Dart was happy to get another letter from Dot today, as well as a letter from her mother, written at Sunapee. The more he hears about the Chamberlain’s summer place, the more eager he is to see it.

He asks Dot if she has ever been in an airplane. (I suspect that in 1944, there were a fair number of 18-year olds who had never flown.) A couple of the guys in his class have their commercial pilot license and Dart has been chewing the fat with them about what it’s like to fly. Speaking of planes, he did very poorly on his recognition test this week. He may be ordered to go to night school to catch up on the material. “So there go your illusions of genius. Don’t forget that I flunked out of Case. That doesn’t seem much like the work of a master mind either, does it?”

Once again he mentions that Burke will be starting his senior year at Shaw High School soon and that his girlfriend has moved back into the city to finish at Shaw. He hopes that means Burke will spend more time closer to home on Sunday afternoons. His parents get bored and lonely on the weekends because they can’t really get far from their apartment. Dart Sr. uses all their gas rations to get to and from work and running errands for his brother Guy.

A little background on Dart Sr. and Guy. Dart was the younger of two sons and Guy was the highly favored child. In fact, the stories I’ve heard of the way Dart Sr. was treated by his mother seem to come straight from a Dickens story. Although my grandfather was a very smart man who loved learning, only Guy went to college. In fact, he graduated medical school while Dart was forced to forego schooling altogether. As adults, Guy treated Dart like a hired hand – there were times when he actually paid Dart to do menial labor for him. Dart Jr. writes in this letter that Guy and both of his daughters each had their own car, but these well-to-do relatives thought nothing of forcing Dart and Helen to use their own gas rations to do their bidding. No wonder Dart sounds a little bitter about it.

There’s a brief paragraph about how strange it is to run into high school chums who are married, engaged, or parents already. Considering Dart is only two years out of high school, I can see how that would be a bit shocking.

Dot is counting down the hours until she is at her beloved Lake Sunapee for the first time in three years. It was four years ago that her parents dropped her off at the train in Albany while on their way home from the lake. That train took her to Cleveland and her destiny. She is grateful she took that trip, or “I would never have met you and my life would have been wasted.” On second thought, she prefers to think they would have found each other some other way.

El is also excited about the upcoming weekend. Don has a week long furlough and they will spend several days of it in Providence, RI with his parents.

Dot writes that tomorrow is her parent’s 29th wedding anniversary and she thinks they’ve pretty much decided to stick it out for another few years. Sadly, Dot was too accurate with the term “few years.” Arthur Chamberlain would live only about five more years, dying far too young of pneumonia following a heart attack.

Dot is now the only sales clerk left in her department. Even though the staff keeps leaving, the merchandise continues to arrive. Today, Dot was “buried alive” in a shipment of sweaters that she had to check in, unpack and place on display. She thinks she must be a little nuts, but she has loads fun doing all that retail work. Of course, our Dot seems to have fun with almost everything she does.

Before closing, she poses a question for Dart. “By the way, your letters seem different lately. Is it just that you’re terribly busy, or is something else the matter?” She urges him not to write if there is something else he should be doing.