanish test today, he knows of two questions he blew but he feels pretty good about the rest of the test. They also began an oral Journalism test today. He hasn’t been called on yet, but when he is, he’ll be graded on how fully he can answer the question and how many prompts he needs from the class and the professor to get to the complete answer.

He’s finally getting around to answering her letter of Nov. 4th which contained a newspaper clipping of some telephone switchboards. Naturally, he’s curious about how they actually work.  “What I don’t understand is how you connect your customer with her destination. Do you have a jack (hole, or trunk, or whatever you call it) for each customer in Greenwich, or do you relay the calls to some other operator who then completes the calls?” It’s a pity we won’t get an answer from Dot due to the lost letters, because I’d like to know how that worked myself.

He continues. “Do your ears ever get tired from the headphones or have they figured out a way for such a thing not to be bothersome? How about the mouthpiece – did they ever make a breastplate that was lighter than they look?” When I remember that such devices as Dart mentions predate most plastics, I assume they were made from that obsolete material called Bakelite, which was extremely heavy and brittle.

There seems to have been news from Dot that either she or El somehow met a former nurse from the ward Dart spent so many months in – a nurse named Mary Forte. He recalls that she was rather unattractive and that she was confused about the names, ages, and personalities of Dot and El. It would be a small world story if somehow a Navy nurse who cared for Dart in a Chicago hospital somehow met his fiance or her sister in Connecticut. I wonder if Mom recalls the back story of this situation.

He writes that if he could ever do just one thing as considerate as her buying the chocolate for Mrs. Reynolds, he’d gloat about it for years. “Thank you for being that way, Dot. It makes me all the more proud to know you and to love you ; and it gives me great cause for rejoicing that a girl like you would fall  in love, and continue to love a guy like me.”

He’s not surprised that she can see no resemblance between Gretchen and either parent, because he’s of the belief that babies don’t start developing real features until they’re much older. (He’s quite the expert, you know.) He shares Dot’s hopes that she’ll be able to “feed” their children. (I think he means breast-feed, but that was probably too racy a term for 1946.) He feels that some women forego this experience – in spite of the new scientific evidence that it is much healthier for both mother and child to “nurse” – because they don’t want to spoil their figures. Studies show that if women would follow their doctor’s advice, they can return to the figure they had before giving birth. (Does this sound a teensy bit sexist when viewed in 21st century light?) “Let’s hear no excuse from you, Dot. I’ll bet you’ll say that your figure is already bad enough (you do say such things) but look at some of the Italian and Polish women, and remember that you’re mighty well off. ”  Well, I’d say that was one of the clumsier statements he’s ever put in print!

“Gee, that passage you wrote about being curled up on a rug in front of the fireplace, listening to music made me lonesome. It still does, every time I read it. Whad’ya mean, spend a Sunday afternoon that way? How ’bout lot’s of Sunday afternoons?”

She must have commented on how proud she is of his recent successes, for her writes that the best thing about having success at anything is knowing that he makes her proud. “How can I ever tell you how much it means to a fella for the girl he has a crush on (a permanent one, in this case) is thrilled over all his little successes? You’re wonderful. Gee, I wish I could see your face light up when you hear good news like mine of a week or so ago. I know you’re happy, and it just doubles my happiness to know it.”

“Speaking of crushes, I hope we’re always happily aware of a crush for each other. I love you, Dot, and I like you, too.”

He needs to get on the ball and get his application for the City Club. He’s already thanked Earle for inviting him, but he’ll be happy to thank him again on Dot’s behalf.

He’d better watch out if she loves him like 60 atom bombs, because that’s a lot of dynamite! He can’t wait for their next installment of XXX OOO *** !!!

Dart says that Dot’s prettier than the other girls. At least, that’s what his Spanish textbook says. “Dorothea es mas’ linda que las otras muchachos.”

At her request, he looked through magazines until he found a Towle advertisement for the “Candlelight” pattern. He likes it very much, from the picture, but he’d like to reserve final opinion until he sees it “in person.” He has some errands downtown tomorrow so he’ll visit some jewelers until he finds one who carries that pattern.

He made two of his luckiest guesses in his career as a “stoogint” today when he took a couple of wild stabs in industry class on a quickie quiz for a chapter he hadn’t even read. He made a guess on the answer and then gave his reason for that answer, inadvertently paraphrasing the book so closely that Mr. Wood may think he copied it! If he can get enough As and Bs on the quizzes he may be able to pull his C- up to a solid C.

He got a higher grade than he imagined on the American lit class, earning a B. Apparently the class as a whole did so poorly that that Mr. Carter had to raise everyone’s grades.

He now knows why Miss Talmage seems like she might be deaf. She’s almost 70! “I certainly hope we’ll be as well-preserved as she, as we approach our threescore and ten, if the A-bomb doesn’t git us first.”

For several days his homework load has been quite light, allowing him to slip into a lazy attitude. How easy he finds it to become lazy when he doesn’t have much to do to keep himself busy.

When he spoke to Elmer Manley he learned that he and Norma plan to married in June. Elmer told Dart that he’ll take the first summer semester which ends on June 7. The second summer semester begins on June 16. Dart will need to sit down and see if he needs either, or both summer terms in order to graduate in June 1948 before they can cast their wedding date in stone.

Speaking of weddings, Dot wrote that she plans to have four bridesmaids. Is that four including the maid of honor, or is that four plus? He still hasn’t asked Hal or Tom to join the wedding party, but he wants to make sure he gets the right number of groomsmen lined up.

He feels about “written-out” this evening. Cool weather must agree with him because he hasn’t felt this energetic in months.

“Good night, Dot. I love you, but I guess I told you that once.”

Dart’s check from the PD was $9.02 this week, meaning he’s making $.56 per hour. He’s quite satisfied with that.

His City Club application came today. Now he just needs to find another “proposer” besides Earle in order to submit the form. He’s pretty impressed with the fee structure;  per quarter membership rates are $1.75 for students, $3.25 for “juniors” up to age 30, and $6.50 for regular members.

He got a 96% on his Spanish test on Monday. They’re getting into some challenging grammar now, so he’ll need to keep up.

While in town today he was able to see an entire six-piece place setting ($24.75, including federal tax) of “Candlelight” and he’s very pleased with the style. It’s neither too heavy, not too light, and the quality seems good. As far as  he’s concerned, that’s a great choice. If Dot sees any she likes better, he’ll be happy to check them out, but he’s all set for “Candlelight.”

Burke came home from Chicago today and they all sat around spinning yarns for a long while. Most of the yarn was spun by Burke because he had lots of stories to tell the family.

He appreciates that Dot sent a lovely card to his family. He always has good intentions about such things, but never seems to carry through with them. He hopes she’ll be the social secretary when they’re married, because she’ll do a much better job than he would.

How nice that Chuckie liked the train pictures. He’ll put together more from his older negatives and send them along when he gets the chance.

For now, his eyes are burning so much they’re beginning to scorch his eyebrows, so he wants to quit writing. He’ll try to do a longer letter tomorrow.

Although Dart never mentions it in his letter, this is Thanksgiving Day, but he’s not feeling very thankful. “I’ve been so lonesome for you today that I’ve been hard to live with. All I’ve been doing is moaning, groaning, and eating. I’m in no mood for writing a letter tonight, so if this one’s off the beam, it’ll give you some good excuse for knowing about my unpredictable, ungrateful, utterly screwy moodiness.”

Claiming that there’s no connection between the previous paragraph and the next – just his random thoughts, he tells her that one of his high school gal friends was married recently in Kentucky. Her name used to be Charlotte Monck and she wrote to him sporadically when he was in Great Lakes Hospital. “I dated her, occasionally, because nobody else would go out with me.”

His most recent letter from Dot is dated the 24th. From it, he deduces that since her monthly issue was running a bit late, his long letters didn’t arrive at a time when they would do her much good. He suggests she “arrange things” so that she’ll be free of such concerns on June 14th, and “thereafter, for a while.”

He isn’t sure if Burke could be in Connecticut in time for a June 14th wedding because his exams in Chicago will wrap up on June 13. (I’ve noticed that nearly all references to their upcoming wedding place it on June 14. In fact, they were married on the 20th. I’m not sure when the final date was set, but they clearly aren’t there yet.)

Dart wishes that when she makes the break away from her parents, he could do the same from his. He acknowledges that their living on his folks’ third floor will allow them to marry a full year before he’d originally thought they would, but he’s eager for the two of them to strike out on their own now. Still, maybe just one of them making a clean break at a time will ease the transition, just as being in the V-12 unit and going to Case eased his transition from home to military life.

“I’ve always said you had a pleasant and cheerful voice. Now one of the phone company customers has thought enough of it to call them and compliment them on you! That’s swell! I’m glad you’re so successful and so happy at your job. Having a job you can feel that way about surely has its advantages. I’m proud of you, my Sweetheart. (Let’s always be sweethearts, even after next June.)”

He sends wishes for a great choral concert on Sunday. He hopes it’s all she hopes it will be. He thinks, however, that it’s a shame they didn’t put her angelic voice to work in a solo.  How he wishes he could sing!

Wishing he could reach out and hug her until she was breathless, and run his fingers through her soft brown hair, he bids her good-night.

Dart and Burke went downtown today with three things in mind; get Burke’s driver’s license renewed, purchase tickets for Burke and his date to see a production at the Playhouse, and buy some clothes. They accomplished the first two, but then Dart got such a headache that they aborted the clothes shopping. He does have his eye on a couple pairs of trousers, though.

Even though he slept all afternoon, he could not shake off the headache. “I still had it when I left for the Skyline meeting tonight, but lost it sometime during the meeting.

He thoroughly enjoyed that meeting! The atmosphere was friendly and casual, with lots of laughter and plenty of puns – right up Dart’s alley. The editor had already read through all of the submissions that had come into the magazine since its last issue and culled the ones that didn’t meet the Skyline standards. At the meeting, he read the remaining selections aloud. After discussion, the staff voted on which pieces would be published in the upcoming issue, which they hope to have out by Christmas! Dart seems to have fallen into just his kind of crowd.

“That’s all for tonight, Dot. I love you very much. I’ve missed you in an extra-special way this evening.”

Dart tells Dot that he typed a long letter to El today, but that he didn’t proofread it very thoroughly, so please ask her to overlook his shortcomings.

He has most of Uncle Guy’s new address that Dot asked for but he has to check to see if he’s in the town of Willoughby or Wickliffe before he sends it to her.

Work was pretty slow tonight. The biggest thing was that Mr. Bacon, the telegraph editor, asked Dart about coming to work for him in his advertising agency. He’s looking for a guy to do some writing and general production office work. It’s exactly the kind of job Dart is hoping for, where he can get his foot in the door. Mr. Bacon and his wife are hoping to expand beyond straight advertising and get into the employer publications field. He really wants Dart for the job, but Dart can’t fit it in with his class schedule. He wants Dart to keep in touch with him in case there’s a schedule change for him that could work. “The more I think about the job, the more I like it.”

He tells her that sometimes when she responds to some of his letters, like the one he told her she might want to burn, he wishes he had made a copy of it so he’d remember what he wrote. “Gee, I wish we could be talking about what I wrote about; doing the things we talk about.”

She is completely forgiven for not writing after her grueling choral rehearsal the other night. He knows how tough those times can be. He remembers how hard his high school chorus prepared for their concerts. They all hated those practices, but loved them, too.

He certainly hopes that her “troubles” didn’t come on Thanksgiving Day and that they wont be around to pain her on the night of the concert.

The Peterson family had chicken for Thanksgiving because they were just a small family, but most of the rest of the fixin’s were the same as she described from their table.

Did he mention that he’s going to try and sell his “Iron Hobby Horse” to the model railroad magazine if it turns our well enough. It’ll surely need lots of editing before that, though.

He’s in a bit of a stew about what to get everyone for Christmas. His budget is so  ridiculously small that he doesn’t know how to make it spread far enough. He knows a particular book he’d like to get for his brother, but that’s the only idea he’s had, and the store shelves are already looking bare.

“Good night, Dot. I get a tummy full of feathers every time I think about what we’re planning for June. I love you so much that I’m at a loss as to tell you how much.”