November 13, 1943

Sat. 13/

Dear folks,
Glad to hear the Eileen is start back to school again and seems to want to go.
You telling about cornpicking makes me sort of wish I was back there throwing nubbins too. I never though I would be home-sick for a cornfield. It would do the other boys some good to be away from farm work for a while. It is a lot of long hours but you are pretty much your own boss and that is worth a lot. I guess I’m still a farmer at heart.
I guess the tickets for the guys to go on the Coast and Geodetic Survey went through alright. We havn’t heard anything since they left.
I don’t believe Dale si doing so bad for his first steady cornpicking job. I’m glad he came back. I think it is good for people to get away from home and find out what they can do. Parents are always going to do too much for their kids and the kids never have to learn if they stay at home. We get a guy now and then that hasn’t had to work and some of them are really messes.
The farming deal at Ella’s looks like a very good thing for the boys. I’d think they would really dig in and make it pay well. I suppose when I have been without an income it looks different to me than it does to them that have to do the work.
I wondered if they wouldn’t cook up a way to clamp down on the farmers and try and keep them from burning tractor gass in their cars. We have a camp car now. Some group of Friends in Calif gave us a Modle A. The director and the Assistant Dirrector went to see the ration board about gas for it the other day and the chairman of the board said that he wouldn’t let them have any gass for the COs to use but it was alright if the Dirrector was the one that used it. So we got an A book in the director’s name. We had a big laugh cause he is just an much a CO as any of us but he isn’t classified as IV-E so the ration man thinks he is some sort of Gov’t man that is watching us I guess.
I got a letter from Kingsley a few days ago and he has changed a little in what he writes. He wrote a whole paragraph on the subject that he thought every red blooded American believed the only good German is a dead one. They must really be filling those guys with propaganda now that they are getting closer to Germany. Kingsley used to look at the war as a dirty job that had to be done and didn’t particularly have any hate for anyone. That’s just another thing that war does for people I guess.
We have had pretty good weather for the last week now not much rain and several hours of sunshine. It is shining now.
With love,
Bernard