Standley_Correspondence_1959-08

Aug. 1959

Dear Mother & Daddy,

We got to Jim's sister's in Santa Clara around 11:00 AM. After a rest & a shower, I took the test at 3:30. They were a pretty friendly group, & I did know the right things to say. I kind of wonder if they didn't come out [gargled?] though. This is no time to worry about that at least it's over.

Thank you for making us so welcome, for your

many gifts & many more [offers]. We really did en joy ourselves. I'm sorry that our vacation was so short & so complicated by that darn test. This whole next year, and our next vacation are going to be different as far as leisure time is con cerned. We will be down to see you on some of those three-day weekends, so keep that crib dusted off.

Yesterday, we spent a short afternoon & [?] in Virginia City. Pooh [threatened?] to [wreck?] the nicest restau rant in town. The food was fabulous, if we just could have turned Pooh off for a while. She had her first

drink at a bar, in the Bucket of Blood Saloon, where sitting on her own bar stool, she helped herself to a [?] slug of my rum & coke. Virginia City is fairly wide open, as it was perfectly all right for her to watch from her stroller as we lost a couple of bucks in the nickel slot machines. The town is full of tourist traps, but the restoration is in its infancy. Right next to the tourist [junk?], they're selling a lot of the beautiful china, silver, & glass appoint ments from the homes of the

millionaires, & the town's wealthiest madams. The prices aren't cheap, but they're not particularly high either. Evidently the tourists don't go too much for that stuff. The area is riddled with big & small diggings, & they [p?] tours through some of the biggest & most famous mines. We'd like to go back & poke around for a whole day, without Pooh. It's very much like Victor or Tonopah, only they haven't stripped all the goodies yet.

We found a nice motel, with fairly indestructable fixtures, a pool, & a kitchen ette. Pooh has a couch that folds out to a full-sized double bed. The arms of the couch & a couple of chairs

Pooh-proof it, she she's very comfortable. Our bed is in the other room, which makes nap-time convenient.

Those Playtex diapers sure are handy. It will be nice not to haul home a big smelly sack of used diapers. Thank you very much for finding them. They're superior to the other types I've seen.

Pooh is still clinging to Jim, as if he's the last-[p?] in the world. I suppose that my turn is just around the corner. They just finished testing the [?], & now