September 2, 1943

Elkton

9/2/43

Dear Folks,

Well, what do you know! I got a letter from youn’s today. Got to keep up so I’ll answer it right away. Say, I figured out how we can keep our corrospondence on schedual. If you write on Sun. or Mon. and send it air mail then I’ll get it on the thur or Fri. and I can answer it on the same day and mail it the next day by ordinary mail and you will get it early enough in the week to have plenty of time to answer it Sunday again. It seems to me that we used to get by with ordinary mail on both ends but once in a while we’d slide by a day or two and it would be more than a week between letters. Oh well, I guess we get along pretty well. One a week is pretty good for me. There is one guy our here from Indiana that writes to his mother every day. But most of that daily stuff is reserved for sweethearts and wives.

I have gotten moved in better and straightened out by now and feel like I am at home again after a vacation. I am still working on the dam that I told you about in Monday’s letter. I think we will have most of it done by Sat. night. I have sort of enjoyed it. Something that I can use my head on, you know. We used some new lumber on it about 450 board feet which we carried up about ¾ or a mile of trail. Its going to be quite a nice little dam when we get through.

I have found out more about the prune picking. I suspect that I’ll get in on some of it too. It seems that it isn’t just one farm but several and they are going to use from one to six or seven on a farm. The farmer comes and gets us and takes us back on his time which is an 8 ½ hour day. Now here’s what the fellows like about it. The farmers got together with the local man-power representitativ and decided to give us (and all free labor too) 2 cents a box bonus if we stayed with the farmer all through the season. Also we can work overtime if we want to and collect the money ourselves, we can keep the bonus money too. Well some one figured out that a fellow that worked all the overtime he could and made the bonus too could pile up about 50 dollars in a season which seems to be from 3 to 5 weeks. I’m kind of lazy and don’t care whether I work overtime or not but I recon that the temptation will get me and I will. The reason that I think that I will get in on it is that the work chairman figured that every one in camp here at Elkton would be needed to make the 25 men except the cooks and the drafting crew. So I come in that. Oh well it will be a new experience.

I am sending you a swell little book of devotional readings by E. Stanley Jones. I have had one all summer and it is great. So I got one for you. I hope you can find time to read it. You might read it in the morning with the SS lesson stuff. It wouldn’t take long and gives a different slant on devotions than the usual thing. The first week I didn’t like ti so well but then it got better so I ordered one for you. I don’t know what you will think of it but I wish you’d give it a trial. One of the fellows here orders books for us from a guy in Portland that gets them with a big reduction. I guess this guy is a pacifist and wants to help us out. I got about $5 worth and have read one of them and used this devotional book all summer. I’m sending this book tomorrow (I hope I get it done) so you will probably get it soon after this letter.

Well I have been telling all about myself. I might mention that I did get that 8 bucks and the two gas stamps. I though I did thank you for them in another letter but if I didn’t I will do it now, I’m sorry I didn’t mention if before.

I had a couple of chuckles about the John K. deal. I figured out one thing, Its good to have few people like that in the world so that we really appreciate the good people. Not that John isn’t good. Remember what Bob Judd said about him “For and old S__t John isn’t a bad guy.” You know about how those blanks were filled in. I hope you got the mess straightened out with out making him too mad.

Guess this enough for tonight.

Yours,
Bernard