Here’s a playful and passionate offering from Dart which begins with his announcement that he has one heck of a headache and a black eye to go with it! Did he drink too much? Of course not! Did he run into a door? Not even close. Was he thrashed by the jealous lover of some sweet young lady? Not our Dart.
In truth, he was enjoying a free swim period in the pool when some dolt decided to brashly enter the water spread-eagle, with fists clenched. One of those fists made violent contact with Dart’s face, nearly knocking him unconscious and causing him to swallow a quantity of pool water. Yikes!
He asks Dot if Lake Sunapee is cold, because he claims the pool tonight could not have been much above freezing. I’ll be interested to read how Dot answers that question. It’s been my observation over the years that people who have grown up swimming at Sunapee use words like “brisk” and “invigorating” when asked about the temperature of the water. The uninitiated generally use different vocabulary, like “frigid” and “holy crap!!”
Dart launches into a small tirade about Dot’s habit of disparaging her physical appearance. “Whaddayou mean by making those cracks about my taste in women?…Why, I should take that as a personal affront.”
He continues with one of the dearest paragraphs he’s written to date. “Really, Dot, I think you’re very pretty, the nicest girl I’ve ever known. … You have such sparkling brown eyes, a beautiful complexion (with just enough freckles…), a cute nose which I like very much, a beautiful smile which puts all the rest of the smiles in the world to shame… You’re just tall enough and not so frail looking that you seem as though you’d break if I hugged you as tight as I’d like to. And if I remember rightly, it feels perfectly natural for my arms to be around you. You also have a very kissable height. And speaking of kissing, I still feel as though our farewell kiss in Grand Central were prolonged clear across the country and clear across all this time. Oh, Dot…I love everything about you.”
He talks some more about his constant desire to try and see her over his leave. The prospects seem dim, but hope colors his dreams, even when he sleeps.
He agrees with her assessment about the futility of laundry. He confesses that the socks, hat and skivvies he’s wearing as he’s washing are dirty by the time the socks, hat and skivvies he’s washed are dry!
He asks for more details about her dentist visit and he naturally forgives her for not writing as often when she gets so busy.
In closing, he writes “The boys have just come back from ‘The Cry of the Werewolf’ and the place is a howling madhouse.” Ah, men will be boys!
There’s no letter from Dot today, but I wanted to include an update on a question I raised last week. There is a letter missing from Dart that apparently contained some racy and passionate passages. I wondered if my folks had removed it from the collection of letters when they read them all many years ago. My mother insists there was no censoring of these letters. Sadly, she can think of a handful of very special letters that have disappeared over the years, due to frequent reading and handling. These tend to be the letters that kept Dot company during the long months when Dart was at sea, like the first letter that he told her he loved her. I suspect the missing letter of September 13th, 1944 may have been one of those cherished pieces that disintegrated over years of folding and unfolding. They still exist in Dot Peterson’s heart and memory.