Well, the year has finally arrived; the year that Dot and Dart have been waiting for so long; the year of their marriage. When I opened the 1947 file I was disappointed to discover that Dot’s letters are missing for the first three months, not resuming until April 2. Dart’s however still arrive at a pace of nearly one every day, right up until he boards a train for Connecticut in June.

This first day of January brings two letters from Dart and I’ll start with the second one. It was hastily written on cheap newsprint and has not withstood the ages entirely in tact. Some of the words written near the margins have broken off in dry flakes, and part of the pages have turned so brown that it’s difficult to read the fading ink. Still, it’s a tender letter and worth telling about here.

“My golly, you sure found one heck of a way to spend New Year’s Eve! Maybe that was why I was so restless as I wrote that other letter.  Gee, as I was writing it, you were having some work done.”

Dart is grateful that Arthur Chamberlain called to deliver the news of Dot’s surgery and Jane’s passing. He was so shocked at all that had transpired that he called Greenwich as soon as he got home from work at 1:00 AM. The only new information Arthur was able to give is that Dot had muscles that would do a blacksmith proud and that she was in fine shape and resting well when the family left the hospital.

Dart expresses relief that if this had to happen, it happened while she was still at home, because at times like these, a girl needs her mother.

“I don’t know what I can say about Jane. I’m terribly sorry, Dot. If only I were able to express myself in times like these, as well as I’m told I can at other times, it would make it much easier. …She was such a nice friend, Dot.”

He begs her to follow doctor’s orders and get well quickly. He tells her he’s pulling for her and he says it hurts that he cannot be with her at a time like this. He pleads with her to keep her chin up and tells her he’ll enclose the letter he wrote earlier in the evening.

At the start of the first letter, he warns her that it must be a short one because he has a long list of chores that must be done. Most of the housework falls to him now that both his mother and father are working.

He took Burke to the station tonight. He had to return to school early for his job but was able to get a nice seat on a new rail car, so Dart supposes he’ll have a comfy trip to Chicago.

His old buddy John Angel stopped by for a visit the other day and they had a grand ofld chat, catching up on all the gang. John loves married life immensely. He told Dart that Charlotte Monck’s husband is a ‘good guy, but a little tough’, having grown up on the south side.

On the bus home from work the other day, he ran into his gawky, awkward pal Willard Hatch with a girl! She was almost as tall as Willie and wore glasses nearly as thick as his, and they seemed to be having a grand old time together. Dart wonders if the young lady ever got a chance to say anything because Willie does like to run on.

He gives her a rosy report on the state of their bank accounts and seems pleased that they finally seem to be getting some traction on the savings skills.

How nice that she finally got the hope chest she’s been hoping for. It sure seems like she had a very bountiful Christmas and he’s only sorry that she was feeling too poorly to enjoy it all. (The chest she received still holds a place of honor in Mom’s bedroom.)  It’s a handsome cedar-lined walnut chest that her father made for her. Her older sister Eleanor got a matching chest which is still doing noble duty in the home of El’s daughter Cathy.

“All the rest of your letter was about wedding dresses, silverware, and Sunapee. …Maybe this little personal work stoppage you’re running right now will give you the chance to lose the weight you want to lose. I’ll bet I could carry you over the threshold even now in my run-down condition of 175 pounds. I think I’ve lost some in the past couple of days. You do drastic things to my innards, Dot.”

He thinks June seems a long way off, but his list of things that must be done by then is daunting. He doubts he’ll get it half done. He sends her his love and a great, big kiss in the form of a giant X at the bottom of the page.

I also found a Western Union telegram addressed to Dot at Greenwich hospital.

DOT DARLING, YOUR FATHER CALLED TO TELL OF YOUR OPERATION. PLEASE GET WELL IN A HURRY. THERES A BIG FAT NO GOOD LETTER  FOR YOU IN THE MAIL RIGHT NOW.  IM AWFULLY SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT JANIE.

Dart’s room has become so cluttered and messy that it makes him tired just to look at it. The monster on his desk has piled things so high that all he has left is a wee corner on which to write this letter.

He’s sorry he missed her parents’ call tonight while he was working at the Skyline office.  Still, it makes him feel swell that they think enough of him to keep him informed of his fiance’s progress. How happy he is to hear that she’s recovering nicely. He suggests that if she keeps that up, maybe they can bowl a few lines the next time they see each other.

He may have been working at the magazine office, but his heart was in Greenwich Hospital. He and some others checked out the galley proofs while the editor and his assistant created a mock-up of the whole magazine. It’ll be ready for distribution in about a week and will contain 36 pages of articles, stories, essays and poetry.

He got a swell letter from Eleanor today and he hopes Dot will tell her how much he enjoyed getting it. Now the question is when he’ll have time to answer it. He’s been overcome by vacation brain and has left his homework until the last minute. “Back to the racks and salt mines. Chain hands to the oars. The Iron Maiden and the fingernail-extractors are standing by. Then come final exams!”

There is now a balance of $147.89 in his savings account for his tux rental, train trip and honeymoon expenses. That doesn’t include the penny account. He feels pretty good about all that.

“This is all for tonight, Darling. In case you’re interested, I love you very much. Does it help any to know that there’s a feller pulling for you as hard as you pulled for him?”

His PS asks the burning questions: When do you get up? When do you go home?

It was a wild night at the Plain Dealer tonight during Dart’s shift. I’ll let him tell the story in his own words. “Tonight we had an exceptionally sordid story (or one with exceptionally sordid implications) about an OSU co-ed who ran away with an ex-convict 22 years older than she. They had wanted to be married, but when the charm wore off, there was an arrest warrant out, charging kidnapping and unlawful occupation of hotel facilities. When we dug out the story, it got on the Associated Press wire, and we had three simultaneous calls from Chicago’s forever-amber newspapers, offering money for ‘exclusive rights’ to the story, including all the inflammatory insinuations against the character of the girl. (Note: I love Dart’s ‘forever-amber’ phrase – the sly reference to yellow journalism.) As yet, nothing has been proved, but those Chicago rags are sure on the lookout for stuff like that. Burke, with his constant slams against Chicagoistic journalism, sure would get a big kick out of such goings-on.”

There was a fair share of killing going on in Cleveland tonight, too. In fact, a hold-up just a few blocks from the Peterson family apartment resulted in one guy getting shot and later dying at the hospital.

Dart got a nice letter from Dot’s mother today, but it was written before her emergency surgery, so there was no update on Dot’s condition.

Today he started cleaning his room but the shifting piles of junk forced him out just as he finished sweeping the floor of its “precipitated air pollution, including soot and dust and young trees and chemical refuse.” The horizontal surfaces are inches deep in papers and sundry other material, but the floor looks nice.

Instead, he tackled the job of taking down the Christmas tree, sorting, cleaning and organizing all the decorations, and putting them all away. Both his parents had quite a surprise when they came home from work and found the apartment  devoid of the trappings of the holiday.

If Dot noticed a peculiar glow in the western sky around 5:30 yesterday, it was probably the glow of his face as he savored his supper of bacon and eggs, cooked nearly expertly by none other than Dart himself! Yes, he’s been so hungry and so broke lately that he has started cooking his own meals. “Of course, with eggs at $.77/dozen and bacon at $.69 per pound, it may become too expensive to keep me supplied. Hamburger has also gone quite high, so I had to limit myself the other night to a single 4-ounce burger.” He adds “Hey, what do you do when you stab a hot soup can with a can opener and soup squirts out all over the kitchen? Well, I duck!”

He has big ideas for what he wants to accomplish tomorrow, so he needs to end this and get some sleep. Now that Dot will have plenty of time for writing long letters, he hopes to be on the receiving end of them any day now. “Don’t spare the griping, but at least let me know how you like being waited on.”

No mail from Dot today and a slow night at work has left Dart feeling flat.  He’s starting to get nervous about leaving so much school work undone over Christmas break. He was supposed to read a book of his choice by one of a list of great American writers. He’d picked one out at school, but it revealed itself “to be a stinker,” so he dropped it and didn’t pick anything else up.

His prose workshop assignment for January 16 is a long piece characterizing a place. He’d like to borrow back some of the letters he wrote to Dot about Charleston that he can re-work for the assignment. The assignment after that one will be a short story, so he needs to think up some “horrible mess of tripe” and call it “The Legend of the Corinthian Street-Walker,” or some similar nonsense.

It’s 3:00 AM and he wants to get up for church tomorrow. Incidentally, Mr. Kershner made his 1946 goal of 300 people in the congregation every Sunday. The sanctuary holds 400, so he had a pretty good average!

“I hope to hear something from you or your family on Monday. I’m almost lost without you, Dot. I love you very much, my Sweetheart.”

Dart forgot to put his “please awaken” sign on his bedroom when he finally went to bed last night, so he slept through church this morning. The extra sleep didn’t improve his mental capacity much because he messed up when he tried to repair the vacuum cleaner. He was hoping to replace the cord of the ancient machine, but the heavy-duty rubberized cord he bought was too big to fit through the holes in the vacuum casing, so he ended up worse than he started. He asks Dot if she knew she was getting such a stooge for a husband.

He’s still wondering how long she’ll be in the hospital. He guesses they don’t keep patients as long as they used to, but he hopes they don’t rush her out of there before she’s ready. Still, he’ll address this letter to her home, in case she’s there by the time it arrives.

He warns her that she’s probably in for some brief letters from him in the coming days, but he’ll try to answer hers as soon as they come in.

“Do you have any idea how much I miss you, my darling? Every minute of the day, it seems, I think of you in some way. All my friends know you, or, at least they know of you. I love you very much.”

True to his word, it’s another short letter from Dart tonight as he gets back into the rhythm of school. Still nothing from Dot.

He learned he got an 89 on his last Spanish test he’d been worried about. That’s nothing to be proud of, but his average over four tests is still 95%, so he’s in no danger of flunking it at this point.  He should learn what his most recent English and industry grades are tomorrow.

His new schedule is set for the second semester – very similar to the first one. He’s continuing prose, journalism, American lit and Spanish. He’s adding an intro to poetry class. No mention of industry, so maybe he’s done with that one. Anyway, that’s 14 hours – the same number he took in the fall term.

He had a talk with Mr. Collins, the city editor at the Plain Dealer the other night. Dart had thought he was a Yale man, and wanted to see if he knew Arthur Chamberlain, but Mr. Collins didn’t go to Yale. In the process of the chat, the editor asked about the classes Dart was taking and as he left, he told Dart that he may get a chance to do a little writing for the PD. Dart is thrilled and terrified at the prospect!

He wishes her good night and hopes she’s taking good care of herself. If she isn’t, he demands an explanation why.

Our two young lovers had a rare and much needed phone conversation tonight. Dart hopes he didn’t make her unhappy (but he’s almost sure he did) when he voiced his disappointment that she’d not written to him yet. He’s awfully sorry to have made her sad.

“Your voice sounded a bit weak when you said ‘hello,’ and I wasn’t sure I should go ahead and start talking. How nice it sounded, though when you screamed ‘It’s Dart!’ I didn’t recognize you till then.”

He tells her that the inexpensive pen his folks gave him for Christmas after the scare he had that he’d lost the wonderful pen Dot had given him, is leaking all over his fingers and his desk. Still, the point is rather nice, and he appreciates his parents’ thoughtfulness.

He’s completely fed up with his American lit class. For a dime, he’d chuck the whole thing and let his arrogant, hypocritical teacher know why. He got a C- on the last test, even though Dart believes it should have been much higher. The grading is very subjective and very tough. Almost no one in the class is satisfied. Because it’s a class in his major, he must get a B or higher, but he has no idea how to read the teacher’s mind and figure out what he needs to do better. Even a conference with the instructor today failed to give him any guidance.

After class today, a girl walked up to him and asked if his name was Dart. He admitted it was and she said she’d been Dot’s roommate at Andrews for two years. She wanted Dot’s address so she could write to her, and she asked that Dart say hello for her. Now he’s ashamed to admit that after being in class with her for 12 weeks, he has no idea what her name is. He describes he to Dot as “very small, dark hair, dark eyes, roundish face, full lips. She’d been Dot’s roomie in 10th and 11th grades. She reported that she’d gone to Nancy Arghi’s wedding, but neither her father or her stepmother had shown up. Nancy lives a couple of doors from her parents and hasn’t seen them since the wedding.

He wonders if Dot got her tooth before her surgery. He doubts she was in any state to see the full moon at midnight the other day. Dart appreciated it through the crystal sky that a few hours later dumped three inches of snow on Cleveland.

Cryptically he adds, “I’m awfully sorry that your deal with Mom is off. I was sure hoping my guess was right, and now that it was right, what good does it do?” I think this indicates that Dart was hoping the plot she was hatching with his mom was for her to come to Cleveland for a visit. I suppose her surgery has put an end to that…or has it? Dart seems to think so.

No letter tomorrow, but Dart will be back on the 9th.

Poor Dart is feeling mighty low tonight. First, they have no heat. It seems the roofers damaged the metal chimney extender yesterday, which the wind then knocked over completely. Now the wind rushes down the furnace flue, extinguishing the feeble little flame. The family has been using the gas oven and the gas grate in the living room for heat, but none of that makes it to the bedrooms.

But the real reason for his depleted state of mind is that there are no letters form Dot today.

And his grades have taken a turn for the worst. On recent tests, he had a D in industry, a C in the test on Emerson, his Spanish has dropped from a 95 to an 89.

Now he’s afraid he must quit his job although he has depended on the income. “However, no matter how much we worship money or desire the things it can be exchanged for, there comes a time for a decision. I feel that the job, although giving me some very valuable contacts and experience, is taking too much time from my school work.” He goes on for a while about how his classes demand much more time than is recommended for their credit hours. I notice he doesn’t, however, factor in how many hours he works on his model trains, spends daydreaming about Dot, or writes assignments that are much longer than they are supposed to be. Perhaps his blue mood is blinding him from the variety of choices he has in adjusting his schedule. I hope he doesn’t do anything rash and quit his job too soon.

Suddenly, his letter switches gears. His paycheck this week allowed him to put nearly $5.00 in savings. He got two A’s in his prose workshop class, and had the honor of both pieces being read aloud in class.

He ends abruptly by bidding Dot good night and asking, “When are you going to let me see another of your swell letters?”

The bottom 2/3 of the page he filled by drawing a large rectangle with a notation: Use this space if you can’t find anything else for stationery.

I hope she gets the hint.

Hooray! Dart finally got a letter from his beloved, as did his parents. He’s a happy man tonight, albeit still freezing. He’s even hung his pajamas over the gas grate screen to warm them up, just like they did with the fireplace at Bonnie Neuk. A man from the bank came by today to investigate the heating troubles, but they still have no heat.

He’s happy to announce that he paid off his loan from Uncle Tom today. Also, his dad wanted him to pick him up from work, so Dart drove the car to the Skyline meeting and was able to drop off a load of students at their homes along the Euclid Ave. route.

He had a great time at the meeting, even though another of his submissions was rejected for publication. Both he and the editor were disappointed by that, but Dart seems to take the disappointment in stride.

Tonight he worked on his place description assignment for prose workshop. He’s about 1/3 of the way through his first draft about Charleston, but so far, the piece lacks punch. He must spend a lot of time this weekend preparing for a Spanish test in order to bring his grade back up to where he wants it. He has a big test on James Russell Lowell on Tuesday, which will be very difficult. A group photo of the Skyline staff on Monday night will cut into his study time for that test.

He hates to keep writing Dot short letters, but if he has news, he’s short on time, and vice versa.

He’s happy she was able to have her radio with her in the hospital. That must mean she was a popular patient! He says he hopes she’ll wear “that red ribbon” in her hair sometime so that he can see what she looked like when she was 15.

He asks Dot to send him a list of her family’s birthdays. He thinks her dad has one coming up on January 13, but he doesn’t want to miss any of them.

He’s very tired and he misses her. Nothing new there.

Before starting this letter, Dart was looking at a “couple of clothes-horses” in Life magazine. “My only sentiment is that they must pick girls with homely faces so people will have to look at the clothes, if they look at the pictures at all.” I think he’s so enamored with Dot’s pretty face that every other female pales in comparison.

Still no working furnace, so it’s going to be a frigid weekend in the Peterson household.

Although he spared himself criticism the other day, he makes up for it here. “I am not only gutless, but stupid, lazy, and spineless. I know darn well I should do schoolwork, yet I fritter my time away terribly and it all piles up at the last minute, and then some of it doesn’t get done. I speak here in reference to Spanish and English. I’m so mad at myself I could slap my wrist. Bah!”

He tells her the only thing he’s sure of these days is that he loves her and misses her. He hasn’t been able to get her off his mind at all today, even if he had wanted to, even when he should. As disappointed as he is that she isn’t able to come out for a visit, he knows it’s for the best. He wants to see her and be with her more than he can describe, “and that’s where the danger lies. I’m afraid of what might happen if you should come. With Mom and Pop both working, I know there’d be times when we’d be alone in the house . Sometimes I think of those times with sorrow for what might have been, if we’d been able to see each other, and with fear for what might have come from it.”

He continues, “Darling, I want you, and along with all your wonderful ideas and your buoying cheer, and your consideration, and your love for me, I want *** and !!!, and I want them all, just as soon as we can decently and honorably share them all, without a trace of remorse.”

He was happy to get her eight-page letter today, but it was the last paragraph where she described how much she missed him that put him in this mood and is responsible for the contents of this letter.

With fondness, he recalls all the little silent signals they send to each other when they are together; a look, a sigh, a little squeeze in the midst of a bigger one. There must be 1,000 ways they converse without words. Sometimes her simple sentences have the same effect when he reads between the lines and picks up the meaning she didn’t put on paper. When that happens, he just about goes wild with missing her.

He wonders if the pain and irregularity she suffers monthly may have been exacerbated by her inflamed appendix. He’s read such things can effect each other. He certainly hopes her monthly struggles will ease up a bit after all this. He wishes he knew for sure that she was alright.

He also hopes it’s been okay to write about such personal things tonight. He feels if they can’t talk, they must write. At the bottom of the page, in tiny, tidy draftsman-style printing, he asks her again to tell him all about her surgery; the prep, the anesthesia, how many stitches, all the morbid details. He also sends his love, of course.