August 29, 1942

C.P.S #23
Coshocton, Ohio
Aug. 29, 1942

Dear folkses,

It hasn’t been long since I wrote to you but I thought of a lot I forgot. Some things I wanted you to send me. I’ll bet I keep you sending me stuff for the duration. You’ll run out of things I forgot tho. Well, you see, I’m working in the kitchen washing stuff and we scrub the floor every day and the little room where we wash the pans and dishes we wash down after each meal so my shoes are wet all the time. I though if you could send me my old zipper overshoes I could get a lot of good out of them and save my shoes too. So if you can find a box and send them as soon as you can I’ll appreciate it a lot.

The other things I forgot is about the money it costs me. I guess it is supposed to go through Ella B. so Papa can just give her a check each month and have her send it in my name and then the cirtificate can be made out to me. I understand it is to be given just like any other contribution to C.P.S. I sent Ella the 35 that I brought with me and maybe she told you all about it.

Say father, that was sure a nice long letter you wrote me I let Ab read some of that about Chick and Claud. He got a big kick out of it. You asked about the examination. We had one allright but it wasn’t quite as good as the Jeff Drs. gave and that isn’t much. We were examined the next afternoon after we got here and got our typhoid shots and small pox vaccination which I didn’t need. The first typhoid shot made me real sick for a couple of hours but the rest just made me a little tired and gave me a stiff arm. Some of the fellows said that they had very good examinations before they left home. A couple of them were “X”-rayed several times in hopes that the bord wouldn’t have to send them.

I’m learning. I washed out my wash pants and that light jacket and pressed my pants myself. One of the fellows that work in the laundry pressed the jacket, we get one shirt each week ironed for us and I had worn a “T” shirt that didn’t need to be ironed so the owed me an ironing. The washing machine is sort of hard on good things so they say that’s why I washed them out by hand.

I will probably have several P.s.s so I’ll leave this letter open till Mon. when I send it.

They changed the address to Coshocton cause they have to go there every day any way for something or to buy groceries, so we are going to get our mail there now. All Fresno mall goes through Coshocton anyway so they will probably stop all C.P.S. mail anyway even if it is addressed Fresno.

Yours
Bernard

P.S. Sun, 4:00 P.M.

I’d like to tell you a little about the recreational program they had last night. They always have something on Sat. night. They had a indoor track meet, that’s what they called it. All games to represent different events in the track meet, on was the “furlong race” We had 8 teams and each team entered 2 people. Then they measured the combined length of the two contestants hair, get it? No one know what it was till they started to measure and the team that won had entered two girls that happened by be visiting their boyfriends or husdbands. On weekends there are always a half a dozen or so girls visiting. There were about 100 people in on the games most of them boys of course, can you imagine 80 or 90 boys ranging in age from 22 to over 30 really enjoying playing games like that? The big feature of the evening was the auction. There had been a lot of clothes accumulating at the laundery that had no mark on them so they auctioned them off. Most of them sold from 10 to 40 cents, and some of them good too. There were a couple of pairs of girl’s slacks and a pair of silk stockings, no one knew how they got there. Then we went to the dinning room and had grahm crackers and milk and all-day suckers too. After that some of the fellows got to singing and about 50, I’d say, stayed till 11:30 I sure enjoyed the singing even tho I didn’t know a lot of the songs. That many boys singing is something. There was something wonderful about the way they sang together last night, men that had been educated to teach in colleges and men who had only a high school education who were simple farmers, from as far west as Kansas and as far east as New York City and New Jersey. They sang and were happy, it must be because thy believed in God.