Dart’s letter today is a serious look at a problem faced by this young couple, as well as an examination of several possible solutions. He lays it all out quite logically and asks Dot for her considered input. The problem, as he sees it, is the difficulty of following his earlier hopes and dreams of finishing college before he takes a wife. This falls under the category of the best-laid plans falling apart when reality and emotions are factored in.

His first concern is  how Dot feels about getting a college education. Does she desire a degree, or would she be satisfied with two years? Second, if they would marry while he is still in school, how does she feel about working to support them (along with the money they’ll receive from the GI Bill)?

He proposes that if Dot is willing to leave school after two years, they might get married in June 1947. By then, Dart will have about a year left, depending on whether he goes to school during the summers, how many of his Case credits will transfer, and if he works part time and takes classes part time.

There are risks to his proposal, including asking Dot to be the bread-winner, which goes against Dart’s traditional values. It could also leave them with a financial burden, especially if he’s unable to find a job after graduating. He also fears that one or both sets of their parents may disapprove of this new plan.

However, he sees psychological risks if they put off starting their lives together too far into the future. He knows that the most important thing for both of them is being together as husband and wife.

“When we announced our engagement we announced to the world that we love each other and that we intend to get married. In getting married, we expect to share each other’s lives in all respects. We must give and take, each in equal amounts. That giving and taking, that sharing of lives, doesn’t, no can’t, begin the moment we’re married. It must begin with our plans to get married and what we expect afterward. Now, then, is the time when our responsibilities to each other begin. ”

He asks Dot to, essentially “write a theme on the topic” and tell him her honest thoughts. She may even like to discuss this with his parents and with hers. “I’ll answer no more of your letter tonight, Darling. I love you for what you are, for what you’ve been to me, and for what the future holds for us.”

#     #     #

Dot sets out to answer four of Dart’s letters, but doesn’t quite make it. She frets that if his ship leaves port on January 7th, he may not get any letters from her for a long time. She hates the thought of him leaving the States, even though she cant’s see him when he’s in Charleston. Somehow, he’ll feel more absent from her life when he’s at sea, and she’ll feel even lonelier than usual.

She fantasizes about him being out of the Navy and home by her spring break in March. More realistically, she begins to dream that maybe he’ll be home for good by Easter on April 21st. How she’d love to attend church with him that day, looking spiffy in his new civilian clothes.

She’s glad that he wrote about wanting to go to church with her someday. She thinks happy married couples are even happier if they attend church together. She told him about a pamphlet that someone on the train gave her to read entitled “Is God Out of Date?” The gist of the pamphlet is that one can’t call himself a Christian just by calling himself one and going to church, but if one lives a good, honest life and doesn’t go to church,  he may indeed be a Christian. Dot thinks living a good life and going to church is the preferred arrangement.

She likes the way he has begun and ended a couple of letters recently. One began with “My Darling Future Family,” which felt so intimate and cozy to her. She also liked the ending of “Your fiance who wants very much to be your husband soon.” That sentiment reflects her feelings exactly.

In other news, she’s happy there are some nice officers on the Craig. She asks that he never mention to his folks the fact that Dot has hitchhiked into Cleveland a few times. She appreciates that he didn’t go to the party in Charleston that those two girls invited him to, although she trusts him completely and would never want him to deprive himself of fun simply for her sake. “Just let your conscience be your guide.”

Two weeks ago tonight, her face ached from smiling so much, but now she feels nothing. Her body seems lifeless when he’s gone. “I love you and miss you, my Darling, more than I can ever say. We have so many things to do together, we’ll have to get married soon and work mighty fast to get them all done.”

Dart bemoans another letterless day – one of several since he’s been back from leave.

He was kept quite busy on his early morning messenger watch, which he had to stand outside in a cold rain. Now the rain has stopped and the sun is beginning to break through the mist, promising another nice day in Charleston. Yesterday, the men were working with their shirt sleeves rolled up.

Last night he took a roll of film into town for developing. While there, he bought a couple of magazines to read at the USO. Finding it hard to read on an empty stomach, he downed a Coke and a hot fudge sundae before returning to the ship.

His two buddies, Foecking and Tupa, and their wives came aboard ship today for a meal. Scotty and Pat are now playing cards with the Captain, and Bob and Shirley just stopped by Dart’s little “office” for a chat. How nice that he’s made friends with these two young couples. The only thing missing is a girl for Dart!

His “office” is a tiny room beneath a large gun. It’s actually the power room for the gun, filled with Buck Rogers-type switches and radar stuff. It’s the same little room that he and Blevins were ordered to paint last week, even though it didn’t need painting. Several technicians walked all over the fresh paint, so the little room looks pretty bad. Dart just hopes no one pops his head in and gets an idea about repainting it.

Turning his attention to Dot’s letter from Dec. 31, he remarks about El’s ginger ale having a little something extra in it. It makes him wonder what kind of hosts he and Dot will be since neither of them drinks. It seems that nearly everyone he knows imbibes in some sort of alcohol, so he fears no one will come to their house twice.

Today while he was on watch, he noticed a familiar face on the neighboring ship and called over to Puckett. He was the fellow from the Haggard that was in an accident while on leave and broke numerous bones – breaks that went undetected for several weeks. Puckett came right over to the Craig so he and Dart could catch up. He spent quite a while in a hospital, wired back together, but has no scars to prove it. While he was confined to bed, Hal Martin paid him a visit before being shipped away for discharge. It was nice to reconnect with a pal he’d spent so many happy hours with in Norfolk.

Naturally, he’s been giving lots of thought to the possibility that they could be married as early as June 1947. He has some lingering misgivings about her working to support them while he was in college, but he’s not sure why. If she’s not in school, what else would she do with her time? He doesn’t want her to leave school on his account, but it doesn’t sound to him like she’s particularly fond of college anyway. He’s eager for her to write her thoughts and suggestions.

He’d be most curious to know how the songs “Hubba, Hubba, Hubba” and “Granny Wore Tights” were acted out during the family game of Charades. He’ll take her recommendation and go see “The Bells of St. Mary’s” as soon as it comes to town, if he’s still around when that happens.

He’s going to tell his mother what Dot wrote about how she would have blushed if she’d known that his mother was aware of how late they went to bed that one night. He assumes they’ll find reasons to go to bed earlier once they’re married. In fact, he thinks he’ll suggest to his mother that she and Pop go to bed earlier the next time Dot is in town! Gee, won’t that thought make Dot blush!

He has “ten million and six letters of various sizes and styles” to write tonight, so he must end this one soon. Not, however, before he writes how much he loves her. He’ll never be able to write, nor speak the degree of love he feels, but, in time, he hopes he’ll find a way to show her just how much he does.

#     #     #

Dot begs Dart’s forgiveness for not writing last night, but she was having fun with her roommates until after 1:00 and wanted to get to bed after that because she had plans to go to church this morning. She did go to church, and is happy she did, because she feels much better now. She’s resolved to go every Sunday of 1946.

Yesterday she and the girls went downtown to play records. He favorite was the one Dart recorded for her, which she has now nearly worn out from playing so often. There’s nothing like hearing a loved one’s voice to make them feel closer.

Today was spent cleaning her room, doing laundry, writing letters and washing Joyce’s hair. (She’s not supposed to stretch since her recent appendectomy.) She and Joyce have plans to go to Akron next week to stay at Bill’s house. He won’t be home, but Joyce wants Dot to meet his parents, and for some reason, they want to meet her.

Although she’s never heard of Foecking before Dart’s recent letter, she sends her greetings to him. She wants Dart to tell him she hopes his marriage is as long and happy as theirs is going to be someday. Golly, she wishes it were now.

Based on his recent reviews, she’s decided not to see “Yolanda and the Thief.” If a film doesn’t have an A+++ rating, her budget won’t accommodate it.

She’s itching to get her grades from her mother. The school sent them out right after Christmas, but the only one she know of is English. She’s terribly disappointed to have received a B when she was really trying for an A. There were only two As given in her class, but she’s sorry she didn’t get one of them. Now she’s nervous to see what her Physical Science and Biology grades were.

“I  miss you more and more as the length of our separation increases. Two weeks can be such a long time. It seems like two months since I last saw you and kissed you goodbye at the station. God grant that that was the last parting we’ll have while you are in the Navy and that any we may have after that will be few and far between.”

Dart writes that if anyone should ask him why he’s not out on liberty, he’d have no good answer for them. He feels like he’s getting a really good head cold. He’s so lonely for Dot that all he wants is to be alone, and when he’s alone, he misses her even more.

It was such a beautiful, spring-like day that the Navy yard looked especially bright and cheerful. That being the case, he’s inspired to write to her about what he sees from the decks of the John R Craig. For several pages, he writes one of those delightful descriptive essays, incorporating sights, sounds and smells. Below, I’ve copied a few of the more colorful passages.

“A Navy yard is a colorful place on a day like this. Even the drab gray of the warships seems a bit brighter and friendlier today because of the sun. …On both sides of the long piers are ships. Smoke, steam and noise are as much a part of the picture as the ships themselves. …Across the dock are two ships like ours; one painted very light gray, almost white, with her hull a bluish color; the other, like ours, a chalky slate color, like a blackboard that’s been used once, then carefully erased.”

“From the masts of ships fly the colorful arrays of signal flags. Their messages, though, have no meaning, for all the flags fly in a fluttering hodgepodge of brilliance as the air coaxes the moisture from them. At the stern of each ship…flies the flag of the nation, as if proud of each and every ship from which it waves.”

“The great green cranes stalk around on their lofty towers, like like a flock of caricatured mechanized storks. Time was when they assisted at the birth of ships. Now, they are helping those ships to die comfortably. As the cranes move amid the din of clanging bells, a gang of white-helmeted black men walk ahead of them, signalling to the operator high above so that he may know just where and how to handle the next load of material.”

“The docks swarm with activity. The gay colors of the hard helmets worn by the workers tell what those workers do. The reddish-brown ones burn steel with hot torches. The green ones work with sheet metal. If there’s a black stripe fore and aft across the top of the hat, the man underneath it is a leading man, a sub-foreman. So every trade is represented by a distinctly colored helmet, and all add color to the already-bright day.”

He writes at length about the color-coded pipes that crisscross the yard. Black ones carry fuel oil, orange is for saltwater. The red-and-white pipes supply the ships with fresh water for drinking, cooking and washing. Blue ones signify high-pressure steam and green ones carry high-pressure air.

The ships themselves add to the palette.  The gray ones run the gamut of nearly-white to almost black. There’s a wide array of blue hues, as well.

In addition to the large white numbers worn by every ship, some of the vessels also sport cartoon drawings of a mascot or the ships campaign ribbons painted gaily on the smoke stacks. Many also boast a kind of colorful score card showing the flags of enemy nations accompanied by hash marks for all the ships or planes of that nation that were destroyed by that ship.

It’s hard to envision that not too long ago, the decks of these ships were awash in seawater and blood. They look so calm now, the sir of peace making the huge guns look almost ornamental.

He writes about the bright red color of the traditional primer used to prevent rust on the steel ships. Now there is a new rust-preventing  paint in town, called chromate. “It’s a true yellow. Yellow enough to make the yellowest canary green with envy.”

“I betchya’ didn’t think there could be so much color in a Navy yard, did ya’? I got dreamy today and thought there might be a story in it. After I’d figured the story out, and the noise had quieted, and the colorfully-hatted workmen had left, the flags were all hauled down at once just as the sun slopped behind the horizon. The beautiful sunset put all my efforts to shame. It was so peaceful and beautiful that it accentuated my loneliness for you.”

He’s mighty glad she didn’t get caught writing that letter in biology class. I’d hate to have been in the room to hear either you or the good professor read those first two paragraphs for the edification of the whole class!”

He tells her that the three months or so until the pain of their long distance separation can be eased will be the longest three months of his life. He’s so eager to hear her reply to his letter about marrying sooner. When he does, he can write to her parents for their input.

“I want so desperately to marry you and enjoy ‘growing up’ with you, that my old caution has been shaken. Call it progress, restlessness, the urge to mate, or whatever you will, it all boils down to love, a deep, tender, passionate, companionable love that few people ever really know.”

Amen.

#     #     #

Dot just read Dart’s hefty letter – the one in which he ponders the possibilities of a 1947 wedding. She sits down to write him the response he so eagerly awaits. She’d like to send his letter to her parents so that they’ll have all of Dart’s well-crafted thoughts. She trusts them to keep it to themselves until she and Dart decide what they plan to do.

As for college, Dot admits she is lukewarm to the whole idea. Getting a good education doesn’t seem as important to her as it did when she started, so she  thinks she’d be satisfied with two years. If she took the right classes and did well in them, she should be able to get a job doing some sort of recreational work, which she would not only enjoy doing, but would also make decent money.

“Whether I’ve hinted at it or not, it has always been my intent to work the first couple of years after we’re married – regardless of whether you go to college after we’re married or have already graduated. To quote your own words, ‘We must give and take each in equal amounts,’ and that certainly doesn’t mean I should sit home all day straightening up what few rooms we’ll have before that dream house becomes a reality. There is only one reason, I feel, for a wife to stay home all day and that is to do justice to raising a family, which, by the way is something we must not overlook. I’m afraid I don’t know much about preventatives for raising a family right away, but I know there are some.”

She suggests that she could go to school over the summer, thereby graduating in March of 1947. That would allow her to work a few months to save for their future before the wedding. On the other hand, it would be more fair to her parents if she would forego summer classes so she could work and help her parents pay tuition for her second year at Kent.

She wishes she felt easier about discussing this with his parents. All along, they’ve been under the impression that Dart would finish school first, and now the plans may be changing. She’s glad Dart broke the ice with them via letter. Now, maybe they will broach the subject with Dot next weekend, rather than her having to bring it up.

No matter the difficulties, she is of the firm belief that they should not wait until Dart is out of school before they marry. The separations are becoming unbearable. Waiting an extra year would add too much strain and unhappiness for them both.

She’s so grateful he wrote such a thoughtful letter. Even though a potential wedding is still 17 months away, it gives her something to pin her hopes on. She won’t even try to write any news, because this letter was big enough to fill a letter all by itself. Oh, how she loves him!

Dart’s short letter begins with a kind of math problem: If April 1 is the 91st day of the year and this is the 8th day of the year, that leaves 83 more days until Dart is eligible for discharge! However, there’s a slight hitch in this little equation. He could be released from the Navy as soon as that, assuming there are enough men available to take the places of everyone who’s about to be discharged. If there are not enough replacements, the Navy can hold him an additional 90 days. Consequently, he says “I’m doing my best to be of little value to the Navy.”

It’s another beautiful, balmy day in his part of the world, but not as nice as it could be because there was no letter from Dot. He may go into town tonight on liberty. He’s just read a condensed version of “High Barbaree,” by Nordhoff and Hall, the South Seas experts. “It’s a beautiful story, the bringing into words of every man’s dreams of an island paradise with his beloved. The ending of the story shocks the dreamer back into reality and makes the story a tale long-to-be-remembered.”

I love you, my Darling. Like you, I find it hard to describe my longing. It’s a desire to be with you always, to meet your friends and have you meet mine, to enjoy our interests, to share our sorrows, to be a good husband to you forever.”

#     #     #

Dot’s letter is even shorter than Dart’s. She and her roommates have a new pact to be in bed by 11:00, giving her just 5  minutes to send her love. She spent her writing time composing a letter to his folks in order to ease into the conversation about wedding dates.

Judging from Dart’s letter yesterday, his mother must think she had a worse train trip than she actually did. She was only without a seat from Buffalo to Erie, so it wasn’t too bad.

She loves him, but her roommates insist she shut off that light!

Dart’s sassy letter begins with “If I ever again become cheerful when I speak of this ship, don’t believe a word of it. Since I’ve already wasted a thousand or more words in previous letters telling you how hopelessly fouled up this ship is, I’ll not go further into the subject. If I cussed in front of you, I’d surely cuss now.”

Today brought a nice long letter from Dot, one from Mr. Hal Martin saying that Mr. Ira Cotton was also a civilian now. He also got a note from a Cleveland friend, Bob Cunningham, and a letter from Pop enclosing 8 snapshots Dart took in Charleston. There’s a second set of those pictures ion Cleveland, so Dot can have a look at them when she visits his folks.

He met another Case man today, an Ensign from a neighboring ship. There are enough V-12 guys around here to have a reunion. Dart is the only one who is unmarried and not commissioned.

He continued the letter after serving a 0400 to 0800 watch with Blevins and a new Officer of the Day. “He didn’t know beans from bananas, so Blevins and I ran the ship. We had more fun.” The watch was so busy that when it ended, they were still trying to tell the same story as when they started. He’s happy they were able to teach the new officer the way things should be done.

From everything he’s learned from tapping his inside sources, the Craig will be leaving port on January 19th. He hopes he can be back (out) in time for her spring break, but Easter is a more likely scenario.

In response to her letter, he thinks that little pamphlet she read on the train sums up his feelings pretty well. Some of those little USO pieces pack a lot of meat. He’s glad she liked those particular opening and closing sentences to his recent letters, and he wishes he could think up things like that more often. He can’t recall the exact words of her opening paragraph in her Christmas Day letter, but it had something to do with sleeping in his arms. “I think our immediate aim is the same; you want to get married, and I’m trying to find a way, ’cause I want to, too.”

#     #     #

Dot feels like teasing Dart a little in her first paragraph: “Got a letter from you today that was over a year old. It was dated January 6, 1945. Yesterday the same thing happened. What shall we do with this mail business? Or could it be that you have forgotten we have just entered into a new year, 1946? How can you expect June 1947 to get her if you persist in calling this 1945?”

She was so impatient to learn what her first semester grades were that she went to the Registrar’s office today. They were holding her grades until they heard what she got in her education class. It’s a good thing she went, because she didn’t take any education classes! Meanwhile, she learned the results of her other courses, and she was very disappointed. Every grade she got was a letter lower than she’d expected, except her two science classes, in which she received the expected C. If she works very hard and stops “wasting time,” she hopes to bring each grade up a letter this time around.

She reports that Physical Science has caught her interest this week. They’re studying levers, the pulley and the incline plane. For a girl as mechanical as Dot is, these topics come easily to her.

Her new gym class is modern dance. “Oh, and to think I thought tap was bad! This is absolutely the height of ridiculous. We have to wear insipid looking tights and walk and leap around the gym in our bare feet in time to the music. We’re supposed to walk as though ‘we’re glad to be alive,’ but after doing the exercises we’re put through, we wake up the  next morning wishing we were dead.”

There’s a big formal dance on January 18, but the guy she’s interested in is going on a little boat trip around then, so she won’t be going. The girls are trying to get Ellie fixed up with a date, but whenever Dot approaches a guy to ask if he’s going to the dance, he thinks she’s asking him to go and he runs in the other direction.

Turning now to his recent letter, she writes “No, Dart, I never thought, even when you told me your feelings, that you had an abnormal interest in sex. I think the ones who can’t keep their interest under control are the ones who are abnormal. They’re surely much weaker than you and there are very few others like you. And that brings us to the question of why I asked you how you could be so wonderful. I meant how could you refrain from doing what you know is wrong and yet that which had such strong hold on us both? True, if you had tried anything, I would, I think, have put a stop to it, but the fact that you didn’t try anything means so much more. That’s why you’re so wonderful.”

“Please don’t fret about how we will entertain in the future. If people don’t like not drinking when they come to our house, let them  bring their own liquor. It’s been done before. Besides, if people don’t come to our house, think how much more we can be alone together.”

She hopes he wouldn’t dare tell his mother what Dot wrote about staying up late. When Mrs. P. tells her some of the things Dart writes home about Dot, she blushes something awful. She hopes Dart will have a little discretion in what he shares with his folks, thereby sparing her some of the blushing.

It’s more than she could hope for that he and his parents could drive her home in June, but she’ll hope, nonetheless. She also hopes he begins to get some mail soon. She knows she’s missed writing a couple of days, but something should be getting through to him.

How she hopes the next three months will go as fast as the last three have. She misses him, even though she knows he’s with her in spirit. “But I want more than that. I want the real you.”