Dart writes this letter from “the most refined and neighborly service club in San Francisco,” where he came today simply to escape the soggy, dismal mess that is Camp Shoemaker. Except for a brief respite yesterday when they all dug the drainage ditch, it has been raining for days at that dreadful place.

He’s happy to report that just after finishing his letter to Dot yesterday, the heating stoves at his quarters kicked back into action, so no one froze during the night.

Several of the guys have received food packages from home lately, similar to the one Dot sent Dart. Because chow was such a disappointment yesterday, Dart and five or six other guys pooled their bounty, added some crackers they filched from the mess, and had themselves a grand feast. The cheese, Vienna sausages and deviled ham from Dot’s package were big hits. “As yet, I haven’t found a way to fix up that cocoa you sent, but never fear – a fire control man must be a man of ingenuity, never stopped by lack of proper equipment.”

Of his trip into ‘Frisco, Dart writes, “When I crossed the Bay Bridge at about 5:30 this afternoon, the Bay was more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it. If it weren’t for the many things wrong with this state, and the fact that I want to live in Ohio with the girl of my ambitions, I might be persuaded to live here. The beauty of that scene is Heavenly, peaceful, indescribable by adjectives.”

His final paragraph sends a little stab to my heart as he writes of his loneliness and homesickness. “I knew it would be this way. (“Mother told me there’d be days like this.”) I wish you were here, or more rightly, that I were there… Every time I think of you-your expressions, your laughter, your gentle (sometimes) sarcasm, our water fights (and wrestling matches), our embraces and our kisses, I think of the day when we can make those memories everlastingly our own possessions.”

Dot writes from another babysitting job for a new customer, 3 1/2-year old David. As with all her charges, she decrees he is “as cute as can be.” To prove it, she tells a story about him. He was playing records on a little portable player when it was time to go to bed. He immediately put the records away and went upstairs. When Dot told him to get ready for bed and to call her when he was done, he replied, “I’m sorry, but I’m too sick and tired from playing records to work at this ungodly hour.”

She thinks it’s wonderful that Dart will be placed on the kind of ship he wants. Now, she hopes no “wagons” or “flat-tops” become available until the war is nearly over, so that the Navy will be able to tell him, “Just stay home. We don’t need you out here anymore.” She certainly has a rich fantasy life! But she has a basis of reality on which to place her hopes – that’s what happened to her father in the last war.

With 19 shopping days left until Christmas, Dot’s feeling the strain. This is the first time she’s been on the receiving end of a mob of shoppers. When Mr. Goldstein went to lunch today, 15 customers swarmed the Young Men’s department all at once. She announced to them that since there were 15 of them and only one of her, they may as well accept the fact that they would have to wait their turn. They all agreed and were most cooperative. Still, she knows she cannot rely on those same people coming in every day between now and Christmas, and she expects “a good deal more trouble with the next crowd.”

She thanks him for the picture postcards of the San Francisco area bridges and agrees with him that they are quite beautiful. She doubts she’ll ever see the real things, so the pictures are even more valuable to her. I’m pleased to say that many years later, she and Dad made it to SF and he was able to share some of his favorite sights with her.

She’s listening to some Strauss waltzes and trying to stay awake. She fills the remainder of the page with a sketch of the lovely fireplace in this home where she’s babysitting. Maybe her sketch will make its way into Dart’s dream home design.

Having begun countless letters with the words “Dearest Dot,” Dart now proclaims that he shouldn’t use that expression because it implies he has more than one “dear Dot” in his life. Still, he likes the superlative sound of it, and so he begins again with “Dearest Dot.”

He has five unanswered letters from Dot which he hopes to get through tonight. He enjoyed the story about little Chris when she picked him out of his bed to cuddle with him in his sleep. Again Dart observes the mutual affection between Dot and her charges. He gets a kick out of that.

He agrees that all the stories found in books and movies about true love are coming true for them. Their friendship has grown into something very special. Now, all their hopes and faith in God and each other must prevail so that they may live the future they desire. For him, that includes building their little house “or its descendant.” The only other plan Dart has for the future is “keeping steady company” with Dot.

Her story about the fight with her family intrigued Dart. He likes her philosophy about looking on the positive side and not despairing until there is a reason to, but he thinks he tends to be more on the emotional side, like El. He lost his ability to be positive recently until he received great letters from Dot and from Fred that helped get him back on track.

As a result of her pleading, he says he’s waking up to a few of her faults, and he loves her anyway. Now he hopes she’ll do the same with his faults. He hopes their faults will cancel each other out, and he’s confident he can overlook anything because of his love for her.

He begs her not to worry about her weight. He fell in love with her just the way she is. He still loves her. He will always love her, regardless of her weight. “Now, if you can put up with my weak body with no weight at all, and my often quick temper and sudden changes of mood, you’re doing quite well.”

Time has flown and he must end his letter, but not without a plea that she take good care of herself. If anything should ever happen to her, his world would collapse.

Dot’s first letter of the day is very brief – mostly saying she babysat for Gale last night with a friend and spent so much time talking about Dart that she had no time to write to him. One more tidbit is that this is the coldest December 3 in Greenwich since 1875 – a bitter 19 degrees.

The second note is not much longer than her first. She babysat for a new customer today – a 7-year old boy whose cuteness has mostly vanished. He was quite the card shark, however. He asked if she’d play rummy with him and she agreed, fearing she’d have to find a way to keep her victory from being too big. He cleaned her clock! During the game, he made a comment that shocked her. He was studying his hand as well as the discard pile, when he suddenly said, “What the hell. I may as well make life a little interesting,” as he scooped up the entire pile. She confirms that he was a perfectly nice little boy other than that “inappropriate” comment. She quips, “I’ll get educated yet, even if it’s only by the kids I take care of.”

El spent the evening packing for her trip to Providence while Doug was having a party with eight teenage boys downstairs, so the house was anything but calm and quiet.

“I cleaned my room and darned stockings and if you can find anything exciting about that, you’re a better man than I. But who’s denying that?”

Dart uses stationery supplied by the Oakland Hospitality House to write this brief note to Dot. He and a buddy came into Oakland on liberty today before mail call. That same buddy received a telegram from his wife today, a Wave, announcing that he was going to be a papa. He’s very, very happy. His wife will get a discharge and he’s trying for one, too. He has some sort of nervous condition (unrelated to his wife’s pregnancy).

Before coming into town today Dart had an interview with the Lieutenant in charge of his battalion. He’s pleased to tell Dot that he’s been assigned a temporary job in the office. While it lasts, it’ll keep Dart off ditch-digging and kitchen details, so he’s happy.

He tells Dot he did a couple of things in Oakland today that he thinks she’d enjoy. He says there’s no point in her asking what they were because she’ll know soon enough. Perhaps on a related note, he relates that he still has no idea what to get his folks for Christmas.

Now he bids her a fond farewell and wishes it could be as fond as one he remembers about a month ago.

Dot is tickled pink to have received a letter from both Dart and his parents today. She got a laugh out of a little note Dart, Sr. wrote on his wife’s letter, thanking Dot for the Pall Malls. “Never before in all of my seventy-three winters has Christmas come in November. Thank you, Mrs. Claus!” Dot liked the first part of the sentence because she says she would never have guessed he was a day over seventy-two. In fact, he was actually only 54 on this date!

She tells Dart how pleased she was to read his father’s opinion of her from a recent letter. She’s liked his folks from the first time she met them and has always hoped they liked her as well. Now she’ll have to spend the rest of her life trying to be the kind of person Dart’s father already thinks she is! She agrees with him when he says that the day when these two kids can begin their lives together seems very far away right now, but when it finally gets here, it won’t seem so long. She thinks anything as important as that is worth waiting for – not unlike the bike she had to save her money to buy. (I wonder how Dart will feel about being compared to a bicycle!)

A warm bed awaits and since she has nearly perished from the cold, she can no  longer resist.

Dart begins his letter while on his new assignment in the battalion office. Because he hasn’t had any letters in a few days, there’s nothing to answer, so he puts this page away until he sees what mail call brings him.

Jackpot! He got a great haul, with two letters from Dot, a package from home, and some Fanny Farmer chocolates from his uncle. The package from home had candy, a mechanical pencil and leads, and two packages of Schick-injector razor blades. He claims that’s “enough blades to last him forever and then some.”

His writing paper is a bit crumpled because he had it in his pocket while he and some other guys unloaded a truck load of butter into cold storage. Says they had a lot of fun doing it.

The letters from home brought the added treasure of four snapshots of Dot. He loves them, especially the “glamour” pose and the one where she’s looking particularly demure. “Gawshamighty, Dot. When will we be able to get together again?” He adds that he hopes the next time they can be together longer – forever, for example. “The very thought of being with you, loving you, having a home with you thrills me to the very depth of my body and soul.”

This is a sweet and affectionate letter that Dot is writing from bed at the unheard of time of 9:00 PM. She feels a cold coming on and hopes to get enough rest to nip it in the bud.

She can’t help thinking that almost exactly four weeks ago, her heart skipped a beat as she saw him dashing up the terminal steps. Never before has four weeks seemed like an eternity.

She asks Dart to enumerate some of the new things he learned about her during their brief time together. She also asks to whom she should give the credit for his pleasing personality, beautiful teeth, heavenly eyes, wonderful disposition and everything else that makes him so perfect.

While she has no letter from her parents that she can quote from to tell him how much they like him, she can attest to the fact that they love him almost as much as she does.

In the margin, she writes that she’ll not start another page because it doesn’t take much room to say “I love you.” She warns him, however, that it will take a lifetime to show him how much.

Today’s letter comes from the Pepsi-Cola club in San Francisco where Dart is spending some of his generous liberty hours. He explains that he works one eight hour shift in the morning and then has no obligations to the Navy until 0800 two days later! He’s supposed to call  in every now and then to see if his name has shown up on a draft, which is a term he’s used when he talks about guys getting their orders to ship out. From the sounds of it, when the draft comes, it all happens very quickly.

He has two goals while in SF: One is to try to find his way to the model railroaders club; the other is to get to the “National Defender’s Club” where he might be able to score a couple of tickets to this week’s symphony concert. Have you noticed how often Dart mentions the various clubs he attends in the cities of San Francisco and Oakland? Hospitality House, Pepsi-Cola, USO, National Defenders, just to name some of the recent ones he’s mentioned. My assumption is that these are hang-outs for service members where they can relax, get a meal, meet new people, maybe play some cards or write letters. I feel a sense of pride that our country provided such easy hospitality to young men and women who were lonely, homesick, bored or broke. Did we take better care of each other then? Did the war make us all feel more like family?

The mail brought more goodies for Dart this morning. He received a box of homemade cookie pieces from Dot. They didn’t start out as pieces, but that’s how they arrived. He says he gobbled up most of them on arrival and he has no hope of the rest surviving the day. He also got a care package from his spinster aunts and their bachelor brother containing candy, nuts, stationery and monogrammed handkerchiefs. The latter item is banned in the Navy, but he’ll put the rest to good use.

He adds that he got a letter from a high school buddy who’s been practicing amphibious landings with the Navy and reports that he loves the Navy chow. “But not as much as I love you,” quips Dart.

When Dot begins her letter, she’s listening to Nelson Eddy on the radio, singing “Shortnin’ Bread.” She tells Dart that Nelson and Paul Robeson are her two favorite classical singers. That leads me to wonder what a classical singer is doing singing “Shortnin’ Bread?”

She’s happy he and the guys enjoyed her food package. She asks if he’s received the cookies yet. “If you’re not in sick bay, then you haven’t,” she jokes.

After a brief pause to listen to Nelson Eddy singing “How Do I Love Thee?,” she wishes Dart were here to listen with her. “As long as I’m tossing wishes around, I wish you were here in civilian clothes and that the war were over.”

She recalls three years ago tomorrow when she was listening to a classical concert on her dorm radio early Sunday afternoon. The broadcast was interrupted by the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

“Many people said it wouldn’t be a long war. Surely not more than a year. Well, now it’s three and I don’t understand how any of the countries can keep up such ‘wholesale manslaughter’ much longer. Where’s it all going to end? What will we gain from it? Enough to pay for all the heartbreak and suffering it has brought forth? If it’s the ‘war to end all wars,’ that will be something. God grant that it be so. Why can’t everyone concentrate on love? The love of family and friends, instead of territory and power. Why don’t I quit blowing off steam and get to bed?”

It sounds like the naive rantings of a simple young girl, but I feel the pain and the truth in every word. It also sounds similar to Dot’s philosophy now, with the endless wars. She still maintains that the reasons to justify war remain the same throughout the ages, but in retrospect, those wars seldom seem to advance the human cause.

She shares his sense of homesickness. For her, it is a pining for the few moments they had together at his home in Cleveland. She agrees that they hope and dream of the same things and she’s confident that they’ll see their dreams come true together.

There’s a cute story about the chorus of girls that greets her every morning at work. (Not to be confused with “chorus girls,” she says.) They always ask, “Does he still love you?” Today she had to say she wasn’t sure because she’d not had a letter since Monday. With this afternoon’s letter, she’s happy to be able to assure them that he still does love her. She tells Dart if anyone ever asks him about her love, he can say she truly does, “And from the way I’m looking at your picture, I see no change indicated in the future.”

Her mother has suggested that she needs to practice her handwriting instead of her usual printing so that she’ll be able to cash checks. Dot doesn’t see much sense in it, but being the optimist, she thinks it might improve her chances of having checks to cash.

The final tidbit of the letter is that she’s been moved to the gift wrapping desk at work and she expects to be wrapping packages in her sleep.

Dart’s brevity and shaky handwriting are explained by the train he’s on. He’s on his way home from a concert in San Francisco.

He met a couple of soldiers when he picked up his free concert tickets and the three of them had a nice evening together. They all enjoyed the symphony and topping off the night with fried egg sandwiches and Pepsi.

Soloist Larry Adler played “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Bolero” and “Holiday for Strings,” followed by vocalist John Charles Thomas who sang for half an hour. The orchestra played Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

In Dart’s opinion, the orchestra could not compare to Cleveland’s symphony or the NYC Philharmonic, but was quite good for San Francisco. Throughout the performance, he imagined Dot sitting beside him.

Dot agrees that she likes the sound of “Dearest” better than the impersonal greeting of “Dear.” She thinks that since she tried to match his letters in tone, he must not have too many from her that do not begin with “Dearest.” She has only three of the “Dear Dot” variety, signed with a “Sincerely.” Thinking back, it’s clear they moved through the levels of affection rather quickly in their early correspondence.

She ought to have been in bed three hours ago if she wants to rid herself of this miserable cold. If only she could focus all her efforts on healing, she might get over it sooner, but they’re too busy at FS and she is in too great a need for money to stay home a day.

She hopes he got the assignment he wanted, although exactly what it is seems as clear to her as mud.

Now she really must sleep.

Dart confesses to feeling some chagrin over the six unanswered letters he has from Dot. He just hasn’t felt much like writing lately, nor has he had a lot of time.

He says he tried to tell her about the orchestra concert last night, but he was riding on a train that was “as jumpy as a nervous jackrabbit with a burr in its fur.”

Then he goes on to describe his evening in San Francisco in almost exactly the same words he’d used in his previous letter -right down the the fried egg sandwiches and Pepsi-Colas.

He’s hoping to go into Stockton tomorrow night with Lefty and Switzer – perhaps even spend the night if they can find cheap rooms. Shoemaker is becoming more and more a place they want to be away from.

Confirming that he did, indeed, notice the fabulous moon a few nights ago, he assures Dot that someday they’ll be able to share every full moon together.

As he continues the conversation about whether or not both of them are slow workers, he assures her that she worked pretty fast on him. “Better not work on anyone else that fast, or I’ll be one lonely and disappointed sailor.”

He cautions her not to throw away her musical instruments. He says that even if she’s as bad as she claims to be, which he doubts, they can always use the spare parts on his model railroad! Amazing how his mind is never far “off that track.”

Last night he bummed a ride in a car to Oakland. It was the first time he’d crossed the Bay Bridge on the upper level. “Really a new and thrilling sight. Much more beautiful from topside where all the pretty parts of the bridge can be seen.” That reminds me of a part of Dad’s character that I always admired; he was a great appreciator. From natural beauty to the majesty of fine engineering, from the feel of a satin-smooth wooden surface, to the aroma of foods – Dad was always taking note of his surroundings and finding a myriad of things to enjoy about them.

He thanks her for that swell sketch of the fireplace she included in a recent letter. He thinks it’s a fine addition to their house notes.

After signing off he adds a P. S. that he’s “two years old in the Navy today.” That means he signed up one year after Pearl Harbor and one month before his 19th birthday.

The letter Dot received today was dated December 4th. She seemed to recall that something very special occurred on that date, so she pulled out his letter from December 4, 1943 and found the proof. Near the bottom of page three were the words that thrilled her then, and always will. It was the first time he’d written “I love you Dot.”

“I prayed so hard the day I got that letter that things would always be ‘that way’ between us. God must have thought it a good plan, too, cuz’ He seems to be doing all He can to make things as perfect as they can be between us.”

She’s happy he’s a “white collar” office boy now – so much nicer than digging ditches.

El and Don returned to Greenwich today. Don looks very good, El has a big red nose “like she’s had one too many,” but they both seem very happy. Dot’s nose looks quite similar to her sister’s due to that nasty cold.

Oh, what a beautiful letter! If this doesn’t remind the reader what it feels like to be young and in love, perhaps the reader never was either of those.

Dart writes in the afterglow of a phone call he made to Dot as an early Christmas gift to himself. Having heard her voice and told her some important things on his mind, he misses her more than before.

“Even though I’ve felt that we would eventually get some of the things we’ve been thinking said to each other, now that we’ve said them, it seems that we’re ever so much closer in mind and spirit than we were.”

He tells her he is constantly reminded of things about her that delight him. He’s glad she likes the same music he does. He’s tickled that they have the same ideas of what’s fun and share a  similar sense of humor.

He has come to the profound realization that being with her feels more natural than any other girls he’s ever spent time with. Feeling a little foolish about how long it took him to learn, he now sees the big difference between a girl who went out with a boy because she wanted to do something or go somewhere, and a girl who went somewhere or did something because she wanted to be with that boy. He sees now that he has been a free ticket and reliable transportation to so many girls, but he knows that Dot truly loves to simply be with him.

His mother has made the wise comment that Dot and Dart will have a fine time “growing up together.” Now he sees what she meant. Until Dot, all the dates he’d been on felt stilted, like something was missing. He now sees that what was missing was a natural, honest interest in the other person – caring about what they were doing or what they thought. “Beyond that, what seems to pass between us, whether we’re in each other’s arms or a quarter of the world apart, is indescribable. We read about it in books before it happened to us, and we scoffed or longed, perhaps. But now our early scoffing proved how young we were. Our longings show we were growing up. But our love shows that we’re still young, … for only the young fall in love, and once in love, they stay young.”

Is it any wonder these two kids built a beautiful life together?

Now Dot writes that Dart’s voice is still whispering in her ear, even though 10 hours have passed since his phone call. “I love you with all my heart and soul and hearing your voice over 3,000 miles utterly melts me.”

She says that when she hung up the phone, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did a little of both. “My family thinks I’m nuts, but as long as you love me, no one else matters.”

Poignantly, she says that she was so relieved that he wasn’t calling to tell her he was going overseas. She knows that day will eventually arrive but says, “I’ll face that heartbreak when I come to it.”

For a couple of pages, she fills him in on news. She was profoundly moved by the performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at her church. She had the sensation that Dart was sitting next to her, so she turned and looked. The woman next to her gave her a queer look, as though she was considering Dot’s sanity. “I know I’m crazy – over you.”

Tonight, she and Betty went to see “Casanova Brown,” and on Christmas Eve, she, Cynthia and Janie will see “Since You went Away.” They all expect to bawl themselves sick because it’s such a sad movie.

She recently read a letter from Dart where he exclaims that he just has to get to her graduation. She warns him that he has just two months to complete his travel arrangements to Willoughby. Recognizing the impossibility of that feat, she says “It was a lovely dream while it lasted.”

“I love you, Darling, and someday (God, please make it soon), I’ll say it to you in person with all the feeling that Ronald Coleman puts into his love scenes. The only difference being that I won’t be acting. I mean it with all my heart.”