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#157 9 mos. old day before yesterday! Navy #3247 (Mil. Govt) FPO San Francisco Monday 3/5 8:15 pm My dearest darling: Having read two or three articles in the little Father's Supplement to Parents’ Magazine when it arrived, I've just picked it up and finished reading it cover to cover. Am returning it to you in another envelope. Backwards in review (no mail today for the first time in a week or ten days) - 174: Glad you enjoyed getting the little money order, sweetie. Tried again tentatively this afternoon, got up to two dollars after being down one, came out even. It's never with playing unless lightly, just for fun, with winnings incidental. “Looking forward to a real long answer soon” - or I write this (in which I hope to catch up in brief with are the letters I haven't answered) it's just about time for a long letter to arrive. I wish it were cold and windy here for a change. The weather continues to be delightful (except for the extreme amount of dust at the school where there is a large grassless playground - on some days we have to blow the dust [pg 2] off our desks 5 or 6 times) and makes me want to share it with you. The new snapshot album sounds good - so glad you could get one the same size. I’d thought it might be difficult. I love being a part of your talks with Wendy. Speaking of flowers (and looking at your drawing), I may not have learned much about them out here as far as names and identification are concerned, but I should be able to recognize a number of them when I get back. Give my best to Dana, will you? 173: When you say holding your own to the tune of 6-2, do you mean that you won? And what do you mean by “not so bad for an old mummy like me…” I'll bet you’re in a lot better shape than I am as far as physical litheness is concerned. I don't exercise enough really to be in trim, but gradually acquiring tanned arms and legs is a partial psychological substitute and in general I'm too busy to think about my health, which together with my appetite continues excellent. I eat more candy than at home (tho that may stop after I go to the dentist day after tomorrow) [pg 3] and have developed just the merest suggestion of a tummy. But it doesn't fit me and I promise not to come home with it - or at least not to have it long after. My only complaint is that I'm a little short on sleep sometimes, *page 4, but have learned to adjust to it well enough (thinking of it as perhaps the supreme luxury that I would like to indulge for awhile when I get home, after we've settled down from initial delights to just a comfortable daily existence punctuated by rather than characterized by excitements). I'll begin a note to Alice when she writes and gives me her address, leaving soon for a brief word from you (but in such a way as not to require it) and letting you enclose the picture. Did I thank you for the Easter Egg dye? I'm afraid I'll have a hard time getting ahold of any eggs, but it's a pleasant reminder. No, I don't know from Steve N.'s address where he is but will likely enough find out in time. 10 pm What a helluva trick to pull a practice air raid [pg 4] on one of my few free nights! I've just come back from leaping ditches and (relying on my sixth sense) avoiding newly blasted 14-feet-deep benjos in the practically pitch dark. The heavy helmet felt funny after so long without wearing it - makes your head feel wobbly until your neck muscles get adjusted to the added weight (which they quickly do); as for the cartridge belt with 45, knife, cartridge case and canteen, they were rather floppy when I first wore them but I unconsciously swing them the right way when I jump a ditch now. 172: Tell Bobbie thank you for me for entertaining Wendy so well - and Wendy thank you for being so just right and for giving you so many delightful details to write me. 171: Thank you for telling me about [Grajdanzev's?] book on Korea (I've read a number of his articles) - yes, I'll probably order it in the next month or so. In case I don't get to write Miss Niles *(page 3) Just came across “You not worried about losing sleep! Wonderful!!” Don’t worry, darling, will do plenty of plain and fancy lying awake nights when I get back. [pg 5] (I will try, and do appreciate her interest), you might let her read a copy of my long-overdue, next typed letter. I shall send you an extra copy for the CASA boys and you can give it to her first. You didn't tell me whether or not Wendy has to eat spinach…. Erase penciling (article on Korea, not yet arrived) - I will Sweetie, always reserving the right to make reasonable exceptions. If you think it's worth the effort, you might go through Ehrenburg with a soft gum eraser when it arrives. It's a good book for pickup reading by other people, and is rather an imposition on them to have it underlined so - textbooks - that is, purely factual or expository material - and particularly personal references are, as I remarked before, something different. Three books are wrapped ready for mailing tomorrow, two more will follow in a few days. You speak of birds (and I'm very fond of [?] birds) - there are not many varieties here, though I've seen a few pretty ones: a small pigeon or dove, and (at just a brief glimpse) some bright red bird. Department of answering coincidences: just as I came to the paragraph in which you spoke [pg 6] of “Forever [?]” - as (by hearsay) “a rat race from one bed to another, - this will slay you - two little mice, one chasing the other, came tearing out from under van Koughnut's bed, which I face where I now sit, and (practically skidding around a wide circle) zipped under mine. It was the first and only time I've seen two of them in here at once. Since I began that paragraph, I've just heard rustlings in the wastebasket behind and to the left of me - he was buried under a pile of paper. A little movement on my part and he scurried; now he's back again. I hope this isn't distasteful to you - I find it very amusing and, since we are to move soon and they will probably be caught and killed when the tent's taken down. I've no particular desire to exterminate a couple of little creatures which provide me with such frequent entertainment [?] says - I don't know whether to believe him or not, but he swears it's true - that he found one of them curled up asleep right in the center of [pg 7] my bed when he came in this afternoon. (In case it should concern you, there are no diseases which they carry hereabouts, the health of the community is good. Nevertheless I am not anxious to make fondling pets of them, and when one ran along a tent boarding 6 inches from my nose as I lay in bed the other night I felt just a little uncomfortable). Speaking of pets, there are a couple of white goats of a [?] small even when full grown which make the Military Camp their habitat. They are quite friendly - well, a little shy, but easily cooked - and wander about at will. A bunch of the boys are whopping it up in a nearby tent, led by Henry graham (Welfare Officer, the [?] worker) and apparently inspired by the movie they saw tonight - “Irish Eyes are Smiling” said to be a good picture and full of pleasantly sentimental music. A few nights ago on a similar occasion I joined them and had a helluva good time singing uninhibitedly and stamping the floor, [pg 8] meanwhile drinking grapefruit juice and whiskey. Once again now they’re singing the theme song of the other evening, ending up with Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay - Boom being a terrific stamping of the floor which makes the whole tent vibrate so that somebody has to make a dash for and support the bookcase before each boom. Well, Sweetie, it's two minutes to eleven and the Staff Duty Officer will be around any time now ordering lights out I love you, darling Warren Went to the party referred to in the enclosed invitation at 1 pm today - the women (in a separate room of the same building, with lots of little children) sang songs the general purport of which was a comparison between their growing babies and the blooming of a flower - meanwhile the men, gathered separately, indulged in a Gochiso similar to that provide at weddings. I had 2 glasses of local sake and was sleepy all afternoon W.
