Dad from Georgia: February 28, 1956

Dear Rosetta:

I hope you have torn up the letter that precedes this one. No sooner had I dropped it in the mail-box than I was sorry.  I should have kept it a day before mailing. It was a poor present and most certainly in very bad taste for any occasion.  Will you forgive me if I ask, penitent, barefoot, genuflected in abject misery before that image of beauty I carry with me, the memory of one--you.

For the last two days we have had high winds and rain.  Yesterday, they evacuated the camp theatre for fear of forecasted high-velocity gusts. We were alerted to the possibility that our barracks might suffer damage.  But, tough the winds were high, there was no damage.  This morning, the sun shone and it was cool, moist and fresh--almost like a Northern climate.

TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION:

"Shall we go back to the old way of living?"  I sincerely believe not.  I think that in coming here I have discovered an intangible that might make the difference. There has been a block between us that was preventing true understanding.  This is curious because both of us have an abundance of those things to give away that we both want.  I discovered, also, that it was largely my own fault that the obstacle existed, even though the two of us have created it by individual contributions. Perhaps it was action and reaction. I hope so, for if this is true, what I did I can undo. But I suspect this is not wholly the truth. In many of my letters I have purposely planted statements designed to get answers to what I want to know.  I know what direction I want to give to what I have but do you?  I'm sorry if I can't make this any clearer.  I'll try another time.

Stars so distant
Are cool and restful to the soul
But searing to the touch.

A kiss for now, Buddy.

Transcriber post script: I cannot presently find the letter to which dad refers which he regretted. I am not sure that I had it, and I have lost it, or that it never was in the package left behind in the first place. Dad had a tendency--and I am told I inherited it--to seem to be speaking directly without ever doing so. The letter above is an example. He was blaming himself for whatever was going on between them, but looking for her to reach out to him, but what he had in mind, I'll never know. My memories, albeit ones that are inherently faulty as I was young and memories always reconstruct themselves, was that they did not achieve what dad was hoping.