May 5, 1946

May 5, 1946

664 W 13th St

San Pedro, Calif

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

Sunday evening again. It’s a nice evening — cool with just a little breeze blowing and the sun rather low in the sky. Usually at this time of day the wind goes down and you can listen and hear things just as well as early in the morning. Strange isn’t [it], altho it’s capable of being easily explained on a physical basis, that a truly nice day starts end ends with calm. I suppose you could get started on a metaphysical discussion starting from that point but it is much simpler just to sit back and enjoy it. I wonder how often we don’t get simple physical pleasures like the feel of a breeze against your cheek, like taking off your shoes and putting on your slippers, like sitting down after a hard day and letting the weariness sort of leak out of you become all mixed up and complicated with ideas about what we should do and ought to do both for ourselves and or the world and people in general. We bludgeon ourselves into striving all our lives to do things, to be somebody, to influence others; it’s all wrong and we would to better to look at things a little more contemplatively. Perhaps I’m just getting balmy or something.

This Sunday was spent much like any other Sunday, so it’s banal to repeat what I did. It was breezy enuf this afternoon so I didn’t much feel like taking a walk. I went downtown to dinner about 2:30 and my hair (I washed it last nite as a diversion) blew all over as it does when recently shampooed. I don’t like (tho why should I) to have my hair blowing all over so I postponed taking the usual Sunday afternoon stroll till this evening. I’ll take this letter down to the post office and mail it.

Yesterday I went down to the beach and sat on the ocean side of the breakwater (there is quite an accumulation of sand about the rocks composing it) and read Time. It took more than [an] hour to do so, probably nearer two, and today my face is kind of sunburned altho perhaps it isn’t as much so as it seems to me.

Did you ever know that you could make pickled eggs? Last week a fellow out at work had one in his lunch. He said that his mother used to make them and that he likes them very much. All you do is hardboil the eggs, peel off the shell and soak them in a mixture of beet juice and vinegar, altho I don’t know how long. The white of the egg becomes a nice purple color, but the yolk is hardly effected, probably the diffusional process in it is much slower. Someday I am going to have to try to make some.

My work continues about as usual. Thank you for the clipping, dad. The Shell company also provides fellowships in various institutions, but I don’t know where they are. Usually when they grant them, there are no strings attached in any way so that it is entirely up to the schools to administer them.

This is all for now — I have run out of anything to write about, not of course saying that I have written anything anyway.

With love,

C.P.