A luxuriously long letter from Dart covers lots of new territory. He tells Dot about his cousin Jim Peterson who married a woman named Dot. Jim is stationed at an Army post in California and Dot is traveling out to see him.
Next, Dart reveals that his father makes legendary spaghetti every year on New Year’s Day for a huge family gathering. His modest dad only cooks one dish, but it receives such raves that he is secretly thrilled to roll it out annually. In this story, Dart talks about his dad going to “Little Italy” in Cleveland to bargain with the merchants for the best ingredients. I am a little horrified to see his use of a derogatory word for Italians. I knew Dad to be one of the most gracious, open-minded and accepting men I ever met – not a prejudiced word ever spoken. Did I simply know a mellower, wiser man than the boy who wrote this letter, or were terms like that more widely accepted in the 1940’s?
He chats about Dot’s negative comments about Norfolk, VA in an earlier letter and mentions that he, too, has heard nasty things about the city. They are reputed to post anti-sailor signage all over town, in spite of the fact that the Navy is the city’s bread and butter. He mentions a Coast Guard officer (bathtub sailor) who likes Norfolk, and talks about the man’s two daughters he knew in high school.
Dart then waxes eloquent about his great love – trains. He can hear their whistles and bells from the hospital and they make him feel lonely and homesick.
He describes visitors’ day on the ward and what the guys do to keep busy. He complements the corpsmen who treat their patients so well. He mentions the homemade cookies the ambulatory patients get from home and the snacks delivered in the evenings. All of this talk of food must torment him a little because he’s still on a liquid diet.
He admonishes Dot not to neglect her studies to write such long letters, even while he tells her how much those long letters mean to him! And he thanks her for all her get-well wishes. “It’s a wonderful feeling to know you have a swell, sweet, pretty girl wishing you well and writing to you every day.”
It’s letters like this that saunter so companionably across all types of terrain that allow these kids to get to know each other so well. Memories, daily reports, jokes, gossip – all combine to create a complete picture of the writer and provide the raw material for mutual dreams of future meetings.
Another fun letter from Dot where she recounts a great prank she and her friend Andy played on the gullible Dorrie across the hall. I can almost hear the girlish giggles as the story unfolds and the masculine guffaws as Dart reads the letter to his fellow patients. Just what the doctor ordered! The prank went something like this: Dot and her roommate Andy were among the few girls who were in the house on this Saturday, and they had nothing to do but look for trouble. An opportunity presented itself when Dot opened a new tube of face cream she’d just bought downtown, only to discover it was some sort of sulfur cream. Naturally, it smelled to high heaven of rotten eggs. Not wanting to waste it by throwing it out, the two girls hatched a plot against Dorrie – a naive and gullible girl across the hall. When Dorrie left her room for a moment, Dot and Andy went in and hid the open tube of stinky cream. They smeared a bit on a piece of paper so that the odor would be more noticeable, and left the room. Dorrie came back and they watched her wrinkle her nose and sniff suspiciously all around. Then she threw open her window and came back to tell Dot and Andy about the horrible stench in her room. “We were in hysterics, but that never bothered her. She never suspects anyone. Later I looked over into her room and she was sitting at her desk with a coat and scarf on, her hair rippling in the wind that’s coming in from the window. She began searching her closet for dead mice. “Honestly, you could tell that girl that Roosevelt was on the phone and she’d believe you.” Eventually, after announcing the smell must be a dead wasp she found in her window, Dorrie discovered the open tube and smeared paper and threw them out the window into the winds. She never suspected Dot and her partner in crime!
