419 1/23/1942 Jim Erwin to Helen Carlson

Jim Erwin 1709 A Street, Pullman, Washington Friday, January 23, 1942

Helen Carlson 1140 Park Square Bldg, Boston, Massachusetts

Dear Helen, Happy birthday. All week I intended to send you a birthday card but everything seemed to come up and could not get one off. Thanks a lot for the candy and cookies you sent me for my birthday. The candy had melted a little but was good anyway. The cookies were very good. They are the first black walnut ones I have had. You certainly are moving around. Pretty soon you will have to pick out the states you will want to be sent to. How is your car running. Will you be able to get tires. I suppose you can get them for the station wagon. Wednesday I was hitchhiking to Spokane to get a part for my clarinet and a man picked me up and said he was going to Tacoma so I kept right on and got out at Auburn. The next morning I came back. At first I was going to stay home and work at the mill but decided to come back and drop out of school and then enroll in the same course next semester. I discovered that it was too late to drop and if I did would get all flunks. It would be hard to get back into school when I wanted to and would be hard to make up those bad grades. The only thing to do is to work hard for the finals that start Feb. 2nd and try and get some good grades. Last night I didn’t get to bed until 4 o’clock. If I work hard things should turn out O.K. The weather here has warmed up and is now raining. The nights have been cold and freezes. If it does tonight, things will be pretty dangerous. There are a lot of kids that are dropping out of school this next semester because of conditions at home. Many more are being drafted or enlisting. I am saving pennies and have about 150 of them. I am going to buy defense stamps with them. It should count up pretty soon. What kind of work will Elmer be doing now? He won’t have any darkies to work with now. The military band is having a dance tonight at a fraternity house we rented for the purpose. I broke my dates for this weekend when I went home Wednesday because I didn’t think about getting back before Monday. There is a ping pong table and a pool table in the house so might go over anyway. Thanks again for the candy and cookies. Next time will not wait so long before writing. With love, Jim I moved out of the fraternity house so my address is now, 1709 A Street Pullman, Washington