Dear Alice and Stewart,

I received your letter yesterday and wa [sic] very glad to hear from you. About the millstone, I am sorry but I would not sell it for less than fift[sic] fifty bucks because I like to have it there where it is pretty well is why I moved it up there. The silo can be bought for thirty bucks any time. I enjoyed all the news a lot. I suppose you are beginning to have some wintry weather by this time. This is the third winter I have spent over here. It doesn't seem like I have gone over two years. There is nothing much that I can write to you about that you would be interested in but I really enjoy getting letters from anyone. The sun shines brigthtly over here as always and at this time of year it is a big relief to have it so cool for a change. There is even a tang of fall in the air which makes me think of tator diggin time. I saw the picture in the paper of Art Footes house.

There has gotten to be so many soldiers and sailors that there isn't many girls any more over here that are not taken up. I knew just one for a while. I went on my first drunk in two years and am just now getting over it. I will tell you about it. To begin with it was pay day and another guy and went to towns shook down all of the joints of every kind and eventually got on a pretty heavy load so I brought home a quart in my car. Two days later I remembered that it must be still there and at the same time saw how I cuold[sic] take off AWOL without being missed. I then went out to the parking lot all and drank it all and right away quietly but gently and firmly pushed off for town. I floated down toward the hickam field gate and as I went that feeling of deacon_like [sic] cold soberness was riding on the front seat with me that precedes being completely insane as a result of drinking to[sic] much to[sic] fast. As I stopped for a stop sign I saw a very pretty and shapely young white woman evidently waiting for a bus. Naturally my gaze rested on her for a minute and I pointed one figernail[sic] in the diretion of town from long force of habit. To my amazement she hopped in and as we neared town I realized that this was a luxury and cussed out the manufacturers of automobiles to myself for making them so speedy and she said once so that I could here[sic] it plainly that she was some non commissioned officers wife. I dont[sic] know why she wanted me to know that. I used the most pressure in the shortest time to try to get a datethat[sic] I ever used but it was no soap. She liked to bat the breeze and was good natured and full of fun if I remember right. She saw bottles and asked me if I drank that much of that kind of stuff at once. I said yes and she wanted out just as we entered town but I wouldnt[sic] let her out. Instead I took her into the heart of town where she was goingand[sic] then went on to a parking spot, crawled over into the back seat and went to sleep to wake up just at dusk so went back to the barraks[sic] and went to bed. So ended a three day session.

You know we have nothing to do most of the time except try to dramatize a drunk or almost any foolish thing in order to pass the time quickly. Well I guess this is about all but write some time again just to see how it seems anyhow. Does Stewart [sic] time I took him to the doctor the time he prick his knee with anail.[sic] I never will forget that last year or many of the details of itif [sic] I live to b [sic] three hundred. Every thing went either higher than a kite or else more bittern than the Lowes gutter. It seemed that I could make nothing run on an even keel. I wonder if old Reed ever thinks back on some of those huge evenings. Ilike [sic] for instance the night I left him andhis [sic] old woman at Oneonta and came home to have Hank Steenrod for a visitor the next morning or then again was the night that Reed was there and Fred Holler at hime [sic] to find out what time it was by that goo [sic] clock of his. You had a way of finding out thing by WPA grapevine or something for you asked me that morning how Reed was and laughed like hell. By the way is Reeds [sic] old woman around there yet? Stewart how much were potatoes worth a bushel at that time when you were thinkin [sic] of trying to swap off one bushel. Enough I guess write. Bill Merithew