November 5, 1943

11/5/43

Hello, Family,
I got your letter today so I’ll grind out one tonight before something comes along and tempts me to put it off.
Harry buying a diamond was about the biggest news that you have had to write me in a long time. Tell him that if he tries hard he will be good enough for her.
Glad to hear that Eileen is doing fine I suspect that by the time you get this she will be back in school. The beans all done sounds like good news too. Sounds like you are taking in a nice amount of money. I reckon that it goes pretty fast tho I know that things are sort of high out here. The thing that made me realize that prices are up was this summer once in a while I would have occasion to buy a meal in Eugene and it takes 75 or 80 cents to get what we used to get for 45 or 50. But people get big wages here too. Some of the boys made 10 bucks a day on furlough time in Portland.
It looks to me like your corn picking is moving along pretty well. If the weather isn’t too bad you’ll have a lot of it in the crib by the last of the month.
I mentioned the work committee. Well, I’mm the chairman and it has kept me busy this week. The business of the committee is the placing of the right men in the right jobs. When there is a new job any place like a timber cruising job some where or a vacancy in the drafting room or anything connected with the work it is the business of the work committee. Where it caught me was Monday there were supposed to be 30 men leave for a tree planting about 120 miles from here.. Well we found out last Sunday that the camp wasn’t ready for people to live in yet and it would take till Wed. to get it ready so I had to things lined up for about 15 men to do. Then before they got away the names of 18 men came through that they had been accepted for detached service. Well, that called for another shuffle and it kept me busy getting things lined up. It has kind of cooled off now that the tree planters are gone. But they want to start another tree planting camp soon and there aren’t enough men available to get the number they want. I don’t know what they will do about it. It isn’t my wory. The Supt. tells us were to get the men and all we do is select the ones that can and will do the job. Any time there is a big job to pick a man for the committee has to decide on it but for little changes for a day or so the chairman does the work and that’s what has been keeping me busy.
I gutted my first hog last Tue. Another guy stuck it but he’s gone so I suppose I’ll have to stick the next one. We kill one every Tue. We have had three and have 7 big ones left and then we will have to wait for some more to grow up. The first ones we killed figured out that the dressed meat cost us 14 cents a pound. So we got 19 little pigs. It’s a good business. Meat tastes good too.
Well, guess that’s all.
Love Bernard
Bernard
P.S. Thanks for the $1. I almost forgot to thank you for it. Tisk [cutoff]