Dart’s letter begins with “I love you. They tell me you should not begin a letter with the ‘vertical pronoun,’ but isn’t my love for you the moving force of my letters? Okay, then why not say so, right in the beginning and not waste any time about it?” Cute, Dart.
His predictions last night of the movements of the “John R Ridiculous” may be wrong. It turns out that during their little excursion yesterday, the ship began to bust apart! “Two frames broke, a bulkhead of 1/4 inch steel split, oil sprayed out of the crack and our main engine went bad. …What a lousy, good-for-nothing-but-the-scrap-it’s-made-of ship this is. Every piece of metal in it is rotten.”
There’s no telling how long the repairs will take to complete.
Dart got a plethora of mail today, after several pieces finally found their way to him from the JA Craig. How frustrating to have two destroyers with similar names in the same vicinity!
He seems to have enjoyed the work he did today, but his favorite part was the nifty coat he was issued. It’s the best coat he’s ever had, and he doesn’t want to get it dirty by working. He described the process of loading heavy ammo canisters: There was the click of a latch as the canisters were released, the scrape as it slid through a scuttle, the slap of three pairs of hands to guide it, and the crash as it was placed on the shelf. “125 times without a break – click, slide, slap,slap, slap BANG!”
He goes on for two pages about the snappy radio dialogue that is carried by the speakers throughout the ship as they go through their maneuvers. Frankly, it reads a little like Latin to the uninitiated, but it was music to Dart’s ears. Rather than copying everything he reported, I’ll use this space to say that my father was a great appreciator. We’ve seen it in his letters as he describes sights, sounds and smells. I used to watch him as he’d smile softly while stroking a nicely polished piece of wood, or filled his lungs with fresh, pine-scented air. He loved the sound nice crystal made when gently struck. He always used all of his senses to garner the most out of his surroundings. Anyone who can find poetry in the barked orders required for moving or docking a ship is a poet, indeed.
In other news, he got a short letter from Fred who expects to be out of the Marines in mid December, but may not be home for Christmas. Dart was happy to read that Dot’s diamond sparkled for her when she was lonely. He recalls how beautifully it sparkled that night on the davenport. And here we go again…he affirms that he likes the photos of the Lyric silverware pattern. He likes the drawings he’s seen. He thinks it’s simple, yet elegant, tasteful. But he leaves the door open a bit (after all their discussions) when he says he’d like to try to see an actual piece of it before they finally decide. But he likes it. He really does. I say it’s a good thing they have so long before they’re married. Two years might give them enough time to commit to a sterling pattern.
He admits that he is unsure how he feels about her leaving college. It would depend on her reasons, he guesses. He truly wants her to finish someday, and he knows her mother would be disappointed, but the decision will have to be Dot’s.
He’s dreaming of a white Christmas, walking hand-in-hand with Dot through a fluffy, quiet street. Could that happen this year?
Commenting on her recent letter, Dart finds it hard to believe that they were so young when they met and fell in love. He thinks she seems more mature since then. “You are the nicest balance between a girl and a woman that I have ever seen. Oh,Dot, I love you!” Then he asks if he seems like he’s 22. He will be just that one month from today. When he was 17, 18, 19, he thought a man of 22 was a real old-timer. “I was wrong.”
It’s midnight, he worked hard today, and he hopes to start his liberty early tomorrow, so he must get some sleep.
Dot and Joyce have just returned from seeing “You Came Along.” It was a good movie, but she says someone as mentally unbalanced as she is should never have seen it. She bawled all the way through it, and would have bawled louder if the man seated next to her didn’t look at her with such scorn. “It certainly shows that you can live a whole life in just a few months, if you have to.”
She feels guilty writing to him, with all the studying she has, but if she found time to see a film, she surely has time to write to her “best excuse for living.”
The school asked her and Joyce to usher at a Christmas program tomorrow. Although they are flattered to have been selected over the traditional upperclassmen, she hopes it won’t take too long because she has 10 pages to write for English.
She proffers an idea they could work on together; if he works on gaining weight, she’ll try to match him with a pound lost for everyone he gains. I wonder how that idea will play with Dart?
Apparently, she has not yet received word of his potential Christmas leave. She tells him that if it should happen that he gets time off at Christmas, he should spend it with his parents. She’d give anything to see him, but it’s his parents that will be so lonely without him. She’ll be lonely for him, but surrounded by parents, siblings, cousins and friends. She would not want to feel like she was robbing his parents of the joy they deserve.
The price of Lyric shocks her. At $22.50 per place setting, they’ll be lucky if they have enough for a snack on their honeymoon. “Ah, but who wants to eat on a honeymoon, anyway?”
She asks a very good question: “What makes you think you’re going to hurt me by something you might say? Do you have anything special in mind? I think you are worrying needlessly. Naturally, I don’t expect every word from your lips to be some form of flattery, but believe me, I can take criticism without suing for divorce. Besides, if we’re going to ‘make up’ every night, there won’t be much opportunity for either of us to hurt the other.”
This has been, in Dot’s estimation, a poor excuse for a letter, but it’s all she has time for tonight, except to tell Dart that she loves him and misses him with every breath she takes.
