Letter or Postcard – Letter
Sender – Ralph Peterson
Recipient – Phyllis Peterson
Postmark Place – St. Petersburg, Florida
Postmark Date – 25 March 1943
Letter Date – 24 March 1943
Text:
My dearest wife and Bonny girl,
Here I am back at my desk writing to you again. It is kind of late as I am writing you. Right now it is a quarter to ten. I just came in about a half an hour ago. I took some laundry out to get washed and got a haircut at the same time. I started to do my own wash but it got piled way up on me. When I got my haircut another kid went along with me. We both were going to get our hair all chopped off, but when I seen him I backed out and only got mine clipped. I am glad I did because this other guy looks kind of funny. Another bunch of our squadron was shipped out today, but there is still a lot of them here. Out of 200 there still is 150. None of the guys from Waushara County have gone yet, but I lost one hell of a good friend from Michigan. He was quite a bit older than I was. That he was one guy I really liked. When I didn’t feel so good or else was blue, I could sit down and talk to him and feel better. That’s the hell of it here. You meet somebody you like and by the time you get to know them… The way Bill Pick’s letters sound that he gets from home is that Thelma is mad at him. She must like him because when he wrote and told her that he was getting letters from a girl, she wrote back and said she suppose that he loved this other girl more than she did him. It don’t make a bit of difference to me, but you should see Bill’s face when he gets these letters. The way she writes him a person would think she was married to Bill instead of Barney. I guess that is enough of this kind of stuff, so I will try to write about something else. I didn’t get any letter from you today honey but I am hoping for one tomorrow. I suppose by this time you are back home with our little Bonny. Every time you write I want you to tell me everything she does. I hope you have everything you need at home. How does your Dad and Mom like the baby? Have you heard from Marian yet? I would like to get their address so I could write to them. This is all for now as it is just about eleven, so will close with loads of love to my dearest wife and Bonny baby from Ralph.
Notes: The whole, “I’ll shave my head if you shave your head” story made me laugh. When I was in high school thirty years later several of my friends and I did the same thing, and I did the same thing as Dad, chickening out at the last second and just getting a buzz cut. I guess the whole acorn and oak thing. Billy Pick, who Dad has mentioned frequently in these letters, was probably the brother of Bernard (Barney) Pick, husband of my Mom’s first cousin Thelma Shruck.