Thursday, May 22, 1947

May 22, 1947

1317 Shattuck

Berkeley, Calif

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

This week has been sort of a cool & blustery one so far. Most of the time in the mornings and the evenings it has been cloudy, and not only with misty indecisive clouds but with determined & voluminous ones. In addition the wind from the sea has been quite strong & certainly nippy. At midday the sun is usually out and it is nice and warm but it doesn’t stay out after mid-afternoon except fitfully. This noon I went for a little walk instead of kibitzing at the bridge game and it was nice out then but this evening it is nice to be indoors, or so my mood is anyway.

This morning the battleship Iowa was anchored in the bay, having steamed in sometime in the previous 12 hours or so since it wasn’t there yesterday evening. A couple of landing barges and some launches were headed toward it as the train went over the bridge so I guess that a whole bunch of sailors were in line for a leave. Altho it is supposed to be a very large ship, & undoubtedly is, it didn’t seem too large as it lay anchored there. However I suppose it was a good ¼ to ½ mile away so the distance may have made it seem smaller. Also the fact that no objects were nearby for comparison of relative sizes made an evaluation of the true picture of its size difficult. This morning about ten-thirty there was supposed to be a parade of some sort in S.F., in connection I presume with its presence, along with several smaller ships, in pot but it didn’t amount to very much. However people seem to have taken advantage of the situation to toss paper out of the office building windows, much like at New Year’s, since there was quite a bit laying around on the streets & sidewalks.

Tuesday night as usual I went to the fractionation class. This time he really went on a spree, deriving equations for absorption towers etc., and I got tired after about 15 minutes of it, and wished I were home in bed. Wednesday night I had supper with Frank before coming home. Mostly, life has proceeded along in its usual routine. It is sort of funny sometimes — you get so you recognize lots of people by sight, since they ride the same train in the morning, or they are waiters or bus boys or something — but you don’t know their names or what they think. It is fun tho to speculate some times about them. Perhaps they do the same about you.

Thank you, father & mother, for your recent letters and advice. However, I feel that perhaps I erred in discussing the subject, particularly since you do not seem amenable to my stand. So, let’s not discuss it any more, shall we?

With love,
C.P.