Well, I’ll quit for awhile and continue writing after mail call. Maybe your package gets here today; I know your letter will!
It’s afternoon now. I just put in a phone call for you, but don’t expect to get you till later in the evening. I am waiting for Johnny to get here; we are going to play some chess; I’ll probably get beaten again. It’s awfully nice outside; warm and sunny; I only hope that we are going to have a day like this two weeks from now. Lots of boys have their wives here at the Service Club today; I wished I did too. I’ll ask Uncle Sam to give me a raise; then, I’ll have you come down here every Sunday.
Did you get to listen to Roosevelt’s speech last night? I didn’t, but I read the text of it in this morning’s paper. After his last two mediocre outlets, I think he was up to par again; this one was well organized, not too much campaigning, but yet attacking each one of Dewey’s points. It was clever of him to talk before the Foreign Policy Association, for this way no one expected him to cover any domestic issues.
It’s getting toward eight now, and I am finishing this letter while Johnnie is on the main floor, dancing. I guess he thinks I am silly for not dancing, but I wouldn’t want you to go to a U.S.O. dance, and also I would get no enjoyment out of dancing when you aren’t here.
Your voice still clings in my ear from the phone call, darling. I guess it doesn’t matter what we talk about as long as we can hear each other. Einstein’s theory of relativity is true: three minutes of calesthenics are longer then three minutes of talking to you! Maybe I shouldn’t call you so often, for it makes me so much more lonesome for you.
As usually, I was right: Johnnie did beat me in the chess games. After I finally got your call through, we ate dinner in the Cafeteria, a pretty good dinner at that. The meal was spoiled a little when one of the fellows came up to sit by us and entertained (?) us by a detailed account of how the G.I. saltpeter affected him and how he found out about it last night. We finally got rid of him, though, and continued our subject of conversation second in frequency: Mathematics. (The one first in frequency starts with the same two letters.)
I am having a little problem at hand: one of the boys in our company, a kid of maybe nineteen years of age, found out where I was born and has developed a clear interest in that place and conditions there. His interest is sincere and probably very laudable, but the guy turns into being a darn nuisance. He sticks around me at every possible and impossible opportunity and assaults me with a miraculous barrage of more or less silly questions. I have used all ways I could think of to show him his undesiredness in a subtle way but no, he won’t catch. After ignoring him, giving him silly answers, and answering in a way which his 60-IQ mind won’t grasp didn’t work, I am afraid I shall have to come out and tell him that he is a (-../.-/--/-.) nuisance. (Note – the morse code in the parenthesis says DAMN)
As often before, Johnny and I have indulged in postwar projects. If we stay here, we get a 200-dollar discharge pay; after having been overseas, it will be $300. (I hope I get 200.) It might be a good idea to get wounded in heroic action, which would give us the Purple Heart plus $75 as a monthly pension. With that as a start, we decided to go to South America, buy, borrow, or steal a mansion and live there as princes for two years. After getting tired of being Royal Highnesses, we return to the States, use the money we have saved (don’t ask: saved from what?) to buy a place in California. Johnny will enter photography while I shall be teaching in college. After our first millions have been made by intelligent land and oil speculations, we shall engage in world-wide pleasure travelling. Returning from this, we will write a book each per country visited, (as you know, residence of one week entitles us to and gives us sufficient background for being completely qualified and informed about social, linguistic, commercial, educational, religious, political, geological, and culinary problem) and then retire for the rest of our lives. Agreed?
Johnny urges me to quit so we can go to the show.
This is Monday morning. The show lasted till eleven o’clock and, in order to make bed check, I had to hurry home and couldn’t finish this.
Honey, we can stay together at the Guest House here as long as I have a pass. Only one thing wrong with that place: they have army beds. We’ll manage, though.
Today, I’m going to get your package, I hope. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t send my underwear yet. On the contrary, for that I’m going to get another package!
This morning, some of us start going to specialist schools. Since neither radio repair nor radar has been called yet, I do not fall under that category. Three of us who don’t go will probably have drill instead. There is some talk that they are going to cut our basic to five weeks. That won’t be bad: one week earlier through basic means a week earlier overseas, which means that the war will end a week earlier, for, naturally, they can’t win the war without me.
How is Skunkie? Has he ever inquired about me? I agree that I owe him a letter, but he hasn’t thanked us yet for sleeping (?) with him in my last night as bachelor, so I am insulted.
Bibi, darling, and write me a long letter.
Love,
Tom
