Dot’s letter starts on a cheerful note. She raced home from work at two o’clock to find the mail had not yet been delivered. While she cleaned her way through the house, she kept an eye on the street, watching for the mailman. After an eternity of waiting, she saw him approaching the house and ran out the door to great him. When she saw him coming up the path, grinning from ear to ear, she knew it had been worth the wait. Two letters from Dart! Now there’s a postman who has his fingers on the pulse of the community!

Her next paragraph is about the weather. This time, she has high praise after days of griping. They had a high temperature of 82 with a cool breeze blowing all day. She hopes this pattern will stick around for a while.

In response to Dart’s tale of the crazy bird on Treasure Island, she has a brief retort – “A very interesting story about your feathered friend. No further comment.”

She also quips, “If you do decide to go to California on your honeymoon I hope you have as nice a time as I’m going to have in New Hampshire.”

She assures him she did not do her back dive off the high tower – just the diving board on the float in Long Island Sound.

She’s delighted by the news that he has sent some pictures (his official Navy portraits) and she promises she will place one in the front window so that all the passing girls will be jealous. She promises she’ll swoon when she sees them, but not from fear.

Regarding his unspecified dreams, she doesn’t know what to say, except she hopes they all come true. She also has a few dreams of her own. I suspect their dreams align rather closely.

She’s so glad he mentioned the sewing kit that he needed. She rushed right out and bought one she hopes will meet his needs. She assures him that it gives her great pleasure to do little things for him and she hopes he’ll keep the requests coming. I think I know exactly which sewing kit she sent him. I still have it today. It is about the size of a box of safety matches, covered in sturdy navy blue fabric. It holds about a half dozen tiny spools of thread in basic colors, a few needles, a thimble, a threader and some very small scissors. I had always assumed it was issued by the Navy as part of his equipment. Since the guys were expected to mend their own uniforms and stitch on their uniform insignia, I thought the Navy would provide the means to do so.

Dot confesses her ignorance of the word “muster,” which Dart used in a recent letter. “You don’t mean the stuff they put on hot-dogs, do you?”

She tells him that Doug called last night from Sunapee. He’s only been gone a couple of days, but he missed his dad and called to hear his voice. Dot can’t understand how anyone could be homesick for anyone or anything when they were sitting by such a perfect lake.

She comments that the news from France is encouraging. She hopes the war in Europe will be over by Christmas and the Japs will be defeated shortly thereafter. Reading this comment made me realize how seldom the war is mentioned in these letters. It seems like it would have been foremost on everyone’s mind. Had it gone on so long by this time that it faded to the back of folk’s consciousness, or was it left unmentioned out of courtesy?

She adds that another week has passed, meaning she’s one week closer to graduation. She knows he has no say in when or if he’ll get leave, but she prays he’ll be able to make it to her big day in February.

Suddenly, the weather in Greenwich has gotten very chilly. It’s only 50 degrees in Dot’s room at the McDonald’s house, where she is babysitting, but she’s not complaining. In fact, she’s sleeping outside on their sun porch.

She mentions a poem that the McDonalds place on their bathroom door. She’s included a copy for Dart, but it has not made the journey to present time with the letter. I wonder if Mom recalls what that poem was?

She gives Dart a play-by-play description of how she spent her day. Prior to leaving for work, she made her father’s breakfast, packed his lunch, changed the bed linens, took a bath and washed the dishes. At lunch time, she did her week’s worth of laundry and later did the week’s shopping before taking the bus to her babysitting gig. Phew! She feels pretty good about her accomplishments for the day.

Continuing with the recitation of her schedule, she tells Dart that tomorrow morning she babysits with the Miller boys and then she and El will go see Tender Comrade, starring Ginger Rogers.

She asks what he’s been doing for variety and then conjectures that variety is not a high priority in the Navy.

Here, she rambles rather aimlessly through a list of topics she says aren’t worth mentioning; the weather (already discussed), how she loves him (he already knows that), the war (she’s not supposed to upset the military men with such things), before finally admitting she’s just stalling in an attempt to get to page three.

Now that she’s made it, she ought to stop writing and finish letters to people who have been waiting for her response for a long time. She confesses to recently unearthing a letter from the Marine pen pal that he wrote on May 28! Still, she is unmotivated to write, and so the poor Marine must wait a little longer.

She repeats a joke she saw in “Readers’ Digest” about the high absentee rate occurring in Germany. More and more factories are failing to show up for work,

She finally gives up trying to extend the letter and encloses some stale gum for Dart’s chewing pleasure. For a bonus pun or two, check out her P. S. written on page 4.

No letter from Dart since August 16. I guess he meant it when he talked about how busy he was, but I can’t see how he could be much busier than Dot, who at least manages a couple of pages.

She is struggling to write the lines because her eyes are swollen from tears. She has just come home from seeing Tender Comrade and it obviously touched her deeply. She says that after seeing it, she is more sorry than ever that she was unable to tell Dart what was in her heart when she saw him last. “But since I didn’t, you’ll have to make a point to come home very soon so I will be able to tell you that I love you very, very much.”

While sleeping on the McDonald’s porch last night, she’s sure she saw the star Dart referred to in a recent letter. It was big and bright and more twinkly than the others.

She tells him to take of himself and know that she loves him always.

Here’s a delightful letter from Dot as Dart’s dry spell continues.

She begins with great exuberance at the arrival of Dart’s portrait. It’s absolutely “out of this world!” She continues with a funny story about her Dad’s reaction to the picture. When he came through the door at the end of the day, he could tell by the look on Dot’s face that either Dart was sitting in the living room or his photo was. She invited him to see for herself. A few minutes later, she checked back to find out what his reaction to the picture was, and she found the following message stuck to the frame:  #561341 WANTED for robbery. 6’1″, brown hair, etc.” When Dot asked her father for an explanation, he said, “Well, from that mischievous look in his eye, I took it for granted that he had just stolen cookies from his mother’s cookie jar and I thought people ought to be on the look out for him.” I see where Dot gets her sense of humor. (To see that “mischievous look” you can check out the portrait on the photo page of this blog.)

She is not pleased to hear about his cold. She thinks he has spent enough time in sick bay for all the sailors in the fleet, and she thinks that’s quite enough. To get healthy, she tells him to “blow hard, drink hot lemonade, get to bed by 7:00 PM and sleep until noon.” I’m sure the Navy would understand.

Referring to his recent success in his classes, she tells him that he better stop telling this “first class moron” how smart he is or she’s liable to throw a fit. On the bright side, when he is a world-celebrated genius, she’ll be able to say “I knew him when…”

It’s been decided that she will indeed accompany her father when he goes to Lake Sunapee over Labor Day to bring Ruth and Doug home. Dot is delighted to finally get to see the place after a three-year absence. She promises to take pictures to send to Dart. I know from experience that Lake Sunapee has inspired countless photographs over the years, but I can’t get too excited about the black and white snapshots that were the norm in the 1940s. People had to rely on their mind’s eye to see the deep blue water, the piercing blue sky and the cool green hemlocks. That’s easy if you’ve actually been there, but I’m not sure how impressed Dart would be seeing photos of a place he’s never visited, displayed in shades of gray.

Dot probes a little for details about a horrible dream Dart mentioned. She really wants to know what it was so she can be sure it doesn’t come true.

Gazing at the new portrait as she writes, Dot reports a warm feeling all over. In fact, she claims her glasses fogged up! I’d say the girl has it bad!

She says that by the time Dart gets this letter, they will have known each other for 11 months. It’s been the happiest 11 months of her life. “If this is a dream, I hope I never wake up,” she writes.

Once again, Dot is a solo correspondent today and she turns the tables on Dart by doing a little bragging of her own. She had the highest sales tally at Franklin Simons this week, due to her selling a blended muskrat fur coat for $252.00. In an effort to keep up her tally, she asks Dart, “Sir, would you be interested in giving your mother a beautiful beaver coat which only costs a mere $695.00?”

She tells Dart she got the surprise of her life today when she ran across a girl she attended grammar school with who now has two children. She also got a letter telling of the immanent marriage of a classmate from Andrews. “What fools these mortals be,” quotes Dot.

In other news, she learned that her despised retailing teacher, Miss Hutton will not be returning to school this fall. Dot bemoans the fact that she didn’t leave a year earlier, thereby saving her a lot of grief.

Finally, Andrews is adding two courses this school year; Latin and the Bible. Dot deems both of them essential to this year’s seniors. With that, her news is done, and she bids him good night.

We have two letters today – both from Dot. She tells Dart that she received, and has already answered, a letter from his mother. She also tells him that she is sitting in the living room at that very moment with a coat on. It is 52 degrees in Greenwich. She wonders how her mother and brother are staying warm in their summer cottage in New Hampshire. It seems that when the heat wave broke, it shattered!

“Isn’t it nice to know there’s always the weather to talk about? I don’t know how I’d fill a page without it,” she writes. This is especially true when she’s had no letters to respond to of late. During this unusual dry spell from Dart, it’s easy to see how important it was to the relationship that both of our writers maintained an almost constant stream of letters, month after month. If either had procrastinated regularly, the gaps between letters would have grown. With less immediacy, the responses might have seemed less intimate. If the correspondence had become lopsided, one person or the other might have become resentful. Although Dot has not complained once during these recent days, I am grateful that long lapses on the part of either party were the exception. It is the continuous and even flow of letters that allowed the relationship to flourish over long absences  and very infrequent face-to-face contact. If they hadn’t both been such loyal correspondents, they may not have ended up married. Indeed, I may have never been born! See why I’m so grateful they wrote as they did?

Dot is preparing to attend El’s surprise bridal shower this evening. She’s purchased two place settings of the everyday dinnerware El has selected. The couple plans to marry on Dec. 4 if Don is successful in graduating on Dec. 2. I believe I have mentioned earlier that things didn’t work out the way they planned…

This being Dot’s half day off, she intends to get the whole house clean today. She says the house never seems large to her until she has to clean it. Well, it was a three-story home with huge rooms, so I’d say it would be a major achievement to get the entire place clean after a half day of working elsewhere!

She wishes Dart continued luck on his swimming lessons (unaware that he’s been temporarily banned from participating) and wishes him luck on his “suicide jump.” I don’t recall reading about that, so I’m not sure what she means.

In her second letter of the day, Dot reports in after the bridal shower. It turned out to be a complete surprise for the bride and a great success. El received beautiful and practical gifts, with no duplicates among them. Dot describes some sort of game they played which was meant to predict who among the unmarried girls at the party would be the next to wed, and how many babies each would eventually have. The game might have been rigged, because Dot “won” the next-to-get-married title and was deemed to have five children in her future.

She promises to answer the two letters she received today from Dart  tomorrow night. She also thanks him for the pictures he sent. “They make you seem a little closer, yet you still feel worlds away from Greenwich, Conn.”