December 8, 1945

Dec 8, 1945

1046 W 24th St

San Pedro, Calif

Dear Father, Mother and the rest of the folks at home,

Well, a week has passed since I returned to Calif and I can’t say that it has overwhelmed me with the desirability of living and working here. Sometimes it is work that makes it seem so depressing, sometimes it’s the weather, sometimes it’s the people, but always, or nearly always, it’s something. Depressing isn’t the right word — more it is enervating, deadening, dulling. Every time I get back here from a visit to the middle west it seems more colorless, the people seem more frenzied, dull, stupid, inane — the atmosphere more torpid, sluggish, the whole attitude toward life more out of focus.

I wrote a letter today to Glockler, department head of chemistry at Iowa asking him to keep me informed of any likely openings in the midwest for chemical engineers. I rather think I could pull a switch of jobs now without getting drafted. I also wrote to Arnold who is at the Univ of Calif at Berkeley asking him what he thought of the idea of going back to school If I don’t get the transfer to Wood River and no likely position shows up in or near Iowa, I think I shall plan definitely on returning to school next fall. The application for a research or teaching fellowship must be in my Feb 15 or March 1, so I would have to decide by that time anyway. Iowa State College seems like the best bet, but I shall pick out a couple of other prospects from the schools I wrote to last fall.

This morning I went to church as usual. As I had written before I wasn’t too favorably impressed with the new pastor, and the impression was strengthened this morning. He is pallid in every sense of the word. He looks anemic. His address is effeminate. He never looks you in the eye while preaching (altho the ceiling is minutely examined as well as the floor) and he must have almost flunked homiletics or whatever the science of preaching is called. His sermon this morning was a masterpiece of illogic and of vague, general statements. If I didn’t feel sorry for him in such a tough situation as San Pedro represents, I would be thoroly disgusted. What is the Augustana Seminary for anyway? Either their admission committee doesn’t function properly or they don’t teach their pupils much after they are admitted. How can you expect a church to progress when the caliber of the men admitted to the ministry is so low? Maybe I am wrong but I am afraid that the death knell for the San Pedro church was rung when he came.

Yesterday I did my Christmas shopping and got the packages wrapped to send off which I shall do tomorrow on the way home from work. I am sending Clarice’s, Verner’s and Ann Marie’s presents in the package home since I don’t have Verner’s address or Clarice’s Aurora address, so could you send them on to them? All except 3 of the stores are functioning again in San Pedro. Penney’s looks like it intends to reopen but one of the ten cent stores has moved out most of its stock so it may be closing. Therefore it wasn’t too hard to do the Christmas shopping, all of which I did in San Pedro.

This afternoon I went down to the Vesper music hour at the YMCA. It was pretty good but nothing to yell about. The best number on the program was a couple of songs by a soldier. He was tall, skinny, shy, bashful but he surely could sing.

This is all for now.

With love

C.P.