March 24, 1946

March 24, 1946

1046 W 24th St

San Pedro, Calif.

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

I feel sort of lazy tonite but I guess I’ll write a few lines home before I go to bed. There is no reason to feel lazy but I feel that way nonetheless. Perhaps ambitionless would be a more correct term to use.

Today has been sort of cloudy. This morning on the way down to church I almost thought I had been foolish in not taking a raincoat along because it looked so much like rain. However, it cleared up to a sort of undecided halfway state later on and remained that way. Yesterday was clearer but sort of cool and not very nice either. Most of the day I felt sort of punk so I went to bed early.

Mrs. Eldridge and her daughter were gone over the weekend to Los Angeles to visit some relatives. They left Saturday morning and got back this afternoon. Gloria’s (that’s the daughter’s name) poison oak is almost gone now. What finally happened was that she got scabs all over her arms and ankles and the doctor scraped them off because they were beginning to be infected, and then the new skin healed quite rapidly. I guess it sort of hurt tho when he did it. She’ll have a hard time making up all the school she’s missed.

I was planning to go to church tonite despite my aversion for the pastor but I got to talking to Mrs. Eldridge and ended up by not going. Perhaps listening to her is preferable to listening to him, but not very much so I’m afraid. Sometimes I wonder how her husband stood it; perhaps he died in self-defense. I played on the piano for awhile afterward, but not with very much enthusiasm or satisfaction, then wrote this letter. I bought a piano piece yesterday when I was downtown in the afternoon. It was a popular piece — “Begin the Beguine” by Cole Porter. I am afraid that I picked out too hard an arrangement tho. It has too many triplet in the most awkward places in it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be too hard. Probably I should have got the other arrangement they had, but it probably wouldn’t sound as pretty.

This is sort of a punk letter but I’ll try to make up for it some other time.

With love

C.P.