December 1940

Iowa City
Thursday morning

Dear mother:

 I thought I would begin my letter now as I have 15 minutes before I will leave for my classes and I don’t believe it would be worthwhile to start studying something in such a short time. Besides I have about ½ of them already prepared for Friday.

The laundry came Friday evening (or was it Friday noon?), somewhat sooner than I expected it to come. Please accept my usual thanks for washing up my clothes and for sending me some things to eat. I have already begun to plan my eating so that everything will be finished up Thursday morning. If I leave with Fridell’s, as I will if Mr. Fridell comes down, I won’t be leaving until after dinner. However, if he does not come down, my plans might be slightly different. This morning, I am going to look up the bus depot and if possible, open up a line of escape in that direction. According to the telephone book, there are bus lines to Des Moines which would maybe put be aboard the M & St L. I wonder what time it leaves Des Moines? I will write more about this later in the letter after I have discovered the particulars. You can’t imagine how I am anticipating coming home. I received a letter from Vivian just the other day and I guess, from the sound of her letter, that she will also be happy to come home once more.

Last Friday [interruption: there goes “Jingle Bells” on the Music Shop. So Xmas-y sounding. It rouses that old anticipatory feeling in me] night, I went with two other boys to Cedar Rapids and saw a show. The boys were some that I knew at F.D.J.C and one of them had an old Chevrolet down here. They asked me to go along and I thought I might as well as I was pretty well caught up on my studying. I had a fairly good time but it could have been better. The show, “The Mark ofZorro” was pretty good because it had my movie hero, Basil Rathbone in it.

Well, here I am again and this time I guess I’ll finish the letter. I went to the bus depot and found out that there is a bus leaving at noon Thursday which would bring me to Des Moines at 3:30. Then there is a bus going to Ft. Dodge but it goes around by Ft. Dodge so if I went that way you would have to come & get me. I don’t know when the M & St L leaves Des Moines and the agent at the bus depot didn’t know, so I don’t think I’d risk running around down there where I don’t know my way around and wind up by losing both train and bus. If you could find out please drop a line or card and let me know. Of course, I’ll follow this plan only if Mr. Fridell does not come. if I do have to go home by bus, I’ll have to write another check, and if I don’t, I still might write one for $2 or so. I have bought several Xmas presents but still have about ½ or 2/3 left to buy. I’ll try to get that done next Saturday.

It has snowed some here this morning. When I left for school it was just starting. When I returned it was snowing quite hard but it has entirely stopped now. I, too, hope the weather remains nice so I can get home with Fridell’s. Weekly analysis of how I am getting along in becoming an engineer. (1) Drawing head the list this week. In the last test wqe had I got 87% which was the best grade in the class by 1%. I felt pretty good after that test.

(2) German — we have started a systematic review of all that we have covered so far. Yesterday we had a vocabulary test which was quite easy. I think for about 2 weeks I will have practically no studying to do in German since the review will be easy. I think if I study a little bit on oral German I can pull an A in this course.

(3) Mechanics of Solids — things are fairly tame. We have started the last section of the book, i.e., kinetics. As a sort of Xmas present the instructor is giving a test the very last class on Thurs. morning. If it wasn’t for that class I could get started for Des Moines at 8:14. I hope I do as well in this test as I did in the last one.

(4) Chem Industries — SoSo as usual — this weekend I am going to bring my notebook up to date since it is due the last class before Xmas vacation.

(5) Indus Stoichiometry — We have had 2 more quizzes. In both I made a small mistake. I should get 9 in both or 9 in one and 10 in the other since my error in the last was not more than about 2% or so. Today I have an experiment to do in this green-eyed-dragon-course. I already have one to write up and that will make two which I will try to finish during Xmas vacation some time (Oh happy thought! and that does go for the writing up either!)

I seem to be writing at an angle on this page so I will use this line to straighten things out.

I believe I’ll abbreviate this letter and call it enough. In just one week I’ll be home and then I can tell you about everything better than writing about it.

With love,

Carl

This is the last letter 

home before Xmas

Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!

(1) Week from today I

should be home at some 

time or other. 

P.S. Who did Audrey A get married to? A foolish question to ask since I’ll find out soon enough anyway I guess.

P.S. I have had a little (very little) cold lately but with that exception none all winter.

P.S. The last roll was a little tough but that was all.

P.S. I just heard the Iowa weather forecast — a cold wave. That should stop this snow and make weather conditions more settled.

P.S. auf Wiederschreiben: meaning, I’ll be writing again to you but not till after Xmas.