6/12/39 #1
Honey:
This is going to be short for I have about three minutes before it is time to go to work.
Spent most of yesterday in swimming. I got a gorgeous tan—which hasn’t blistered—yet.
Went to “Calling Doctor Kildare” yesterday evening. It is also good, but not worth any particular effort to see.
Heard from JH and all is well—social duties preventing him from writing. Imagine that!
How was the trip?
Time to go, sweetheart, so gumbye.
Cy
6/12/39 #2
Darling:
All week-end I felt that you were a little closer to me. Maybe I’m crazy.
You should have had letters on Wednesday and Thursday, but I guess the P.O. slipped as usual. In any case, you should have found last week’s letter at home tonight and the one I wrote this morning at the office on Tuesday.
I’m glad your trip was a success. My week-end was pleasant, but nothing to brag about. I walked about twenty miles on Saturday and swam for about three hours on Sunday. The airport pool is only a couple of miles and makes a nice walk. If I keep it up, you’ll have a tan on me to be proud of. Everyone says I look healthy for a change. Feel better too.
Toots, this is going to sound funny. You can take it, Tsk, tsk! Or leave it, and in any case, please don’t be angry. I’ve had a couple of dates this past week. Now, take a deep breath and read the rest of it. She is most uninterested in me for, among other things, she is the one who helped me pick out the frame for your picture and is well convinced that I have certain strong feelings towards one little girl out west. I have a hunch that you will like her when you meet her, for she seems to be our kind of people. The situation is thus. She is going camping with the boyfriend and family the latter part of the summer, and she can’t swim. There is a fair chance that this will make a very bad impression. Point two, I want to teach you how to swim without drowning you in the process. She (Helen Paetz is the name) knows this and volunteered to be the guinea pig! Unbeknownst to her, I have checked with a couple of boyfriends of hers (whom she doesn’t know I know) and find that she is unapproachable from any and all angles. She is about your size or smaller, dish-water blonde, and not very attractive. Now Toots, here’s the problem. It’s up to you. Neither her heart nor mine will be broken either way you decide it. It would keep me out of beer joints one night per week as she doesn’t imbibe. I don’t think there is much danger of her getting any silly ideas for she knows full well how much I love you. The purpose of the dates was to meet the family, see what kind of a neighborhood they lived in, and, in general, determine if they were the kind of friends I wanted to make for us.
Well, Darling, I feel like a rat for not telling you beforehand, but I felt that you would only worry if you had part of the story and not the entire story. It wouldn’t cost me anything, for I shall go swimming most of the nights in the week anyhow. It’s up to you. If you feel inclined to check further, you might write to her and tell her how to keep me in hand (haw haw). Well, Darling girl, I’ll take it or leave it as you say. I shan’t be hurt either way you decide, but for God’s sake, don’t get worried over it, for it isn’t that kind of a date. (P.S.—if you’ve had any, which you probably haven’t, just forget to mention it, hi).
I have to go out and give my boy scouts hell tonight. They were going hiking with me last Saturday and none of them showed up. I’m going to tell them that only the best men in the troop were out, and they all had a good time. This is true, for I hiked about 8 miles through the woods. Darling, there are some beautiful homes around here if we can only make enough to get one of them. They are within 15 minutes of Camden and 30 of Philly with the one way bus fares being respectively 5 cents and 15 cents.
You’re lucky you aren’t here, Darling, for I have some buttons to be moved on the riding breeches.
I received an invitation from Al for a supper next Sunday. I forgot that he was in the last throes of finishing up school (teaches English in high school). This is why I haven’t heard from him. He referred to the school closing as the “closing of the Bastille.” I think you will like him, and his mother is just like mine would have been had she had as much money the past twenty years as she had the previous twenty. His father is apparently dead and he has a little trouble with mother being afraid for her little boy. One example is that he postponed a trip to Europe this summer because she was afraid of the war scare.
Tell Bill* his article was excellent and I shall answer his letter when things quiet down a little.
Gee, I wish you were here to enjoy this swell weather and the pool with me. The water is as clean as the stuff you have to drink in Chicago. You can see the bottom of the pool in the deep end with no trouble at all.
Tell Chucky to write to me. I miss him more than I should.
Nana Brooks’ grandchildren, three McShane boys and Mary Lee (my little brunette sweetheart—5 yrs old) were here Sunday while I was away. They left full instructions that they would be back next Sunday and that I am to be here. When I answer the phone here, I always say “Brook’s residence, the butler speaking.” It started as a joke when I knew who was calling one evening, but has been continued and is now expected. The kids said I would get fired as the butler if I kept on taking my Sunday afternoons off without their permission. Darling, I can see where we’re going to have trouble restraining certain primitive impulses, if you get what I mean.
I take it that a “default” in law as in athletics, one team not showing up and the other automatically winning, I certainly hope that is the case. When that is over, precious, I shall be lost for a couple of days. I won’t ever have anything so important to worry over again.
Don’t “ask” about the ring. I haven’t figured it out myself. But I know that I shall feel much more secure and happy when you have it on. Lots of dumb people will not be so grabby around my darling when she has a ring on her correct finger. Maybe I should get you a set of brass knuckles to match! They might work where the ring didn’t, hi.
I’m sending JH a father’s day card, with a note to save it just in case. I’ll bet he’ll murder me for it. I trust that all of my past affairs have successfully blown over so that he can’t send it to me! Oh me!!
Someplace in the schedule I have to figure a trip to Aiken’s soon. I don’t want to lose track of them.
I suddenly realized why the job has been so tough. With one or two exceptions, every piece of work that I have done has been a new bit of engineering to me. In all of my experience, the things I have missed are exactly the ones I am getting now. This is good, for it is rounding out my experience, but an awful headache.
In addition to the card to JH, I am sending one to Dad. The verse I like a lot, so I shall quote it. Maybe he’ll show it to you.
Have you ever had a day, Dad, When everything went right,
When every little worry, Was hidden out of sight?
When Good Luck seemed to guide you, And bring the best your way?
Well, Dad, that’s how I’m hoping, You’ll find each future day.
And that applies to my little darling too and if I don’t run out and get some supper, you will find an invalid to nurse when you get here. So stay the same sweetest girl in all the world, and everything else to make you happy.
Your husband, Cy
P.S. Mrs. Huntoon owes me a letter from about a month back. She isn’t ill or anything is she?
P.S. XXXX all for you.
*Bill Conklin