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.”

Dart’s letter is chock full of news from Camp Shoemaker. He received a huge package from Dot today, but he’s honoring her request that he not open it until December 25. He’ll honor it as long as he can, but when he gets his orders, he’ll need to stow the contents he’s permitted to take on board with him and send the rest home to Cleveland. That makes his departure seem so near.

This evening, he and a few other guys made use of the cocoa Dot had sent earlier. He hung around the office after his duty was over and decided to skip the inferior meal being served in the mess hall. His group chose to have coffee and sandwiches right there in the office. Chief Wagstaff sent a messenger to round up some sandwich fixings, milk, chips and ice cream. They used the milk to make cocoa on a hot plate and had a tasty little impromptu feast.

He plans to go to a nearby bottling company tomorrow and work for the day. He was able to secure a work permit and the yeoman got him a job, so the two will put in a day and see how much they earn.

With the return of the regular Ship’s Company Yeoman from leave today, Dart lost his temporary office job. Right away Lt. Forbes signed Dart up as Chief Wagstaff’s little helper on his duty days. He’ll take drafts to the warehouse to get them equipped with their overseas gear, recruit work parties, run around with the Chief on inspections, and generally function as his “little flunkie.”

A letter from Fred announces how happy the Marine is on his “little island in the Marianas.” Dart was impressed that the letter took only six days to reach California.

From the sound of Dot’s voice on the telephone, it seems like her cold didn’t stick around too long. He’s happy she was able to get some extra sleep to banish the bug.

He recalls how excited he was when he reached the Cleveland train station on his leave. He doesn’t even recall running up the steps – merely being lifted by the buoyancy of his own emotions. In answer to her question about what new things he learned about her, he says it was mostly, “the same, but more so.” More natural, funnier, sweeter, more playful, etc.

He has warned her about his moodiness, and even demonstrated it in some of his letters, so he hopes she’s prepared when she first sees that characteristic in person. He closes by telling her he sent her a package today with no note enclosed. She knows what’s in his heart, so a note would be superfluous.

Dot’s note is short and silly, written in a kind of Scottish or Irish dialect.  After about a paragraph, she begs Dart’s forgiveness and explains that some Irish girl with green eyes was singing on the radio and it ran chills up Dot’s Scottish spine. (How does one know the color of a singer’s eyes over the radio?)

Anyway, she says she’s too tired to write, and there’s no news to write even if she weren’t so tired. She hopes he’ll check back with her tomorrow when she hopes for better luck at writing a decent letter.

This is a brief note Dart writes from a hotel room in Oakland, where he and Spiegler have come on liberty. They visited the model railroad club, did a little shopping and are now looking forward to a good night’s sleep in real beds before heading back to Shoemaker tomorrow.

He feels guilty that he’s not spent enough time with Dot in recent days. He’s thought about her. He’s talked about her; just ask Spiegler and Chuck and the girls he danced with at the YWCA how much he’s talked about her!

He misses her terribly and hopes to get back to writing a decent letter soon.

Dot makes up for not writing yesterday by sending a six-pager today. I’m a little stumped about the content, but I’ll clarify what I can. A few days ago, although I didn’t mention it here, Dot sent Dart a little piece of string that she’d glued to a small card. Her caption said something about “dropping him a line.” Well, he apparently had a snappy come back for that, maybe written on the envelope, but it’s lost to time.

Unfortunately, she devotes nearly the entire first page of this letter going on about his clever retort. It seems she has shown it to the whole town of Greenwich and everyone has “practically gone into convulsions over it.” She’s told everyone how incredibly witty and clever he is, so she warns him that if his line was not original, he should plan on being on non-speaking terms with her for the rest of her natural life.  Now she must stop raving about how funny it was or there will be no hat in the US Navy large enough to fit his swelled head.

She feels the same way he does that the phone call makes it seem as though they are even farther away than before. But she confesses that even if she saw him every day, she couldn’t love him any more than she does right now.

In case he has doubts, she wants him to know that she gets the biggest kick out of his letters. Today at work she was thinking about something he wrote and the way he said it and she began to smile without knowing it. She was about 3,000 miles away when her manager walked in and found her grinning to herself. He brought her back to Earth when he said, “I bet that radiant beam on your face means you got a letter from ‘the one’ today. Am I right?” Because it’s so obvious, she’s decided there’s no use trying to hide how she feels from anyone.

In that vein, she thinks she should tell him that he’s more than a little okay. In fact, he’s so doggone nice that all she can think about is how lucky she is to have met him.

She hereby grants permission for him to open the Christmas package as soon as he reads this letter. She instructs him to keep what he wants and send the rest back. She really wants to get him something he wants and needs. Speaking of Christmas presents, she reminds him that he ignored her previous instructions to call her collect as his gift to her. She thinks it’s important to inform him that she controls 51% of their partnership, so she has the final say and he must obey. When she says to call collect and he ends up paying for the call, he has not obeyed her! To correct the error, she implores him to call again before he leaves the country and to do it by reversing the charges!

She’s impressed that the Navy lets him take civilian work at the winery. Maybe he’ll want to make a life of the Navy with rules like that. She just heard a story on the radio about an 83-year old man who had been with the merchant marine for 70 years and was still on active duty! She asks that he banish that thought from his head.

She confesses to a little scheme she has going on at work. About three times a week, Mr. Goldstein sends her to the tailor to deliver or pick up alterations for customers. As soon as she puts her coat on, word spreads throughout the store, and she is inundated with requests for errands. Today she went to the tailor, the grocer, cigar store, drugist and even stopped by her home to see if there were any letters from Dart. She fears that someday, someone will see her in the wrong place during work hours and her fun will have to stop, but for now, she enjoys the freedom.

It’s taken her several hours to write this letter, with all her daydreaming about a certain sailor, so she must get some shut-eye.

True to his intentions, Dart manages to write a nice, long letter today. He’s alone in the barracks, in the mood for nothing but writing to Dot, and hoping the guys don’t come in to bother him. He’s usually happy to talk with the boys, but they invade his privacy at times and make it hard for him to write sweet nothings to his favorite girl.

He’s very enthusiastic about sleeping until 0800 this morning. The hotel bed provided a good rest, and the room only cost him and Spiegler a buck a piece! I wonder if that was a service man discount, or if that’s the going rate for a hotel room in 1944. If it’s the latter, it’s no wonder my mother gets sticker shock whenever she needs to reserve a hotel room these days.

Tomorrow brings a minor shake-up at Shoemaker. They are trading the lieutenant and the ship’s company men with another battalion. Dart hopes the “old boy” they get won’t be as big a stinker as Lt. Forbes was. Chief Wagstaff, on the other hand is a 30-year Navy man, serving as a bandmaster; a good guy and a true friend to the enlisted men.

He tells her that the Christmas mail rush has slowed down her letters. He’s a little concerned that all the stuff he’s been sending to her won’t get there in time for Christmas. He’s mailed some first class, some parcel post and others were shipped by the stores where he bought them.

Perhaps he dwells too much on those moments when the two of them were in perfect sync with each other, but those moments, and the hope that they’ll have forever together in the not-too-distant future are all he has to dream about. He keeps thinking of their afternoon in the park and how much he wanted to ask her to marry him. I’d heard often when I was growing up that Dad told Mom he didn’t think it was fair to obligate a young woman to marry a man who was going off to fight a war. What if he didn’t make it home, or if he came back a different man? In the beginning of the war, Dart believed that engagements should happen after the war was over. It must have been hard to keep to that self-imposed rule while he held her in his arms for their last time together for many, many months.

He writes that his pleasant reverie of those moments was interrupted by his quick trip to the office to see if his name was on a new draft that just came down. It wasn’t. Then he and Spiegler had a little snack of crackers and sandwich spread.

He confirms that he gets the same question as she does about whether she still loves him. Lt. Forbes asked him today when he was reading Dot’s latest letter. Dart blushed so deeply that Forbes tried to read the letter over his shoulder. I think that really annoyed him.

Just as she imagines wrapping gifts in her sleep, he finds himself stooping to pick up crates of empty bottles as he’s drifting off.

If his memory is correct, she was the first one to use the salutation “Dearest” in a letter. He believes that letter arrived the day before he was sent to the hospital at Great Lakes and he was overjoyed to get it. He’s always been grateful that he fell for her so hard and so fast that he was able to throw caution to the wind and be bold. He was bold enough to ask for a goodnight kiss on their date in Cleveland. The overthrown caution let him write that he loved her in the December 4, 1943 letter. He has no regrets.

It’s true that she has never told him to his face that she loved him, but she’s said it on the phone, and she’s said it in different ways. He loves the way she’s said it and he loves her, all of her. He fears the “short time” until the Big Day his pop wrote about is going to pass painfully slowly until the war is over. It’s all he wants in the world.

Dot gets a little start on her letter while at work  because she has plans for this evening. She and her friend Jean are going to the Greenwich H. S. basketball game of alums vs students. Although Dot doesn’t care a fig about Greenwich H. S., she likes basketball and spending time with Jean, so it should be a fun evening.

She didn’t get much writing done at work because Mr. Goldstein got sick and Dot had to run the department alone. The game went well, with the alums winning on account of Dot screaming for them. Now she’s hoarse and tired.

Since Dart plans to go to the admiral to complain about a change of officers at Shoemaker, she decides she won’t make him also complain to the Postmaster General. Dot’s getting Dart’s letters all out of order, even though they’ve all be sent Air Mail. She’s so happy to get them at all, that she supposes it’s not necessary to complain about when they arrive.

She’s getting a little nervous about the day when Dart will reveal some of his faults to her. She can’t really believe he has any, and she won’t be the one to insist that he reveal them. If she had her “druthers,” he’d keep them hidden always so she’d never have to be disillusioned.

This is a long and thoughtful letter from Dart, revealing in equal parts a gloomy, frustrated sailor and a positive, cultured young man.

He is seriously out of sorts today. Camp Shoemaker – never a pleasant place – is starting to wear him down. He’s angry that he’s wasting three, four, five weeks here doing nothing of value, waiting for what comes next and unable to make any plans. Why did the Navy give them such short leaves after their advanced training school just so they could rot in this God forsaken hole?

Every day is filled with endless queuing up. There are lines for the toilets, lines for chow, lines for dirty dishes, lines for showers, lines for liberty passes, lines for bowling and theaters, lines for buses, and lines for finding out what line to stand in. There’s never an opportunity to sit while in line, unless one wants to sit on sharp gravel or muddy muck.

He was able to score a single ticket to the San Francisco orchestra concert last night – a full program of Russian music. He was enchanted by the “Francesca Da Rimini” piece by Tschaikowsky and amused by a humorous collection of four short pieces called the “Suite Diabolique” by Prokofeiff.

Quite the critic for a non-musician, he deems the SF orchestra inferior to Cleveland’s. To his ear, the brass sounded “tinny” and the string section lacked the full, rich, harmonious tone of his home town’s orchestra. Still, he was happy to have been able to attend the concert.

While crossing the Bay Bridge yesterday, he saw the hull of a huge new battleship looming out of the fog. As he got nearer, he saw that it was the USS Missouri, in town for a check-up after her shake-down cruise. He was so impressed with her size and the number of guns on deck. She was moored next to a tiny destroyer, fondly known by sailors as a “tin can.” Dart expressed a keen interest in being assigned to a giant battleship rather than a flimsy little destroyer. He believes all that massive steel and the mighty guns would feel much safer to him. No doubt.

The new battalion commander at Shoemaker brought a larger support staff with him, so Dart has lost his cushy office assignments to the regular staff. I guess now he’ll take his turn on the work crews again.

He’s happy to have mailed all his Christmas cards and hopes they and his packages all arrive in time. He’s mailed several things to Dot; some are Christmas gifts and others are ideas he’s had for awhile that he’s only recently had time to buy.

The final paragraph is sweet. “Well, it’s time to crawl back into my shell for the night. So I’ll kiss you goodnight in the doorway and hold you close for so long that we almost lose our balance (and our minds.)”

The big news from Greenwich concerns El and Don. Eleanor has been worried about Don because she hadn’t heard from him since his leave ended. Then she got a call from his mother saying she would be bringing El’s Christmas gift because Don is in quarantine. The gift is a beautiful, sparkling diamond ring. Although they’ve been engaged for awhile, El has been wearing Don’s high school ring this whole time. She is so enchanted with her ring that tonight at dinner, she was dazzled to the point that she put mounds of salt in her coffee!

Dot’s father has been down for the count the last couple of days. It’s the first time he’s been too sick to go into his shop in years. When Dot asked him this morning how he was feeling, he replied, “Well, I’m not feeling fine, but I’m feeling a lot less worse.” See what a Yale education will do for one’s grammar?

Ruth Chamberlain has been holding the shop together during Arthur’s illness, in addition to her work at the library. There’s no taking it easy for her, even though she just got out of her sick bed the day before her husband fell ill. Dot explains “My cold meant so much to me that I simply had to share it with my whole family.” It seems like the entire eastern seaboard is under the weather.

With six more shopping days until Christmas, Dot’s beginning to doubt she’ll survive. She’s exhausted.