The only mail today is a cute little greeting card from Dot to Dart. This is a sweet way to say “I’m thinking about you,” even when there’s nothing new to write and no time for a full letter. This card is designed to send to someone in the service, which must have been a very large group for the greeting card companies to remember in the 1940s.
Enjoy this little piece of nostalgia!
Here’s another greeting card sent during one of Dot’s very busy weeks. This time, it’s coming from “Tonsillectomy,” the African pillow/doll that Dot has claimed as a “daughter.” I’m a little surprised that a card featuring a dark-skinned child could be found in 1945, in Greenwich, Connecticut – perhaps one of the whitest communities in America. Anyway, it expresses a sweet message that Dart is missed very much. It also serves the dual purpose of cementing an inside joke that has grown between the two of them. (Although I notice it’s mostly Dot who perpetuates the joke.)
Tomorrow brings a long-awaited letter from Dart.
Dart begins by saying that for the last couple of days he’s been in a happy and carefree mood for no apparent reason. In fact, he says there are plenty of reasons not to feel happy or carefree, yet still, he does.
He reveals the biggest worry the guys on his ship have, aside from worrying about the enemy, is worrying that their loved ones at home will worry about them. When their letters can’t get off the ship they know that there’ll be long, anxious days at home, waiting for some word from them. The sailors aren’t bothered much by not hearing from home, because they can assume their families and friends are safe and that the letters from home will eventually reach the ship. I wonder if sailors from England, Germany, and all the other fighting nations had the peace of mind that US fighters did. It seems doubtful, as the cities in their home countries were being bombed ferociously throughout the war. How very easy the US civilians had it, in spite of all the shortages they faced.
He waxes poetic about Spring arriving in the Pacific. “As we watched the rich golden sun come up and start scattering fluffy white clouds all over the sky the other day, each of us seemed to be reminded of clear, early-Spring mornings at home. The beautiful things of the world don’t seem to change much, no matter where they are transplanted. A Spring sunrise in clear, cool air awakens the same dreams, whether we’re on a plunging speeding destroyer at some unknown spot in the Pacific, or are the only one on the streets as we deliver the Cleveland Plain Dealer and watch the world awaken. I’ve never seen a sunrise in Greenwich, but I suppose they’re just the same there as in Ohio or in the Pacific.”
The recent sunrise reminded him of his paper route days – up at 4:30 a.m. each day, seeing the same people with the same cheery wave at the same place. “There’s a peculiar bond between people who get up before dawn, whether they be heavy-laden newsboys or heavily careworn men.”
Although the men on board the Haggard curse the dawn alerts that shake them from their beds to watch for enemy attack planes, he tells Dot that such alerts may sometime not only save their lives, but can also yield some beautiful sights in the bargain.
Deciding to end the letter here, he writes “My heart is full of love for you and happiness at loving you so much and knowing you feel the same.”
Dot’s letter today ends abruptly at the end of the first page and continues for three pages the next day. To spread out the news, I’ll handle it the same way.
If she had known how much time she’d be spending on other people’s dishes and children, she would have thought twice about placing that ad in the newspaper! She and El served a big spaghetti dinner at the Miller’s home last night.
Fortunately, she had the foresight to carve out a whole day to work on her bike. She used the tools and equipment at her father’s fix-it shop and she’s delighted with the results. “It’s a delicious light blue and looks nearly new. (I’m a poet and don’t I know it. My talents show it. I’m ‘Whittier.’)”
Tomorrow she hopes to get all 200 bolts, screws, and other parts back into their proper places. She jokes about pumping to make the light go on and ringing the bell to turn the pedals, but she’s actually quite mechanical, so I bet it all worked out fine.
She warns him that if he doesn’t stop making up this beautiful dream girl back in the States, he’ll be setting himself up for a huge letdown when he gets home. That reminded her of a limerick:
As a beauty, I’m not a great star
There are others more handsome by far.
But my face, I don’t mind it, ’cause I’m here behind it.
It’s you folks out in front that I jar.
Limericks were always one of Dart’s favorite “art forms,” but I doubt he’ll have much appreciation for this one.
Dot continues the letter she started yesterday, saying she hopes she’ll have it finished by the time he gets home. Today brought another letter from Dart, written just one week ago! She says he was right – she was thinking about him that day. (What are the odds?)
She tells Dart about another dream she had where she was in the store room at work and someone came up behind her and covered her eyes. She guessed everyone she works with, but eventually she turned around and there was Dart, “big as life.” He began to get hazy and far away, so she reached out and woke herself up, only to discover she had grabbed his picture off her bed side table.
The thought of him surprising her at work thrills her to the bone. Again, she begs him to remember her daily schedule and seek her out as soon as he gets to Greenwich, without telling her he’s coming. Then she chides herself for talking as though his surprise visit was imminent. “You must allow me my little dreams once in a while. I thrive on them.”
Yesterday, she “went off the deep end,” and bought herself a new hat and a suit. Her dad, who has said he’s never seen a lady’s hat he liked, actually likes this one. It’s been four years since she was home for Easter and even longer than that since she bought anything new for the occasion, so she thought it was time. “If I can find some film, I’ll spoil it and have my picture taken in my new Easter finery.”
She recalls that her last Easter at home, she was 14 and her brother Gordon bought her the first corsage she’d ever had. It was six roses, and it lasted three weeks. She can’t believe Gordon and Betty’s second anniversary is the week after Easter.
She interrupts her chatty letter to declare that she’s so glad he loves her, because she loves him, and a one-sided affair can be so awkward.
Tonight, she served and washed dishes for another dinner party. (Was it just Greenwich that was into having dinner parties all the time, or did everyone do more of that in 1945?) She was dead tired before the party started, but she’s trying not to complain of fatigue to such a hard-working sailor as Dart.
Her mother’s birthday is this week and Harriet is taking Ruth into NYC for lunch and a play. Aside from baking the cake and preparing her birthday dinner, Dot’s not sure what she’ll do to help her mother celebrate the occasion.
She writes that the war will no doubt have its effects on Dart, but one thing she knows for sure is that he won’t be coming home to her every night drunk and smelling of cigarettes. His deeply held opinions on those habits are too ingrained for them to change at this point. She’s quite happy about that and counts herself especially lucky to be in love with such a fine man. She regrets that she can’t say it in words that give him goose pimples like his letters do to her, but she tries her hand at a love poem:
When your hair has turned to silver and your teeth start to decay, I’ll love you just as much, my Darling, as I love you today.
As she promises to write again tomorrow, she begs his forgiveness. She’s so tired all the time and she looks like a T.B. patient.
The past few days have passed quickly for Dart, but with no real news to tell. Instead he decides to describe a little more about his daily life aboard the ship.
He hopes to finish this letter before the deadline for censors. When they get word that there will be a mail pick-up that day, they never have much time to wrap up their letters in order for the censors to approve them before the mail goes out. It takes quite a long time for all the letters to get processed through the censorship board.
His “condition watch” has been changed to an inside post, although his battle station watches are still outdoors. The latter he does every dawn and dusk, but the inside watch is much nicer, especially when the weather is rough.
When he first came to the Haggard, he feared he would not get assigned to fire control. In fact, one of the three FC guys in his newbie group was actually assigned to the mess hall – cooking and serving meals, stocking the galley and cleaning the mess hall. Now, Dart and the other FC striker are having their turn at the same duty. He isn’t sure when it’ll start, but it can’t last longer than three months and he’s been told it won’t hurt his chances for advancement, if such chances occur. He doesn’t seem too upset about being taken off the duty he trained so hard for and working in the mess.
The men are allowed to work on standard Navy courses while on condition watch, so he’s about two thirds of the way through the course work he’s doing to try to get a promotion.
The sea has been unbelievably calm for the last couple of days. It reminds him of Lake Erie in the summer, when the water is so smooth that the only motion is when the wind ruffles the surface slightly. He loves to see the Cleveland skyline reflected in the lake when it gets like that. The Pacific has been just that smooth. His ship can go through the glass-like water at top speed without a drop of water or a breath of spray coming on deck. He says it’s a shame to run a ship through such perfectly smooth water.
As he writes now, however, the old girl is having some fun. She’s pitching and swaying all over the place. He’s gotten used to the wildly irregular roll of the ship on rough seas and it doesn’t phase him much, except when the bow rides off the top of a swell and then plunges into a deep trough with a giant smack! There are times when they hit the wave so hard that a solid sheet of water envelopes the ship and soaks everything in its path.
He guesses even war and rough seas can’t keep a guy from thinking about his girl, his family and his hobbies. He’s been doing a lot of all three lately. I’m sure Dot will be thrilled to learn he’s designed a wiring plan for his two model trains so he can get them running when he’s able to get little motors for them. He’s also been working out some details on their house. “You mentioned going upstairs hand-in-hand in one of your letters. What fond memories that brought back! I wish now that we’d stayed awake and talked all night. The sleep we’d have missed wouldn’t have mattered now. I’m doing all I can to make our little house with the big fireplace come true, and when that happens, all our present dreams will have come true, too. The only ones left will be the ones we can cook up together, between now and then.”
Dart writes that he is gradually getting accustomed to his new life out here. Life on a tin can is teaching him all sorts of things every day. For example, he has learned a valuable lesson of how to stow clothing in his locker. Because regular duckings by fierce or playful waves make for frequent changes of clothing, he’s learned to fold an entire outfit, from underwear and socks to dungarees and shirt, into one neat package. Then when he has to change on the double, he just grabs a bundle and has everything he needs in one hand.
He tells her she needn’t worry that this life would ever take first place in his heart over Cleveland. “The way we like it here is to try to forget about home, to think of all the worse places we could be, to forget where we are and why, and then it sorta comes on us that maybe this place would be alright as a last choice.”
It doesn’t sound to Dart like Dot really wants to hear much “about that ‘perfect size 12’ girl I mentioned once. She may have been size 12 – I wouldn’t know about that – but as far as perfection goes, she wasn’t it. ‘Nuff said. I think size 14 would be alright for you. Don’t let all the effort of getting there mar your charming personality and sweet looks, though.”
Referring to her long-ago comment about Washington’s birthday falling on a work day and her hopes that by the time it’s on a Sunday, she’ll have the type of job where she won’t have to work weekends, he commented that the holiday falls on a Sunday in just three years. He says that doesn’t leave much time for the war to end and for the two of them to “get started.” How he hopes he’ll be able to provide for her when they can get married. He hopes the first year or two after the war aren’t too difficult. He wants to finish college and get a big job in a big hurry.
He ends with “By the way, the only way we know it’s Sunday around here is when some guy says “Jeezuss, we’re having chicken noodle soup for chow!”
Having broken her promise to write last night, Dot explains that she was struggling with her mother’s birthday cake. The devil’s food came out okay, but the frosting was a disaster. She ran out of powdered sugar and had to use granulated. Chewing the frosting felt like eating sand.
Next Thursday, she’s taking the day off work to go into NYC with Nancy Clapp. Her dad has a list of supplies he’d like her to get and she needs new shoes. If there’s time, they hope to take in a show.
The weather today was spring-like, but earlier this week, it was cold, wet and snowy. She says last night was a perfect night for “indoor sports,” and says she means just what he’s thinking!
Last night she dreamed that Dart’s brother had joined the Navy and was already an Ensign. Dot says she’d take a lowly bell-bottom wearing sailor if the one wearing them was Dart.
While trying to fall asleep last night, she thought back to every detail of their time together in November. She can’t figure out why they didn’t change their awkward seating arrangement with him in the straight back chair and her on that low couch. She also doesn’t know why she couldn’t open up and say what was in her heart when he was saying all those pretty things to her. He must have thought her an awful twerp.
Now she takes comfort in knowing that each day brings her one day closer to seeing him again.
Dart says that in spite of her claims of being a “poor, mistreated baby-sitter,” Dot must enjoy the work or she wouldn’t have put that clever ad in the newspaper. He’s eagerly awaiting word on how that first dinner party turned out. He asks if she decided to go into business with El rather than look for a job at a defense plant as she had mentioned once. From his limited observation, defense plants “are not such hot places for young girls to work.”
He sees in the news that Mayor LaGuardia is running New York City in defiance of the curfew laws. “And the New Yorkers call the boys from the South ‘rebels’! Looks like we’ll have to sail the fleet into New York harbor and lambast the city with our pea-shooters.” He wonders if, after putting her little charges to bed, she’s ever had to help some of their parents get to bed, too. “Then, maybe your clients don’t come home stewed.”
He wishes he’d seen “I Love a Soldier,” because of the San Francisco scenes in it. “Did they show any scenes of the bridges or of the city from a cocktail lounge high above it? If not, they missed the two most impressive sights of the city.” He’s surprised that his descriptions of the places he’s seen make her homesick for those places, even though she’s never been to them. “The biggest and most important memories I have which make me homesick are those dealing with eight days separated by a couple of eternities and a millennium.”
Let that sink in for a minute. The eight days he refers to are the ones he’s spent in Dot’s company. Eight days. Think of how far these two have come in their relationship, how much they know about each other, how deep their love has grown – with only eight days together. Such is the power of letters in the hands of two mature, self-aware, honest, and compatible young people.
Now comes a gentle lecture. He asserts that she must never refer to her lovely paragraphs as “corny.” He writes, “Darling, every single word you send me thrills and enthralls me. They’re the nearest thing to your being with me that there could be…Yours are the sweetest and most endearing love letters I’ve ever seen. Lots of fellows sit around and read each other’s mail, laughing at the gentler phrases and thoughts of the writers, but no one except me ever sees your letters. They are Sacred Writings.”
It’s nearly lunch time and not only the Army but also the Navy fights on it’s stomach. As for Dart, he finds it hard to make love on an empty stomach, so he must end this letter, sending all his love.
Dot begins her letter by saying that writing it at work might earn her 10 hours of extra duty, or cost her a job, but spending a few minutes chatting with him is worth the risk.
She was thrilled to get three good letters from him when she went home for lunch today. She was so eager to read them that she forgot to blow on her soup and has suffered a burned tongue.
She’s decided there’s no excuse for her not writing to him every single day, so she begs him not to forgive her anymore. There are women she works with who, according to Dot, have more to do than she does (I find that hard to believe) and they manage to write to their husbands and sweethearts daily. Some of them have been at it for more than three years! Dot prays that the war won’t last anywhere near that long, but if it does, she’ll still be writing. I wonder if she realizes that she’s been writing to Dart on a nearly daily basis for half that long already?
It’s supposed to be a very busy day at the store, with Easter so close, and in most of the departments, that’s true. However, the Young Men’s Shop is deserted.
She continues the letter from home later that day. How nice it is that the Navy is giving him so much practice at painting. By the end of the war he should be an expert at wielding the paint brush. She asks if he’d rather paint a house than a ship. “Good – so would I,” she says, agreeing with his presumed response.
Today she decided to send Dart’s family a little something for Easter to remind them of Dart, so she wired them a plant with a card that said “With love from Dart, via Dot.” She wanted him to know what she’d done in case they mention something to him. I can imagine how much that plant, and Dot’s thoughtfulness will please them. Another thought she had was that his folk’s 25th wedding anniversary is coming up in June. Since she doesn’t trust the timing of the mail, she’s mentioning this now. She’d like him to tell her what he’d like to give them for the occasion and she’ll handle the shopping and shipping. She knows it’ll be more fun for her than for him, but since he’s not exactly in the “Shopping Mart of the World,” she hopes he’ll let her help him out this way. What a thoughtful girl!
Dot gets philosophical as she tells Dart about a discussion she, El and their cousin Betty had after dinner tonight. It seems that economists predict that for at least 10 years after the war ends, prices for nearly everything will climb significantly. Dot claims she has no head for figures, but one thing she has figured out is that money doesn’t mean that much. Granted, one must have the stuff in order to eat, but there’re so many things that are more meaningful. She cites nature as an example and says Spring is the perfect reminder that some of the greatest beauty in the world can be had for free if one simply sits and drinks in all the splendor. “So – I’ve got it all boiled down to one thing. If you love someone as much as I love you, material wealth matters very little.” As it turned out, Dot and Dart always had “enough,” but there were lots of periods when they didn’t have a penny more than that. Yet they were richly blessed in their long and loving marriage.
It’s 1:30 AM and she is bleary eyed. Good night.
For a brief time today, Dart thought he might be able to meet Dot’s brother. While he was in port, he saw a ship he thought was Gordon’s and he asked the signalman to send a message over to it. A response came back that they were talking to the wrong ship. Oh well, maybe next time…
As he’s mentioned before, huge waves break over the deck of the Haggard fairly frequently, soaking everyone it their paths. It seems that Dart has developed a reputation of being in the wave’s path more often than anyone else. At times, he thinks there’s a trained shark following the ship, ready to squirt a big spray of salt water whenever Peterson sets foot on deck. A couple of days ago, it reached slapstick comedy levels when first his feet got soaked as a wave washed over the deck on his early morning watch at the bow. Later, as he walked aft, nearly dry from the earlier ducking, another wave came aboard and , Voila! He was wearing wet pants. Everybody laughed, including Dart, I think. He concludes with “It shouldn’t happen to any dog.”
But wait! There’s more. In the late afternoon while he walked the deck, he saw the wave coming. He grabbed the handiest thing which would support his weight and hoisted his feet up. The wave rolled under his feet, up the side of the deck house, bounced off and soaked him from hat to brogans. “It could only happen in the movies, or to me.”
A week from today will be Easter. It was about a year ago that Dot and his parents met for the first time while he was in the hospital, hundreds of miles away. “Maybe some of these years we may all be home together for the holidays. All the holidays. From New Year’s Day through New Year’s Eve, for many years in succession.” Nice dream.
He writes that he is sitting here with Donn Byron recalling how he met Dot, where he met her, how much he liked her from the very first moment. “Golly Dot, you’re swell. Every once in a while the very thought of you overwhelms me. To think that I should know and love a person like you, and then have you love me too, is almost too much to believe.”
I love how each of them feels like they won the lottery when they met each other. Both of them thinks s/he is the lucky one to have the other person love them. Isn’t that the very definition of romantic love?
Dot’s short letter is hard for her to write because she’s sitting in the Miller’s living room and they’re talking and the radio is playing. She’s spending the night because Mr. and Mrs. Miller are leaving at the crack of dawn for a three-day anniversary celebration in NYC. Dot will stay with the boys until a sitter arrives later in the morning.
As happens so often, Dot’s mind is running in the same channel as Dart’s today. She’s thinking how much she’ll miss him again at Easter. Last year she was hoping that by this year they could celebrate the holiday together and now she’s hoping the same thing about next year. These busy kids, surrounded by people and activity are so very lonely for each other. Let’s hope next Easter brings a reunion.
We have two very short notes today. Dart stood in line twice today so that he could buy two packs of stationery to replace the tiny lined notebook pages he’s been using for a few days.
He skipped the movie tonight to write to his old pal Fred – the only buddy he’s heard from in weeks. There have been big gaps in their mail service and they think they know why, but they don’t know where the mail is.
“I’ve never fallen asleep on a date, but tonight’s the nearest thing to it. Sitting here on a hard steel deck, with my feet out straight, your picture before me and my sore back getting stiffer, I fell asleep with my pen actually on the paper in the middle of a word. I love you night and day, my Darling.”
I hope Mom can shed a little light on the first paragraph of this letter she wrote. She says she had to work late tonight because the store had to do an O.P.A. inventory. “If there were no war, there would be no O.P.A. ceilings and I wouldn’t have had to work late tonight.” What is/was the O.P.A.?
She goes on to say that if there’d been no war, she would probably never have met Dart, so this nasty business has some compensation because she can’t imagine her life if they’d never met.
She bought some egg coloring today and thought about sending a dyed egg to Dart. Then she thought a rotten egg wouldn’t sit too well in a constantly rolling and pitching stomach, so she must content herself with thinking about him as she colors the eggs, and imagine doing the job with him someday.
Greenwich is gradually looking like Spring has sprung. The trees have a slight veil of bright green around their edges and she’s quite enjoying her case of Spring fever. She hopes it’s true that ‘in the Spring a young man’s fancy turns to what the girls have been thinking about all winter.'”
While she was filling in for the elevator operator today she tried to imagine what she would do if the door opened to reveal Dart standing there. She thinks if she didn’t faint dead away, she’d grab him inside, close the door and forget the buzzer until she’d had her fill of looking at him and pinching herself. “Golly, my heart skips a beat just thinking about it. If I didn’t have my day dreams, my days would never end. I have to live on them until the real thing comes along.”
She has bestowed upon him the title of “The Boy I’d Most like to See Every Time I Open My Eyes.” But now, she must close her eyes in sleep.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like to love someone as much as I love you – can you?” Yes, Dottie, I think he can.
