Every Friday I send out a real love letter that I’ve transcribed from a stack I bought at the flea market. Missed one? Check the chronological list.
Sept. 14, 1961
Dearest Kay,
So, how was today’s weather out on the prairies of Champaign? After it cooled off yesterday (about 20 degrees in 8 hours), temps ranged in the 50s and 60s for a high. Tonight — 40 for a low. That should be rather pleasant relief.
For me it was anyway. I am overjoyed with the change in weather.
Russ is a sweater weather girl.
That and your letter, and card has made the last day and half as bright as sunshine. Especially your letter.
Y’all this is wild. Think about the endless misery and weirdness of his letters at school from the past year? What was happening at school to make him that miserable? This fall he’s like a white girl who bought a fancy scarf after getting her first pumpkin spice latte of the season!
All the men’s residences have elevators. Clark, Barton, Lundgren, Taft, Van Doren and Noble are the only ones that didn’t have them. Allen and LAR have elevators. Evans and Busey don’t. So the girls have to do the work.
How shocking. How deeeeeeply shocking that only the women’s residences do not have elevators in 1961. I looked it up and the university started letting girls attend the school in the 1870s. So how is it nearly 100 years later and womens residences are the ones that don’t have elevators?
I’m sorry I wasn’t down there to help.
The frat-rats across the street are a noisy bunch and you will listen to their “melodious” howling on many nights of the week, and many weeks during the semester. Hopkins House was “far away from it all” which was one advantage of its location.
Remember to get waterproof books. Champaign is hot all through Sept. and part of October and starts again around the middle of April or so, although the heat isn’t steady until May. Fortunately, the nights run fairly cool most of the time.
In answer to your card: — how would you like a portable shower and associated accessories? You could plug it into the drinking fountain. By running the “output” out of a window, you wouldn’t even need a septic tank. Run it right across the street. Either street, it doesn’t matter, although if it ran across Euclid everyone would get it for dinner in the canteen the next day.
It’s roughly 135 miles from their home town to their college, Russ. She’s not on another continent.
And those grey walls will drive you batty in no time.
He speaks from experience.
About 2 a.m., with a midterm at 8 a.m. and no sleep for a week (per normal), your mind will begin supplying you with the contradictory information that your body is inside of, not outside your brain. You will begin thinking that you have been studying so hard your brain has completely enveloped everything. Grey being so neutral the wall will begin to blend into infinity and you will seem to float away in a primordial ooze — which is about when your roommate will wake you up to tell you that it’s 9 a.m.
Well, it’s not that bad, but I would like green walls with my red, or orange, or blue bedspread, brown, red, green, yellow, purple, etc. drapes, or any other combination of one or more colors, and furniture in blonde, mahogany, walnut, unfinished boxwood, cork, metal, aluminum, or what have, a great big comfortable, softy easy chair, any kind of lamp shade with fluorescent fixtures and the room would be complete.
That’s why men don’t have any trouble buying decorating, or otherwise occupying a room. But women like that, and I’m actually glad you are interested in a decorating scheme, even a dorm room at school. I could do it if I wanted to, but — — —
Being satisfied with your living quarters helps quite a bit in keeping your spirits and ambition up.
Again, he speaks from experience.
Your friend Connie’s décor, however, is upsetting even to me. Like it would keep me awake at night. When the sun hits her room, she won’t need an alarm clock at all. The room will shout at her. She could sleep in the lounge?
Ooh, what does it look like, I wonder?
In view of Doc Henry’s speaking abilities, I fully concur with your decision and the spanking may be forgone. I went to his speech my first semester and stayed because there was no way to get out. I even shook hands with him afterward. All of which was somewhat assembly-lined. Someday the students will give the old demon his due and it won’t be in effigy. Anyway, his speeches are never worth it.
Doc Henry refers to David D. Henry, president of the university at the time. Later in the 1960s he would take a hard line against “violent” anti-war and other protests and was actually burned in effigy by student protestors. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Haha! Henry was proud of that fact!
Prior to his gig in Illinois, he was president of my alma mater, Wayne State in Detroit, Mich. According to his NYT obit, he was a controversial figure who once unilaterally suspended a professor for publicly condoning premarital sex for “mature” students!
Doc Henry also got in trouble when he deferred to a committee who did not want to suspend a professor for saying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy had been a communist plot. That said, he was a believer in universal public higher education for every qualified high school student. He was credited with doubling enrollment at the University of Illinois and supervising a big building boom. He died in Naples, Fla., in 1995.
I’m glad you feel the way you do about Saturday night. I thought about it all evening, deciding for and against and finally came to the conclusion that I would be better not to.
We would not gain a great deal of satisfaction (compared to seeing one another, that is) over the phone and it would have only made us more unhappy at parting. Friday night was one of the most “enjoyable” and one of the “best good-byes” we’ve ever managed. I thought it a good note to part on.
Curious!
I thought it a good note to part on. Happy to be together yet, naturally, unhappy at parting, but confident in the future and hoping to see one another soon. The close contact of a personal good-bye is the most effective means of leaving a lasting reaffirmation of devotion and affection.
Bow chicka bow bow.
It’s getting late now, darling, so I’ll to close. Take extra special care of yourself, darling, I miss you so much. Sweet dreams, sleep tight until next time,
Love and Kisses,
Tiger