This sure doesn’t feel like any Christmas Eve Dart has ever known. The California sunshine and brilliant skies feel incongruous to his Midwestern experience.
By now, he tells Dot, she has probably had a scare and also had it repudiated. He plans to send a telegram timed to arrive the same day as the letter that announces his departure, updating her to the news that his shipping out date has been postponed by a few days.
They’ve all been granted special liberty, but most of the boys had such a big time on their “final” liberty last night that they plan to stay in the barracks and sleep it off. Some of the guys want to return to Stockton and try to find the girls they got lucky with last night. Dart says they managed to “corrupt” Lefty and tried their hardest to convince Dart that he owed himself one last fling before departure. “But I figured that I’d had my last one in Cleveland six weeks ago and am satisfied with the way things went.”
He instead spent the evening in Oakland, attending a concert and having his picture taken in one of the “innumerable clip-joints” along Market Street. They’re not too good, but he’ll send her one if she’s not easily frightened.
“Ever since I first came here for shipment I’ve been slightly anxious to be on the move. Now that the word has come for us to be on our way before too very long, the anticipation of the big adventure is really working on us. So far our Navy life has been an interesting adventure, and the big climax has not yet arrived.”
He writes a vivid description of San Francisco and Oakland and how much they change when daytime turns into night. “During the day they are rather attractive cities, with the normal proportion of civilians and sailors. At night, they’re transformed into roaring, dirty, seedy dens of iniquity. Drunken sailors, rowdy Waves, women from 16 to 61, all dressed alike, always badly painted…”
He continues,”Nice people lock their homes, desert the main section of town every night. Each city is, in reality two separate cities; one a tranquil place in which one would like to live; the other, a revolting yet intriguing mixture of open vice and undercover vice and the frailties and failures of human beings, with here and there a touch of refinement, but seldom a touch of home.” I love that last part. It shows a young man who is taking full advantage of his chance to “see the world,” to observe and learn and grow. But it also reveals the abiding loneliness and homesickness that comes with all that exposure to novelty.
Once again, this letter refers to items Dot has written about that have not shown up in any of the letters I’ve found. He does mention several cute cards she’s sent him lately, so maybe they included the topics he references now. He calls her “Lois,” her middle name which she loathes. It seems as though that’s in response to her having called him “Junior.” He says junior is a title, not a name. He also refers to some dream she mentioned and to her fondness for the Case overalls that he hopes his brother doesn’t wear out before he has a chance to.
He mentions again the the Ouija board was wrong about his departure date, but he hopes it was right about Gordon, and it looks like it’ll be right about the war perhaps lasting until January 1947. He says that he plans to get in there and end it sooner, though.
There’s a long paragraph where he talks about the kids Dot babysits for. He’s happy one of the boys is a train nut like himself. He asks about Chucky Pecsok and Chris and Eric.
After some other chit chat about her recent letters, Dart mentions that he loves writing to her even more than he loves to eat, so he skipped chow tonight to do so. As a result he’s very hungry and must go forage for food in the Ship’s Service. Meanwhile, he’s happy she approves of his ideas on “things,” by which I presume he means honor and morality. “After knowing so many people without a trace of honor you make me glad clear through that I’ve been my way this long. If it’s possible to give reasons for loving a person, that’s one of the reasons I love you so much.”
