May 9, 1955

Post # 66

Howdy ma’am,

     Wonder why anybody ever went to the trouble of hyphenating “madam” into “ma’am”.  It’s much harder to write a “’” than it is a “d”, especially on a typewriter where you have to stop, hit the shift key and then look for the “’” which is never where I expect it to be.  Seems to me it should be where the % is or maybe the _ or even the (.  Not the right ( but the left (.  The right ( actually looks like this: ). Know that this # is?  It’s a tic-tac-toe graph for small insects like cockroaches.  If you ever want to please a cockroach leave a few of these around on a blank sheet of paper.

In the morning you will find several tiny completed games of tic-tac-toe.

   I just talked to Dottie at home.  She said that your grades were there, which indicated that you were still alive and that they were excellent, which indicated that even if you were deceased that your last days were remarkably successful. I said that I was sure that you were not dead; that all those letters you had written in the last few days had been improperly addressed and had ended up in the dead-letter box at the post office.  I assured her that dead letters in no wise indicated dead daughter.  She hastened to say that she hadn’t been concerned, only curious, she said the year she graduated from college she hadn’t written her folks in seven weeks and I
mustn’t be too hard on you, there were eight million things to do the last couple of months in school and that we mustn’t expect any thing from you but bad news.  I said that it would be
better if we never heard from you at all, wouldn’t it then?  (What a beautiful sentence—shows what you can do just by thinking beautiful thoughts).  She said “Hell no, that isn’t what I meant at all!  Stop twisting my words.  Of course I would be delighted to hear from her.  She’s already written I know.  Stop picking on her was all I said.”  I replied civilly enough that I wasn’t picking on you.  She said I was, too.  So I’m picking on you.

     They are actually at work on the new studio!  I saw it with my own eyes.  Holes being dug in the earth!  Cement being poured into the holes!  Unbelievable! Perhaps by this time next week they will be digging holes in our new lot and pouring cement there-in.  What a fantastic age we are living in.  Imagine!  Pouring cement into holes in the ground!  Cain’t believe it now.

     Nobody said nothin’really about you not attending Shirley’s gathering of adobe girls.  What was intended was that your driving that highway without more current driving experience comes under the heading of foolish risk.  Calculated risks, O.K.  Foolish risks, no.  Confidence and basic ability is not the point.  Long distance driving is safe only when you drive by reflex.
When you have not been driving a lot it is necessary to approach each driving crisis, large or small, as a separate problem and in a hundred or so miles the mind is exhausted and driving becomes very dangerous indeed.  That is why this is a foolish risk.  The train is not very expensive and is considered fairly safe. Why not?  I am sure you would have just as much fun while there.

     Now why did I use the back of the paper?  Surely I have no interest in saving Warner Bros. such a picayune sum.  Friend of mine once visited William Randolph Hearst at that gigantic castle at San Simeon.  The thing that impressed him most, aside from almost running over a camel, was that on the table at dinner was an exquisite solid gold spray vase, emblazoned with lovely scroll work in shell design and studded with precious stones. It dated from the fifteenth century and may have been the work of Benvenuto Cellini.  Well, what do you think was in that priceless object? Paper napkins.

I must leave you now and traipse me way to art class. Wish me luck.

I love you
emphatically.

Daddy