Because of the extensive damage to the Haggard, there is no letter from Dart today. Instead, I’ll post a somewhat fuzzy photo of him, taken sometime before the kamikazi attack. Doesn’t he look younger than the maturity of his letters would lead you to believe he was?
No letter from Dot, either, because the letter she began on April 30 ran into May 1. More from her and Dart tomorrow.
This is very brief note, scratched out in pencil before the lights go out for the night. The dateline says they’re in port. (Where they were towed by another ship, the small kamikaze plane and its dead pilot still embedded deep into the innards of the Haggard.)
He began his new job yesterday in the scullery, cleaning dishes and food containers. He says the work was rugged. What he doesn’t say is that since the ship has no power, the food has consisted of sandwiches and warm juice served three times a day.
He’s enclosing a page of interior sketches for their house. He’ll try to do more as the spirit moves him, although his new work assignment doesn’t leave much time for such things.
A couple of nights ago, he caught a glimpse of the brilliant full moon. It made him feel lonesome, staring out over the black water and wishing he were somewhere else, with Dot.
Dot has started a couple of recent letters with a corny riddle scribbled in the upper corner. I didn’t mention them because they are really terrible jokes. Now, it appears it’s might become a trend. In the spirit of accurately capturing the “truth” of these letters, I guess I’d better include them. Read the following at your own risk. Q: What’s the difference between a duck? A: One leg is both the same. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Dot had just finished writing to Dart’s mother, telling her of a great new plan Dot has hatched. She thinks it would be wonderful if Dart, Sr., Helen and Burke could make a road trip this summer to the northeast. It would be a fine celebration for their 25th anniversary and Burke’s high school graduation. It would also give Dot’s whole family a chance to meet the folks who raised such a terrific son as Dart. If Dot and Janie are able to spend their June vacation at Lake Sunapee, Dot would like nothing better than to introduce the Peterson’s to that little piece of heaven. She asks Dart to use his influence on them so they’ll say yes to Dot’s invitation.
She abruptly changes the subject to the fact that Hitler is dead. She cares little whether he was killed or took his own life, but she’s confident that the war in Europe will be completely wrapped up very soon. “And then ah, cheer up, my dear boy! Then they will send our European troops to the Pacific to give you and Gordon a hand with this war. I know how you hate to rush these things, but I’m kinda gettin’ lonely and I want you home soon!”
She ends with “It’s late and I’m tired.(Seems to me you’ve heard that song before.) But I love you like 60 tons of ice cream, and boy!!! Do I LOVE ice cream!”
Her P.S. is a “check” for 42 kisses, payable when he returns from the Pacific, but invalid if not redeemed immediately upon his return.
Dot begins by telling Dart that she found a poem that perfectly describes how she feels about him. It’s called “Why I Love You” and was written by an unknown author.
It begins with “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you…I love you for not only what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.” It goes on for a couple of stanzas with some nice thoughts about a love that brings out the best in the loved one. The final line is “I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.”
She continues with a weather report, describing the typical March day they are having – rain and a blustery cold wind. Unfortunately, it is May. The Chamberlain house is very cold because Arthur shut down the furnace in March when the temperatures ran high. Dot is quite chilly as she writes this. “Golly, I’d be in a _ell of a fix if I didn’t have my love to keep me warm.”
She confesses to doing something silly tonight. She was sitting on her bed when she thought she heard pebbles hitting her window. She jumped off her bed, ran to the window and actually called Dart’s name. All she got was a face full of cold rain. How disappointing! “When you do come to Greenwich, don’t throw pebbles at the window. I may think it’s only the wind and will pay no attention. Let’s see. Shouldn’t we have a signal worked out? Just to give me a little warning that you’re here. If you ring the doorbell, ring 3 short and 1 long. If you get inside the house and don’t see me sprawled on the floor, whistle 3 sort and 1 long. But if no one’s home, better use the phone in the kitchen to call the Fix-It Shop.”
She berates herself for these torturing thoughts. She knows it does no good to imagine what it’ll be like when she sees Dart next, but her mind keeps going there anyway. Gordon thinks it will be quite a while yet until the fleet comes home. Not until the war is over for Tokyo. How this girl wishes things would hurry up!
Dart announces that he has finally been assigned a real bunk. He says that enough men have “transferred’ off the ship that there is now space for him in a regular sleeping area. If one knows what happened to the Haggard just days ago, one might assume that “transferred” is a clue about it. Transferred to a hospital ship, perhaps? Or, tragically, transferred Stateside in a casket? In any case he says, “I expect to rest my raw bones in a real bunk tonight, for the second time since I left the good old USA.” He explains that his first occasion to sleep in a bunk came one night in sick bay aboard the Admiral Coontz, en route to the Haggard.
He writes a humorous description of those bunks. They were stacked five layers high and constructed of canvas slings that sagged very low beneath the frame work that suspended them. He drew a little sketch of a tower of skinny sailors lounging in their bunks. Each man’s “center of gravity” drooped low into the space that the man below him would have occupied, if he, too were not drooping far below his bunk frame. The poor guy on the bottom was essentially resting his rump directly on the deck.
Having filled one whole page with chatter about his sleeping arrangements, Dart describes his new job in the mess. He’s up before reveille and doesn’t finish until after 7:00 PM, but he’s not required to serve on work parties. Yesterday while he washed dishes, other sailors hauled heavy ammunition all over the decks. This job has it’s perks.
He closes with the wish that they will get mail soon. It feels like months since he’s heard from Dot, but it’s really only two weeks. Perhaps some of his eagerness for news is because he himself has so much news to share that cannot be shared.
As Dot begins to write, she finds herself wishing she were curled up next to Dart on the couch, talking to him instead of writing. She misses him so much, but she finds one fault in her wish – that is the fact that she does better “talking” in a letter than she does face-to-face. “I hope by the time you get home, I’ll be cured.” She recalls that Wednesday afternoon when she tried to explain why she couldn’t express herself. “As soon as you parked the car I started to pray, ‘Please help me prove I have a heart and a tongue. Keep me from blushing and silence my heartbeat so it can’t be heard way down at the Square.’ Oh, but alas, I couldn’t say ‘boo,’ my heartbeat fairly shook the car, and I blushed so violently the sky reflected it and we had a gorgeous sunset!”
Tonight she is babysitting way out on the outskirts of Greenwich with two “devil children.” They’ve been running her ragged all evening and their parents won’t be home until about 2:00 AM.
She talks about her little brother and her niece going into Madison Square Garden tomorrow to see the Ringling Brothers Circus, courtesy of Franklin Simon. The store purchased enough tickets for nearly every child in Greenwich to attend.
Dot reminds Dart that just a year ago tonight, she was having her second visit to his family’s home in Cleveland. While she was there, Dart called from Great Lakes Hospital and it was so wonderful to hear his voice. “Golly, it doesn’t seem possible a year has slipped by so fast, and yet, some ways it seems ages since that time.”
Dot believes this has been a wasted year for her. She seems no more mature than when she left school, her bank account has grown very little. “I have neither taken from society that which might benefit me, nor given anything to the world that would help in solving its many problems. The only thing she has learned is the value of a lost year – a year that can neither be relived, replaced, nor renewed. Perhaps this lesson will awaken her to the need to make something of her life. “With you as the model, I should be able to come as near to perfection as you, but you have the makings already there. I’ll have to scout around for some.”
What little regard this young woman has for her tremendous qualities of hard work, good humor, patience with young children, honesty, compassion and a positive outlook. I’m sure Dart will be happy to enlighten her.
Wow! Dot sure does cram a lot of chat into this little letter! For the first time in ages, she’s back babysitting at the Pecsok’s house. Little Chuck has grown a lot and Linda is almost a year old. For the second time in as many days, Dot reminds Dart of events that she wrote about last year when he was a perpetual patient in Great Lakes Hospital.
As soon as Dot arrived today, Mr. Pecsok put on some square dance music and began to twirl Dot around the living room. When the music switched to a waltz tempo, he danced with Dot in perfect 3/4 time. She drew the line when the marching started! “Do you realize that’s the first time I’ve danced since October 16th, 1943? That is, if you stretch the meaning of the word dance and call what I was doing tonight dancing. Little did I know a year and a half ago that I’d want to spend the rest of my life dancing with you. Oh sure, I had big dreams, but I didn’t think they’d ever come true.”
Tomorrow, she sits with Chris and Eric Miller. She has plans with the Millers every Sunday throughout the summer. They have a very nice sail boat that Mr. Miller built by hand. On alternate Sundays, she’ll escort the boys for a Miller family sail. On the “off” weeks, she and the boys will stay home while Mr. and Mrs. Miller sail alone. What a great way to spend a summer, if you love to sail as much as Dot does.
She and Nancy are going to see “A Song to Remember” tomorrow night, on the recommendation of her parents. Although Dot’s not too keen on Merle Oberon, any movie that took seven years to complete must be worth seeing.
She hopes Dart forgives her for ending the letter to get some sleep. She was up until 3:00 AM this morning, and she’s been cleaning or babysitting all day.
No letters tomorrow or the next day, but Dot will return on the 8th and Dart on the 10th.
There’s little to say and not much time to say it, but Dart manages to fill three small pages nonetheless. The ship’s mail petty officer has taken the launch out every day in search of mail for the Haggard, but to no avail.
Dart’s payday was today and he had earned $126. From that he withdrew $15 to live on. He wishes he could have bought a money order to send something for his brother Burke to pay for an anniversary gift for his folks, but the sale of money orders was prohibited this pay period for unexplained reasons. Besides, he hasn’t heard from Burke to know what he decided to buy the folks and how much Dart owes.
He says that whether he’s able to write of not, he has plenty of time to think up ideas for their house. Unfortunately, by the time he gets a chance to sketch out his ideas, he’s forgotten half of them. He hopes a 12 x 18 living room is large enough, because that’s what he and his buddies have based cost estimates on. That room, adjacent to a 9 x 12 dining room will look quite impressive. He says rooms that big are usually hard to heat, but he and his friends have worked out a solution to that problem. Our Dart is still a frustrated engineer, I think, in spite of washing out of engineering school at Case.
In response to a letter from Dot he says he’s never been to any of the places her brother has seen, but the Haggard did have a hand in preparing for some of the actions that Gordon has been involved with. He’s by now managed to figure out the time difference between where he is and Greenwich. If he told her, however, Dot (and the enemy) would be able to pinpoint where on the globe he is, so he must not tell her. “It’s awfully far to be away from someone you love so dearly.”
He has thoroughly enjoyed the hour he’s spent writing to the loveliest girl in the world.
It is V-E-Day! The exclamation point at the end of the sentence is all the celebrating Dot will do. Anything else would seem like throwing a party when the guest of honor wasn’t there. She’s putting all her prayers and hopes into a speedy end to Dart’s war in the Pacific. She is. however so grateful that millions of families in Europe are breathing freely tonight for the first time in 5-1/2 years.
At Eleanor’s birthday dinner tonight, the family sang the Navy hymn and offered prayers for Dart and Gordon’s quick return.
Franklin-Simon closed the store when the news broke about the victory in Europe today. Dot and some of the other girls stopped in a church on the way home to say a prayer of gratitude. She doesn’t think God would mind at all that they prayed in a Catholic church, even though none of them was Catholic.
Dot believes that if everyone on earth loved someone as much as she loves Dart, there would be no more war. Everyone would be so focused on making their loved one happy that there’d be no time for anything else.
The lull in mail that Dart predicted two weeks ago has now been going on for about 10 days. She’s not complaining because he’s so dependable when he is able to write. She takes comfort in thinking that the two of them might be thinking of each other at the same time on some days.
She loved “A Song to Remember,” but she was a little shocked at Chopin’s “shady” life. Even though her Dad explained that his lifestyle was common for artists of his day, Dot doesn’t believe her ideals would have allowed her to live like that, no matter what the majority thought was alright.
She must sleep now. There are no letters tomorrow, but Dart returns on the 10th.
What a wonderful letter from Dart. It reels out at a leisurely pace, stopping at intervals to chat about the weather, answer a bit of an old letter from Dot, and lingering over house plans. There’s a touch of sweetness, a dose of nostalgia, a snippet of humor. Dot will eat this one up.
First, he explains that he received a letter from Dot today, although there was no mail delivered to the ship. The letter, dated March 10, was somehow misplaced and had been languishing in the mail room for nearly two months. The postal officer found it today while bundling up letters for men who had been transferred off the ship. Dart was delighted to receive it, but is still eagerly awaiting her letter from April 10th. More on that later.
“I liked your description of Spring from the 3rd floor windows of Franklin Simon. Boy, how I’d like to see a nice Spring in Greenwich, or (if you’ll pardon me) better still, in Ohio. There is no Spring season in the tropics, you know. It is so foreign, yet so like July and August all the time, that we forget there are such things as delicate filmy greens of new leaves after a Spring rain; or the soft, white quietness of a Winter snowfall; or the rich, crisp, comfortable-looking colors of an Autumn countryside.”
He describes the fierce, quick rainstorms of the tropics – popping up in an instant and leaving without a trace. He describes seeing steam rise off the decks of the ships after a rain shower – a similar effect to the steam he once saw rising from the fresh hot asphalt of a new Cleveland street.
Her letter also answered a mystery he’d been puzzling over for a while. He remembered that she said she’d sold her bike, but then she described all her efforts to restore her bike. He was curious if she’d repossessed her old one for lack of payment, or stolen a bike from some poor little girl who had sold shoe strings to earn the money to buy her own. Today’s letter informed him that Mrs. Miller had given her an old bike as a graduation gift.
He wishes she could be in on some of the house planning discussions. They not only talk about materials and design, but the ease of cleaning and maintaining the structure. He has one buddy who is sure the first floor could be completely wired for between $75 and $100 dollars. At last, he has included some exterior elevations of the house and a small floor plan in the body of the letter so we can have some idea of the pictures in his head. I can assure you, there is not much similarity between this house and the one Mom and Dad eventually had built when we were young children.
Changing the subject, he writes, “We learned, of course, of the surrender of Germany. I greeted the news, I guess, just about as other people did: with a broad grin, a sense of relief, and a continuation of work. It’s nice to know that there’ll be more attention paid to the Pacific war from now on.”
Before wrapping up this edition of “Spot and Arrow,” let’s return to his desire to receive Dot’s April 10th letter – the one written after her interview with the WAVEs. “But the letter I’m really interested in is the one dated 10 April. You know why. I can’t say why because I’m already in enough of a jam over it. That’s probably another letter which will be delayed awhile in reaching me.” The back story to this passage is that Dart received a serious dressing down from a high-ranking officer over his letter to Dot about the WAVEs. In the first place, the officer reminded Dart of the court-martial-able offense of trying to discourage enlistment in a time of war. In the second place, he informed Dart that despite the young sailor’s harsh assessment of the women in the WAVEs, this particular officer was particularly proud of his wife, an officer in that much maligned organization! Dart was in deep trouble, but I suspect he would not have gotten off quite so easily as a tongue lashing, had Dot written to say that, because of his letter, she had decided not to join up. That’s probably why Dart suspected that letter would be delayed in reaching him – while the officers took a first look at it and determined his fate.
“The lights are going out now, one at a time, so I think it’s time I took the rest of the night off for some bit of sleep, and perhaps, (I hope) a spot of sweet dreams of you. You’re just about getting up to greet this very day which I’m closing. Isn’t it a pretty morning? It was when it left here, anyway.”
This is a sweet letter, written by a love-sick sailor who was smitten by an unrelenting love for a pretty, perky, practical girl and will never be the same.
The opening paragraphs mentioned lots of work, no time to write, and a rare game of cards he was roped into last night. He’s never liked cards before, and his opinion remains the same after his experience last night. For what it’s worth, he never came to like cards and could hardly ever be persuaded to join in any type of card game. It was quite the opposite with Dot, who was always up for any number of games. It was she who bore the responsibility of teaching their future children everything they knew and loved about cards.
Then he tells her that he has been entertaining himself by repeatedly writing the name of his cousin Jim’s wife – “Mrs. Dorothy Peterson.” He thinks it’s a perfectly lovely name and vows he would not find it confusing for one moment if there happened to be two women of that name in the family. In fact, he’d quite like it.
He resumes the letter when it’s nearly bedtime. Two hours ago, he moved a buddy off his locker so he could retrieve the start of this letter and Dot’s picture. Since then, the gang has been engaged in lively conversation with no letter-writing being done. Topics have ranged from good books to sports (for which Dart, I’m sure had very little to add), past Navy actions (which he cannot write about here), and girls. “Just between you and me and anyone who’ll listen, I think I’ve got the sweetest, prettiest, most completely lovely girl of any fellow on the ship. Your pictures are really admired by all who see them. ”
He continues, “Something I wish I could do is make a reasonable facsimile of interest when fellows show me pictures of their girls. But I begin seeing you instead, and with your smile lighting the back of my mind, I can’t praise any other girl at all.”
The rest of the letter is filled with such poetic sweetness that I cannot paraphrase it with any justice. He says, “Boy, how I wish I could look into those pretty brown eyes with little flecks of gold in them, again. Want to hold you in my arms, feel your cheek soft against mine, whisper things in your ear and kiss you again and again. I heard my buddy Vernon Hite talk about all the girls he’d kissed before he met his wife. He discussed several (lemons, spicy, firm, warm, cold, etc.) and said that his wife reminded him of rosebuds when he kissed her. I’d heard that expression before, but I’d been looking for it to describe in some way the girl I wanted to go on kissing forever. If I had a nickel for every girl I kissed before I met you, I could ride downtown on the streetcar. But even that amazingly small (for a lad of 21) experience is enough for me to know that you’re the one, the only one I want. And knowing you feel the same is the greatest consolation I could have for not being with you.”
Such a sad and poignant letter from Dot today.
She would rather have had this heart-to-heart with Dart in person, but time is passing, with no indication of when they might have the chance for a long, serious face-to-face talk, so she feels she needs to write this now.
Posing the question, “Why do you love me?” she assures him that she is not fishing for complements, but rather, trying desperately to understand what he sees in her.
“When I think of why I love you, I realize you couldn’t love me for the same reason because I don’t possess the same qualities you do. You’re ambitious and intelligent. You have such a keen sense of humor, and at the same time such downright straight-forward thinking. You seem to know right from wrong in every case and have such strong will power to follow your own convictions. Besides all of these qualities, you’re kind, very courteous and just an all around swell guy. And just for good measure, let’s throw in the fact that you’re tall, dark and handsome.”
But, she muses, none of that explains what he sees in her. She’s nearly 19 and has accomplished nearly nothing in her life. He writes that she’s “charming” and “lovely,” but she’s too much of a Tom-boy to be either. She knows right from wrong, but doesn’t “do much about it.” She has big ideas, but rarely follows them through because she gets so easily discouraged. She believes she’s unworthy of his love and doesn’t want him saddling himself with a girl as obviously inferior as she is.
We’ve seen this low self image reflected a lot in her letters, but it’s painful to read it expressed so emphatically. Where does it come from? Partly, I think it stems from living in a family that are big on teasing, and, although she seems to be a good sport, sometimes that teasing must cut a little, especially when it comes from her beloved father. She also mentions Mr. Hibschman from Andrews School, whom she has always claimed didn’t like her much. For all we know, he may have been an arrogant, judgemental son of a gun, but his disapproval of Dot stings even now that she has graduated and left the campus. The character that people admire so much in her – her easy way with children, her hard work, her friendly and positive nature – are traits she either doesn’t recognize or doesn’t value.
Dart on the other hand, who himself is sometimes prone to moodiness and seeing things on the dark side, sees in Dot a breath of fresh air, a spark of light and joy that cannot be squelched. He values her honesty – not just in the fact that she tells the truth, but that she couldn’t obfuscate or be phony if you paid her. He knows that her natural, unadorned prettiness on the outside reflects her inner naturalness and goodness. With Dot, what you see is what you get, and he likes everything he sees in her.
She was thrilled to get three letters from Dart today after a two- week drought. She loves his drawings for the house, but she agrees that he’ll have to find a way to increase the size of the kitchen. Her father still doesn’t believe the house can be built for under $12,000, but admits he doesn’t know much about costs outside of the greater New York City area. To do her part toward building the house, she intends to buy a war savings bond. She explains that she’ll put it into his name, and if he ends up marrying someone else, he can consider it a wedding present from her. The she adds, “Dot, how can you talk of such things so lightly?”
It’s off to bed for her now, as she wishes her “scullery maid” goodnight, with a warning that he must not get dish pan hands.
With Dart’s gift for addressing serious subjects with a poetic, gentle touch, I’m eager to read his response to this letter.
Here’s a very short note from Dart, saying he has nothing new to say and little time to say it. He thinks he’s catching a cold, which he blames on working over a steam table and then going on deck to cool off after the outside temperature suddenly dropped. He’s not used to taking a jacket with him after being in the tropics so long.
Now he’s at the end of the page and he hasn’t told the loveliest girl in the world that he loves her. Such things are better said in the dark, “so I must wait for many moons until I can whisper what I’d like to write about us, ‘n love, ‘n houses, ‘n stuff. I love you always.”
