Dart is wracked by loneliness on this holiday. He has so much on his mind that it’s difficult to paraphrase it all. Below, you’ll find large passages of his 10-page letter copied verbatim.

Never in all my life have I been so miserably lonely for anyone as I am now for you. Never have I wanted anyone so strongly. Never have I longed for love and affection and a chance to give all my love and affection so deeply as I long for such tonight. I love you beyond all hope of understanding and rationalization. In the deepest darkness of my emptiness, I love you with such an intensity that I can hardly think, or live.

My Dearest, you’ll always be troubled by my efforts at analysis. It’s as much a part of me as you are. For some reason tonight, I see in my love for you something that includes all of our hopes and precious dreams; all of our talks and experiences of everyday living which have become so wonderful for us since we knew we were in love; and all of the endearing, private experiences which we hold so close to our hearts. But the whole of my emotion now seems to be above all that, more beautiful and more serious, more deep and more lovely than ever before.

I’m afraid as I write. I remember, for it will never do to repress or try to forget, our case of disagreement. You said one thing which I keep hearing so often when I am moved to write to you to tell of my feelings. It was something about ‘pretty phrases.’ Oh, my Darling, I don’t want ever to misrepresent anything to you, yet tonight as I write, I don’t want you to remember that bitterness about ‘pretty phrases.’ I feel almost as if an ability at saying such things was a curse which showed itself in that moment when we lost something of each other for a time.

I can’t explain why I thought of such a sad blot in our memory, Dot. There seems so often to be a beauty in sadness. Right now there seems to be a beauty even in those two days. It’s there in the way we came so close to a break which might have never been healed, yet in the way we managed to come out of it still in love, or in love all over again. There is beauty in the way you were so willing, in your love and trust for me, to understand that there was something which I could not understand. I’ll never know why you didn’t tell me to GO, right then and there, and never to return. I deserved it.

Part of my love was there – the love that wanted to protect you. Part of it was missing – the part that deals with most of the rest of our relations. At once, I wanted to protect and comfort you, and to leave you and think for a while. And I think that you were of much the same mind: if not undecided between the same two extremes as I, then undecided in two other extremes of love and not-love.

It was only through the grace of that wonderful God of ours who has brought us together that we were able to come through that ordeal of bitterness and not-love, to a closer feeling for the problems which confront us in our life. I am always thankful to God that we are together; that I have faced, and expect to face the just measure of life’s trials with you as my wife. If anything that nightmare we had in which I prayed for eternal punishment if I had hurt you, and in which you cried for a night, has proved our love to be a true one, and worthy of our everlasting trust.

I don’t know what all this leads to , Dot. All I know is that I miss you terribly tonight, and when I tried to tell you how much, I ran into the thing in our black night which has distressed me greatly.

In relation to sadness and beauty, there must be some instinct for tragedy in all of us. Our being apart when we desire each other so much is tragic. Yet there is a soul-stirring beauty about it. My feeling tonight could easily go to that desire of which we’ve written so often lately. But if you were here, I think we’d go for a walk, even on this cold, snowy morning at 3:00 AM. We’d be so closely together in spirit that any union of our bodies would be secondary and far less important than our mere ‘being’ together.

What a strange word that ‘mere’ is in that sentence. At once, it expresses the simplicity in our pleasure and our peace, yet in that very simplicity it shows something of how little an occasion is necessary for two people in love to be supremely happy.

At this point in the letter, he shares with Dot details of his Christmas, which he calls “a paradox.” In truth, the family was down to their last few dollars when the gift of a significant sum of money came their way. The few gifts they gave to each other were both useful and delightful.

He describes in vivid detail both feasts they ate today, Knowing how Dart loves to eat, none will be surprised that he enjoyed each meal immensely.

“My old shaver, after years of faithful service, has been retired to a reserve status by the gift from you. To be really truthful, I was wondering how I would manage when the old one wore out, and you solved the problem. ”

Everyone was delighted with the thoughtful gifts they received, most of them courtesy of Dart and Burke. They were all grateful for the gifts from Dot and her parents, although he doesn’t give much detail on what they were, other than a renewal of his Readers’ Digest subscription.

He was so glad to hear Dot’s voice today when she and her parents called. “Gee, you sure have swell parents. I only wish I could remember what all we talked about. I remember that you got nice things for “us”, that your parents liked their pictures, that my little book had arrived but had not been read yet, and that I love you very much. I was too delighted hearing voices from Greenwich to remember much of what the voices said. When your father announced himself I almost dropped! I was glad to hear all three of you – you, your father, your mother.”

Although he’s afraid of jinxing things by writing about it, he can’t help telling Dot that his father has two prospects for jobs next week! Pop’s been so pathetic lately, that Dart hopes if he gets one of these jobs, he’ll stop aging for a while.

“Good night my Darling. I felt two hours ago when I started this that you were missing me as strongly as I miss you. Need I say that I love you?”

This scarcely qualifies as a news flash, but Dart is lonely. He got a letter from Dot today that was dated December 19th. He guesses it was one of 4,000,000 pieces of mail that the Cleveland post office left undelivered over the holiday when they closed their office early on Tuesday. He comments that the photos of the Pecsok kids are sweet, especially the one of Billy.

“i used your new razor today. It was sure nice. It does a much better job in half the time than the old one. It did such a swell, fast job that I had to call Pop to witness the miracle. Just for your sweetness, I’ll use it every night of our honeymoon just before we go to bed.” (I bet the imagery conjured by that previous sentence gave Dot a tingle, right down to her toes.)

He announces that Green’s hardware store is closed. Ike, Jake, their wives and children have all moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. He’s sorry to see them go. Besides being nice people, theirs was the only decent store left in the neighborhood.

Dot Orr, who of late has been Burke’s off-and-on flame, is definitely off. She wrote him a letter to say she’s going steady with someone else now, leaving Burke high and dry for New Year’s Eve. He even stopped by Edie’s house, but found her conversation too inane to tolerate.

Today the brothers pushed the old jalopy out of the garage and gave it some water before driving it around the corner to the mechanic. There, they had thermostats, anti-freeze, gas and water put in, so the old gal is good for another few months. Burke sprung for the whole job, except the gas and oil.

Pop had in interview today with the guy who ran Quad Hall when Dart, Sr. had his smoke shop and haberdashery there a while ago. He starts the new job on January 2! He’ll be working as a night clerk from 3:00PM until midnight at this small residential hotel. Nobody knows yet how many days a week he’ll work, but Dart thinks it’ll be no more than 7. (Smart guy!) Even across the seven decades, I swear I can hear the sigh of relief emanating from the Peterson apartment on Superior Ave. This should help bring some relief to the household finances and, with luck, to Dart, Sr.’s mental outlook.

That’s about all the news he has for now, his loneliness being an old story. “Good night, my Darling. I do love you ever so much. You’re cute, and sweet, and lovable, and oh-so-nice, and I miss you like fury.”

Tonight Dart, Homer and Dick Robinson went to the West side to see a very slick train layout. Of course, the owner of said layout runs a hobby shop and has the whole basement of his store for the setup.

Today, he received a little booklet of cute and witty poetry from the Skyline editor, Dick Heynan.

Dart tells Dot that his regular weekly paycheck will be $11.10, including the $1.25 that’s included for a rail pass. The next check, however, will be a little larger because of the extra hours he’s worked.

At this point, he begins to respond directly to Dot’s recent letters – usually just a one-sentence comment on each: It was nice of her to put in all that work on Doug’s gift. It must have made her feel good. His folks are being very secretive about a letter they got from Dot recently; he anticipates something big from that, and he hopes he’s not disappointed. He hopes Doug liked his radio. He was sorry to hear she had trouble at work on Christmas day and he’s anxious to hear about it. His mother was really taken with the pictures of the Pecsok kids, especially Billy. It was very sweet of Gale to give her mica to Santa Claus.

Then he writes that he is already thinking of next Christmas. Janie wrote to tell him that she hopes to spend the holiday with the newlyweds next year. Dart is worried that Dot will be very homesick for her big family and hometown Christmas next year. If she has a new job, she may have to stay in Cleveland, but he’s hoping that they will be able to get back to Greenwich then.

“I like this trading of back-washes idea.  What will Mom and Pop think (or say) when we start trading the real thing? We can always tell ’em we’re married!”

He suggests that when they’re living together, they could keep a memo pad for notes about chores and things. He has a similar system that works fairly well for him – as long as he remembers to read his notes!

He has nothing to add about the date of the wedding. June 14 would not be good for Burke. The 19th might be better. He still hasn’t talked with Tom or Hal to ask them if they can be in the wedding, so he doesn’t know any more than he did before.

Dart’s letter tonight simply says that they received a large box of the biggest, most beautiful Oregonian apples he’d ever sunk a tooth into, accompanied by a card that says they are from the Chamberlains. He’s grateful.

He loves Dot still and hopes to marry her someday. That is all.

Dart gets the important stuff out of the way, right off the bat. He misses her. A lot.

Last  night he got to bed very late and then awoke early for church. Tonight there were just two people to do the work normally handled by four, so he’s very tired. He likes being busy, though, because it makes the time go faster.

In family news, Pop was stopped randomly by the police the other day. They checked his turn signals, brake lights, horn, lights, windshield wipers and his license. Satisfied that all was well with the old car, they placed a seal of approval on the windshield. “At least now we know we can stop the car. Whether we can make it go or not…”

This weekend he called Mrs. Carle to see if he could stop by for a visit. It turned out that he called on the second anniversary of Art’s death. He felt horrible to intrude on her grief like that. He said her voice was gravely and shaking, and he was pretty sure she’d been crying. I’m not sure a woman who’s lost her son to war ever really stops crying – especially over the holidays or on the anniversary of the death.

Dart surmises that Betty B must have the same impression of Dot’s money-handling skills as he. After all, who did Betty turn to for help in pinching pennies? He’s very impressed that Gordon and Betty are able to buy a bungalow already. He wants Dot to tell Betty she has good taste in budget helpers.

He believes he has a greater understanding of Dot’s job now that he’s been trained on the Plain Dealer’s phone system. He only had eight lines to manage and he never really got good at it. He left one poor sucker hanging so long that the guy gave up. There were times Dart himself felt like giving up. “What a rat-race!”

Remember that dream he had that he wouldn’t tell Dot about because he feared it might make her angry? It would appear that she has asked him about it again and he’s giving her the stall. He said he’ll tell her about it the next time he sees her, if she remembers to ask him and if he still remembers what it was. I bet she remembers to ask.

By now he thinks he should have received all the Christmas cards he’s going to get – for a total of 24. He mailed about 40 and seems pleased with his 60% rate of return. (Is he sure he’s not the engineer type?)

He signs off, but adds a PS. He thinks he should have written a x-o-*-! sort of letter like he did a few days ago. He started out wanting to, but feared it would only add to his sense of loneliness. Now that the letter is done, with scarcely a mention of x, o, or *, he still has all the loneliness inside him. Oh, how he misses her!

Dot’s airmail letter arrived today just as Dart was leaving for work. It was great to hear from her, but he’s sorry she’s having such a rough time of it over the “Merry Holiday.” I’m not sure exactly what she wrote to him, but I know from conversations with Mom that this was the week she got very, very sick. She had called her cousin Janie yesterday but was told Janie had gone to bed ill. A few hours later, the word came that Jane had gone into a diabetic coma and died! (Seventy years after the fact I still grieve this young girl I never met – a smart, energetic, funny young woman who never really had a chance to live.) As the day and night wore on, Dot became violently ill and her family believed it was from her grief over Janie. At some point, however, they learned that the appendix, which had been giving her trouble for several years, was nearly ready to rupture. She underwent emergency surgery on New Year’s Eve – probably about the time Dart was writing today’s letter.

Dart is keeping his commitment to lay off the passionate letters for a while. This 10-pager is full of chitchat, and a long dissertation on how a daily newspaper is born. I’ll cover the chitchat and skim over the newspaper production.

He received a letter from the Navy Disbursement Office stating that his request for terminal leave pay had been received and was being processed. That’s nice to know, but he got his terminal leave check weeks ago. He also got his December GI-bill stipend of $65, but not in time to get it into the bank today. He was able, however, to make a deposit into their penny account at the bank, using the check Dot had included from her penny collection and the pennies and FDR dimes he’d collected. “Whether you like FDR or not, he’s helping us to save money for our marriage.”

When his mother was rummaging through the attic the other day she came upon a box that she thinks must be Dot’s. It contained a nice pair of boots and Dart asks what she’d like them to do with them. Shall he mail them to Greenwich of keep them here for next winter when she’ll be a resident of snowy Cleveland?

Finally, he called Tom Riley about the wedding. First, Tom didn’t think it would be a sin for him to serve as an usher in a Protestant wedding. He seemed pleased to be asked, but will have to check his school calendar to see what his availability will be in June.

Pop was called to start his new job a couple of days early. He started his training as a night clerk at 2:00 this afternoon and Dart and Burke picked him up at midnight. Dart sure hopes he likes it, although Dart wouldn’t be too keen on the job himself.

Yesterday, he, Homer and Burke spent two and a half hours visiting with Mrs. Carle. She served them tea and seemed to enjoy their visit very much. I could tell that Dart was happy they went to see her. As a mother myself, I can imagine how much it must mean to her to know that her late son’s friends have not forgotten him.

Right now, Dart has a headache and is eagerly awaiting the 9:35 deadline for the first draft of the paper so that he can go out and get some dinner. While he waits on this quiet night in the newsroom, he begins his detailed explanation of how a paper is produced. He’s using some of the cheap and plentiful paper that the reporters use to file their stories. Dart guesses they use a ton of it every month, for no effort is used to conserve the stuff.  Stories are typed, triple-spaced on one side of the paper with about an inch of margin all around. A full column inch of newspaper is equal to about seven feet of this paper, pasted together.

Just a note here – most of the stationery used by Dot and Dart for their letters must have been of pretty good quality, because it still looks almost new when I read it today. This paper, however, shows it’s age. It is a dark golden brown now, and the edges are so brittle that it must be handled with great gentleness lest it crumble to dust.

After describing the roles of the city editor and the copy readers, which wire services the PD uses, and the what “proofs” are, Dart gets to the good stuff. “At this point, for a few fateful seconds, the copy comes under the control of that lowest of all slaves, the COPY BOY, who rolls it up, puts it in a carrier, and sends it upstairs to the composing room, via a pneumatic tube.”

Of course, that’s not all the copy boys do, and Dart goes over the rest of their tasks with exacting detail.

Things have been so slow at the paper tonight that the only thing he’s had to help pass the time has been a series of phone calls from drunks and paranoid callers. One woman wanted to disclose details of a secret meeting of either the FBI or the Federal Reserve Bank which was supposedly taking place right under the editor’s nose in the Plain Dealer Building. When pressed for details, the story started to unravel. Another wanted to know the correct spelling of Czechoslovakia, and when Dart told her, she squealed that he had just won her “a considerable sum of money.”

“It’s almost midnight – quitting time for me tonight, so happy new year, Darling. And may it bring you everything good that you desire, and may the bad things (like me) be given to you in such a way that they don’t hurt. I love you Dot. Happy 1947.”