October 26, 1943

Oct. 26, 1943

Dear family,
I don’t have anything to say this time and I’ve been awfully busy the last few days and I suspect I’ll be busy for some time. They have nominated me for work committee chairman and they had another guy too but he withdrew and so I reckon that they will have to elect me. I’m not a bit anxious about having the job. It takes a lot of time but I will get Saturdays off. Oh well I guess it is about my turn to do some of the committee work.
I let a fellow talk me into doing some carpenter work for some nice people in Eugene. I had worked overtime and had a couple of days coming so I went up on a week-end leave. That’s not the same as furlough. I went up 2 weeks ago last week-end and again last Sat. and Sun. I’m not done yet. There was another guy went along last time and we both worked on it. We get 75 cents an hour but I hate to take their money so we did 12 hours and only charged for 10. I need some shirts and sox so I can use a little money. I suppose I’ll go to more shows too. Thanks for the last dollar Dad. Talking about money made me think of it.
These people that I was working for, their name is Etter. He is a research lawyer and works in connection with the University of Oregon that is in Eugene. They built their house about three years ago and it is quite a house. It is finished inside with Hemlock in a sort of a barn style. Real pretty. They have a big room upstairs that they built for FOR meetings and now they have a baby boy about a year and a half old and they don’t have any good place for him to sleep so they want one end of that room partisioned off with three doors and they will put Jonny’s bed in there. That’s what I was doing. It is quite a job I got the pieces all cut and the supply truck is going to bring them down here and I’ll smooth them up on the power sander here then they will take them back next week. The planning was taking a long time and I was out of overtime too. Those people are really swell they have been down to visit the camp several times Orvil (that’s his name) is the FOR secretary for the northwest I think so he is more than interested in us.
The camp here is going to have an open house program here this Fri. and there are several things that they want to get done before then so I’ll be working up some more overtime. I do kind of like to get out into civilization once in a while and that’s a pretty good way to do it. I hitchhiked up and came back on the bus. That was kind of fun we rode with a couple of truck drivers they have big diesel trucks with big trailers out here and it was one of them that I rode in. They sure make a lot of noise we could hardly talk. They aren’t supposed to take hitchhikers at all so I had to sort of duck when we met a car where they could see me.
Well this turned out to be quite a letter after all. Don’t you guys work too hard. It is raining very well here now, it doesn’t have to try at all. It has been doing that for about three weeks now. I’m real proud of myself for not writing about it before. I reckon that the boys are all picking by now just about anyway.
Love
Bernard