March 12, 1942

Dear Folks

Did you get the cards which I sent to you from Canada?  I wrote them in a drugstore in Windsor & left them for the druggist to mail.  Nearly everything costs more in Canada than it costs here but our money is worth more than theirs.  If we spend a Canadian dime here we must give a penny also.  If we change a dollar into their money we get one dollar & ten cents.  I tried to find a few souvenirs for all of you but they didn’t have a very large variety from which to choose so will try to find something for the men some other time.  Mom, I am sending you a handkerchief which I bought in Windsor, Canada, also one to Frances & to Josephine.

I received your letter at noon today & was glad to hear from you.  How are the baby chicks?  Hope you have good luck with them.  If the weather continues as warm as it is now it will soon be time to plant garden.  We saw garden seeds in the store windows in Windsor the other day.  It rains quite a lot up here but is very nice at the present time.

A friend & I went into Detroit last night & went to a stage show put on by the navy.  It lasted about an hour & a half & was good enough that they made recordings of some of the singing.  It was better than most of the programs we have here.  We hitch-hiked & it didn’t take very long.  The people around here are very good about giving us rides.  A lot of the Ford workers drive to & from work from Detroit.  We can ride the buses & street cars free but it is faster to catch rides & it is about two miles to the bus or car lines.  A liberty party of three hundred or so can leave the station & in twenty minutes none of them will be walking.  There isn’t any danger for the drivers because a sailor wouldn’t dare rob or hurt them & we aren’t in danger because we always travel in pairs.  Sunday night by the time we reached the station, eight sailors were in the car in which I was riding.  The man who picked us up made a special trip just to bring us to the station.  That’s the kind of people that live around here.

Greenfield village is closed to visitors this winter so we didn’t get to visit it.  If Ford Museum is open I want to go visit it sometime.

I have just returned from getting another haircut.  That is a regular occurrence every two weeks.  Also I got my blanket back from the cleaners.  I had it dry-cleaned because they are wool & are so big they are hard to handle in a bucket.  However I think I shall try to wash it next time.  Wish we had a washing machine.  If it were allowed, we could all chip in & buy one but our navy regulations wouldn’t allow that.  I have some washing to do yet this evening.

This morning after most of the boys had gone to school, a call came for a working party.  All of us in this room that were left had to go.  We unloaded part of a carload of canned goods & flour.  I was glad I didn’t get on the working detail the other day when they had to unload 40 tons of sugar.  That’s a lot of sugar.  They have quite a number of hundred pound sacks of rice & beans.  I took nine cases of spinach in for dinner.  Each case weighed about forty pounds.  I don’t know whether they used all of it or not.  The cooks had pork shops on the stove & it kept them busy turning those chops.  They were sure good.  Paul it was too bad about your dinner pail.  You might have gone hungry.  Write again sometime.