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Fran to Bill.  Jan 18, 1945, Thurs.  New York City 

Fran Carroll (SAM Columbia) to Bill Allman (SED Oakridge) 

     Is that all, hey Bill? A stanza, some love and a picture?  Well at least a picture- Everyone misses you, especially me.  Except that I don’t really at all, I remind myself, because I do not have anything to miss you from.  You said jive (?) and right away I think you said.  After I engage with this final exam on Monday, I am going out among people again and I shall resort to the nearest bowling alley, to the nearest open bowling alley, and miss you from there.

    Never will I be transferred from before the examination to after the examination.  And absolutely never will I be prepared to accomplish it itself.  Once before, I started elementary physics and withdrew, in the face of lambdas and deltas and cosines, before the cause was half over.  And vectors that by some mysterious fashion keep breaking up here and there.  This time I see the pattern, but I didn’t study enough.

    It’s wonderfully quiet here at work after six-  I stayed to finish putting together one of our contrivances which I had taken apart to the last screw and after breaking several spot- welds after it was assembled and having to disassemble it to re-spot-weld Four times, and after developing a short, finding two open connections, snapping off a gage, the same one twice, and beating it for hours, it has a transcendent sensitivity! from an original nothing.  Am I not approaching the specialist class?  Circuits hold me back.  And electricity is unfathomable.  So that’s that.  What are you being?  Mechanical, electrical, or neither?  Are you in the same square kilometer as Jimmy Margiatta (phonetic probably) or with anyone else you know?  Is he glad he changed?  I should imagine one would run into all sorts of acquaintances.  Or are the masses too many?

  Went down to the glass blower’s to return his key that keeps turning up in every pocket.  And never having been there before I said- Is this your key.  I’ll see if it fits- It does- Here.  Where did you get it he says.  It was Bill Allman’s I say and depart.  Of course I should have thrown it away.  I can see why Jimmy left light-heartedly.  The next day, I was down in Our glass blower’s and Henry, if that’s his name, came in.  Even if it isn’t.  And when his eye came to rest upon me, he approached menacingly the while discharging in cold, measured tones- Where-did- you- get- that- key? I- asked- you- that- yesterday- but- you- evaded- the- question- and- slipped- away- too- quickly- to- find- out.   To find out what I query.  Repetition.  I thought maybe you weren’t supposed to have it and murmured, but clearly, something about Jimmy and you forgetting you had it till too late to return it and giving it to me to return because I happened to be there.  While I murmur, he shouts.  The net result is highly unsatisfactory to him.  I suggest the FBI.  He continues to declaim.  I stare as if at one demented, one of my best, by the way.  His temper increases.  You’ll probably be investigated shortly.

   Charlie is still here reporting every day tho I didn’t actually see him today.

  Sunday, Dick & Knowles Dickey & Evelyn & I went walking in the blinding snowstorm.  There’s a slope near Grant’s Tomb going down toward the Parkway where kids were sliding and skiing.  It looks like a good place to practice ski turns which I must do after Monday.

  I read somewhere that there’s not going to be a spring this year- just lots of winter.  Can you golf lengthwise of the barracks?

  I wish that you come to like it there, that your particular assignment is interesting and fun, and that you come back sometime--Fran