Spitball Army

March 21, 1942
Sat night 2030

How-do-you-do-my Lover:

I had a 3 page letter written to you last night, but after I read it over, I just felt it wasn’t worth sending, so just didn’t, and now I’ll try again.

How is everything going?  I haven’t heard from you for a couple of weeks now and it seems like such a long, long time.  Today was the day I was really supposed to get your mail, so I am concerned.  Please keep writing often, won’t you Hon?  I’m desperately in love with you and need you, of course, & miss you so.  Our country needs you too, though, & I can wait, because it’s going to be so wonderful to have you back again, to be with me forever.  You’re so much to wait for, so worth while, with your lovable ways & winning personality.  That smile of yours sure made me “fall” hard, & I found out too, what a perfect husband you make, not only in the one month we were together, but ever since in your letter writing.  You’ve been wonderfully faithful & expressed your love every single time by beginning & ending “I love you” – & I’ll never, never see or hear those 3 words too much.

Winnifred & I did see the ice show on Thursday.  It was splendid, but golly, it sure didn’t seem right to be sitting there without you next to me.  The costumes were even more beautiful than last year’s, & they had many new lovely settings.  The only big disappointment was the fact that Ev. Chandler was ill with a strept throat & not able, of course, to skate.  She really has the other girls in the show beat with her spectacular skating.

The comedians were as funny as usual.  Heinie Brock started out by selling peanuts in the audience & no one recognized him.  He was yelling so, that people tried to quiet him so they could enjoy the 3 sophisticated ladies skating.  Finally after a lot of commotion, he dropped his baskets of peanuts & sailed down on the ice.  Boy, everyone laughed.  He was dressed with big baggy trouzers & a funny looking shirt.  He went thru some of the same tricks as he did last year.

I have my rings back now from the jeweler, sparkling more than ever, & the wedding ring has our initials on it too, so that makes it specifically yours and mine.

I’m just a plain housekeeper again now, as was laid off yesterday.  It really doesn’t matter one way or the other as long as I’m kept busy.  It’s nice to have the change of working out part of the time, & then catching up on the housework the rest of the time.  It’s housecleaning season now too, so that means that blankets, curtains, rugs will have to be washed or cleaned & the whole house gone through.  It seems that Dad does intend to stay here this summer.  He’s talking of buying a home, just a small one, because says that he could soon own one with the rent he has to pay here.  Guess real estate is about the best investment there is now.  He thinks it would be ideal if you and I could buy a house & then he rent from us until you get back.  He says he’d rather be paying rent to me than a stranger.  I don’t feel that would be exactly the wise thing for us to do, however.  Of course, if inflation should come, it would be better to have our money invested in something like that; but then if we knew exactly where we would eventually be settled, it would be different.

Audrey is out with Don tonight & Dad is busy reading the paper.  Harvey is still in New Jersey.  Jim has to be re-classified.

I didn’t accomplish much today, though did bake a blueberry pie & got my groceries for the week-end.  It seemed I was busy answering the door all day.  First the egg man came, then the butter man.  Some little girls came to sell me some camp fire doughnuts; a woman who preached a little religious sermon to me for about ½ hr., before she told me she wanted to sell me some magazine subscriptions, was also here; then the ass’t pastor of the Methodist Church stayed for 2 hours – & so the day went.

Anyway – do you know why Hitler changes his socks three times a day?  He smells de-feat.  Or did you already guess it?

Sweetheart, I love you & you’re the one that makes me feel happy and keeps me singing when the days otherwise would seem long and dreary.  I’m so glad we belong to each other & that I have you to wait and live for and live with in the future.

Love, Bev

[Note: This letter was written eight days before the first wedding anniversary of Bev and Ande, from their home on So. Xerxes in Minneapolis.  Within a month they would be residing in Mission Beach, California, near the Navy base in San Diego.  Sometime between the summer of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, when Ande leaves the country for the war effort, Bev moves back to So. Xerxes.]