468 3/12/1943 Helen Carlson to Sadie Erwin

Helen Carlson 401 Alexander, Monroe, Louisiana Friday, March 12, 1943

Sadie Erwin 1120 Cole St., Enumclaw, Washington

Dear Folks, Tonight I went to a wedding and just got home a few minutes ago. A man from work was married and I went with the Deans who live upstairs and Elmer stayed home because he had a headache. Jimmie feels just fine now and is such a good boy. Jim has been in the army a week tonight and I think about him all the time. I hope he is getting along alright and I hope you got to see him Sunday. I feel sure he will be sent down here near us someplace and I certainly hope so. There is a colored woman who goes around and cleans people’s houses and is real good. She specializes in that and doesn’t do anything else. She works for the same people every week and comes to my house on Tuesdays. Last Tuesday was her first day here and she came at seven thirty in the morning and started in and didn’t finish until four in the afternoon. She washed all the woodwork and all the floors and waxed all the floors and took all the curtains down and shook them and took up the rugs and cleaned good under them and did just everything. She does everything so thoroughly that I really feel like the place is clean now and I never would have gotten time to clean it like she did. This next Tuesday she is going to wash the walls in the living room and dining room because it is plaster and quite dirty. She just charges a dollar and then I don’t have to clean house the rest of the week except for picking up because after she sweeps the walls down and cleans so good it doesn’t seem to need much more done to it. It is raining out and sounds nice. We’ve had rain almost every day this week but it has been quite warm and seems just like spring. I don’t think you better try to send the alarm clock if you do get it fixed because it might get broken in the mail. We have been managing just fine because if Jimmie doesn’t wake us up I usually wake up. Sometimes Elmer has to leave without any breakfast but most of the time I get up in time. After he leaves I take Jimmie back to bed with me and we sleep until nine o’clock and this morning it was nine thirty. I wish I had thought of that months ago because it certainly is wonderful to get a little extra sleep, especially in the morning. I had the nicest long letter from Elizabeth Close today and she sent it airmail. I am going to answer it right away. I thought it was awfully nice of her to write and she wrote such a good letter and it must have been hard after not having seen me for so many years. She said she had a boyfriend in the army she expected to marry some day when the war was over. Wednesday I am going to get a permanent and sure will be glad to have it. Today I got our old shoes together, shoes so old and worn out I have been going to throw them away for ages, but there is a swell shoemaker in town and he can make the worst looking things look like brand new ones and since shoes are rationed he has his shop piled high with shoes to fix so it takes quite a long time to get them but I don’t care about that. In my last letter I said things like the pillow you sent me I would miss if I couldn’t move it and I thought afterwards it sounded as though maybe I couldn’t take things like that but that is just about the only kind of thing I can move. I hope we will be staying right here since I have that feeling Jimmie will be sent down around here. Well Folks, this isn’t much of a letter this time but I wanted to get a few lines written to mail the first thing in the morning and I will write a better letter over the weekend. Love, Helen