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Fran to her Mom & Dad; Oct. 11, 1946  Oak Ridge, TN 

Fran to her Parents in Conn.

from 360 W. Outer Drive, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

on Manhattan Project stationery

                                                                                 October 11, 1946

Dear Mother & Dad,

If nothing goes wrong between now & May 12 or thereabouts, we shall bring forth a child into this happy world.

I have been too utterly nauseated – my rate for the word so gruesome that it should be struck from the English language – the past few weeks to lift a pen.  Seems as though all the joys of my life – cokes, cigarettes, people (especially people), reading -  NAUSEATE me.  According to my untrustworthy friends – crackers in the morning phooey – I will be done with this particular period shortly.

 I quit Carbide & Carbon the middle of August thinking to vacation a month & then go into the upcoming Monsanto labs.  If I had only known I would have stayed with Carbide another 6 mos. or so because according to Madeleine O’Malley McMahon, who should know as she had a baby a month ago, one must work right up to the last minute because waiting is unbearable.  However, I find the days fly by what with searching for “anything but beef for a change”, toilet paper, mayonnaise, good fruit.  All of which I manage to run into eventually.  I jumped into a line the other day & it was Hershey bars – haven’t seen them for months, and unhappy day, my stomach flopped over at the sight of them.  I’ll know for sure that the world has turned right side up again though when I yearn for a coca cola again which condition I cannot conceive of at the moment.

 I did get your card from Cape Cod.  It was wonderful to get back to the same spot.  Some good food I suppose?  The ocean seems far away from Oak Ridge.  Although there is a Myrtle Beach in N. Carolina which is accessible.  We were going to Florida in Dec. when Bill has a vacation, but alas, Dr. O’Connor says no trips.  Perhaps we’ll get to Myrtle Beach next spring.

 (I hope I can raise my child not to call everyone “honey”.)

 Oak Ridge is growing.  We may even have sidewalks, one of these days.  We are now acquiring gutters.  All the streets seem to be torn up at once.  People had made all sorts of make shift driveways into their houses, and the gutters go along straight & true, ignoring all such attempts, and so there are an unusual no. of cars in the streets adding to the confusion & danger.  Still the populace remains unscathed.  There is an intense safety propaganda going on here all the time.

 You know all the housing is government owned and you no doubt have an idea how large this place is, and there is not one single garage to go with a house on the Area.  A few people have flung up canvas covered affairs (for which privilege they had to go thru a lot of red tape).

 Bridge is what we do most of, of an evening.  I even went so far as to get us a book by Culbertson – of course.  Bill doesn’t have to look at it as he considers the whole thing just common sense.

                              Love, Fran