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January 29, 1946
Dear Mother and Daddy,
I received your letter today, and since I knew what was in it already, I neglected to open it for a few hours, just to detain the ordeal a little. Finally I took a quick look at it, and then hastily filed it with my other letters. I know it deserved a second reading quite definitely, but I hope you won't mind too much if it didn't get it.
When I stopped yesterday, I had gotten up to Saturday of the week-end before last. By that time the best part of the week-end had already passed. I played tennis with Sally Teachout during the afternoon, and I beat her two sets. My tennis game has much improved since I started taking a class in it again. That night I went to the basketball game with Art. We played Cal. and lost to her. It was very discouraging because the night before we had lost to Cal. by only one point, and that night we lost by about ten. After the game we went to the Officer's Club at Moffat Field. We went with an Ainsley Bell and his date whom I didn't know. But after we got out there, there were millions of people that I knew. Virginia Walker and Sally Teachout were their with dates. The boy that Virginia was with was a boy who was a very good friend of Art's. His name is Ralph Ashton and is from some little place out in the Utah Desert called Vernal. You would just die if you could hear those two boys talk. Ralph kept telling me that the first time he saw Art at Encina (the Freshman boy's dormitory) that he was wearing a pair of shaps and swinging a rope, and that for the first whole quarter he was there, he would always see Art spanking the side of a car because he couldn't get used to riding in a car instead of on a horse. The tales Art told Virginia were almost as good, but I can't remember them so well, except that the first
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time that Art saw Ralph, Ralph was coming down the hall leading four sheep. Of course I believed half of the stuff that they told me, which only made them go on and on.
On Sunday I spent most of the time studying for my Constitutional Law test. I'm sure I read each of thirteen cases over a hundred times. I had a small date with Art that night and Virginia had a date with Ralph; so we asked them both over to dinner. Boys always come over to dinner on Sunday night; we have a buffet dinner and you eat all over the living room. Dinner started a little early; so everyone had started when the boys arrived, and of course they were in ties and suits and all the other boys only had on sweaters; so I'm afraid they felt slightly conspicious. Besides Mrs. Reynolds absolutely beamed at Art. Her son is married to Art's cousin, and so she definitely approves of him, and is always wanting to know when I am going out with him and if I have a good time. We sat them down in a corner, and listened to a thousand more of their little tales. I made the mistake of believing a few more than Virginia did; so now they expect me to believe anything that they happen to want to tell me. Later on Judy Peake and Ned Gates joined our little party, and we had quite a gay but short evening of it.
On Monday I began my big drive for the week from which I didn't emerge until the following Friday night. I got the Law test that I took back today, and I was certainly pleasantly surprised. It wasn't really very good, as compared with the rest of the class, but I felt that I had done well for me. But I at least knew as much as the majority of the rest of the class, and almost everyone in there has had a lot more experience with things like that. I spent the rest of the week reading a book about John C. Calhoun, and writing a mamouth book report about it which was very discouraging, because you have to make it long and put a lot of time on it, but after you do all that, you just get
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marked satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
The only other things of interest that happened last week, were the Freshman that we had over and another Delt that came over to see me. You could have knocked me over, I was so surprised. He took me out for an hour one night to get something to eat - I told him that an hour was all the longer I could stay out. And then he asked me out for last week-end but I couldn't go. His name is Bob Arthur and graduated from Cal. Tech. with Dick Huntsburger. He is now working for a steel company at Danville. Quite a few other boys have asked me out this quarter, but I certainly never thought another Delt would.
I have to go to my gym class now - so I'll mail this on my way and write another small chapter tomorrow about last week-end.
Love to all,
Mary
