Dart is happy with the swell letter he got from Dot today. If things go according to plan, he will have started his return trip from Kent by this time tomorrow night. While they’re together, he hopes he’ll remember to talk with her about picnic plans.

Tonight at Hi-Y, there was an election of officers for next year and the head man asked Dart to speak with the boys about some of his experiences in the Navy. There is no meeting next week, and the following week will be the last of the school hear. Mr. Cumler asked Dart if he’d be a YMCA camp counselor this summer, but camp starts the same week as his classes at Cleveland College, so he must decline. It sure sounds like a lot of fun to him, though.

He didn’t do much else today but putter around with his trains. He has his little bit of track smoothed out now, and he hopes to have some noticeable improvements on the layout by the next time Dot visits.

He talks again about how badly the family car needs tires, and he mentions that he now wishes he’d “parasited” his $20 a week from the US government while he had the chance. Then he might have been able to replace those tires. I talked with Mom about what he meant by that comment and she told me about an offer from the government to give $20 a week for 52 weeks to any returning GI who requested it. Dot encouraged Dart to take it, if only to help out his folks a little, but Dart insisted that the Navy had treated him fairly, especially putting him up for 8 months in the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and he refused to be a parasite by taking any more of their money. I maintain that if it hadn’t been for the Navy, he wouldn’t have had to spend 8 months in a hospital, but Dart was nothing if not scrupulous and unrelentingly honest.

He’s glad she has a spot reserved in off-campus housing over the summer. He’ll be happy to keep her radio while she’s in Greenwich, but she needn’t get it fixed; he’s fairly certain he can put it to rights in short order.

Now he must ask: weren’t her parents also married in June? Then why doesn’t she suggest they get married on that anniversary instead of his folks. He has no objection to any date she chooses, as long as she’ll be there, and he’s not in classes.

He tells her that he’s always wanted a formal wedding, and he agrees that four attendants each is a good number. He’ll want one, or both of her brothers, Hal Martin, and maybe his brother Burke.

Ever since Saturday night, he’s been thinking about the marriage vows they repeated to each other that night. He truly believes they were the real vows, and the vows they say on their wedding day will simply be a public repetition. Still, those are the official ones, and they must do everything in their power to avoid doing wrong over the next 390 or so days.  “I want to marry you Dot,  so we can live together, eat together, do our working and our playing together; so that we can have our friends over to our house (or room) for an evening. I hope I haven’t put too much emphasis on sleeping together, but I want that, too. Good night, Dorothy. I love you.”

#          #          #

Dot can predict in the first sentence that this will be a short letter. She worked late tonight, wrote to her mother, and is nursing a bad headache as a result of said head hitting the ground during a baseball game today. “I feel very much in the mood to call it a day.”‘

At work tonight, she tried to make it very clear that she couldn’t work later than 7:30 on Saturday. She has a banquet to serve that night, starting at 6:15, so she hopes they’ll be done by the time Dart gets there. She’s made $5.00 in tips this week which helps to make up for the $6.00 she spent on her “disappearing choppers” last week.

She wonders if the prints Dart is getting developed will be ready by Decoration Day. She hopes to see them then, except she will not be coming to Cleveland as planned that day, She was just told that she really needs to attend the Health & Phys Ed picnic on campus that day. She has permission to invite Dart, and she surely hopes he’ll come.

There is no doubt that he’ll become a better typist than she is. Ever since she bragged about how well she was doing, she’s done worse on her tests. She says she’ll be lucky to get a B in that class.

She’s tired and has no more energy for writing. She’ll go to bed counting the 16 hours until she sees him tomorrow night.

Neither wrote on May 23rd 70 years ago, but we can meet back here on the 24th for an update from Dart.