I’m Ignorant and All My Shorts Are Blue

Levity and concern over two letters barely a week after Japan”s stock market crashes due to the dropping of the thing that ended the pacific front as concerns arose that SHIRL should not get to excited about a homecoming because men were still dying.

Transcript

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Welcome to Letters Radio Sheryl, a World War II Love Story podcast, season three. We are barely a week out from the dropping of the atomic bomb. August eleventh, nineteen forty-five. Lieutenant, second lieutenant, bombardier, Raymond Conan, writes his sweetheart, Shirley Rutledge, back in Chicago. Um he has been stateside the entire war, training and serving his country by choice. He signed up in um earlier letters that are not included in the book that is now available for sale. Reading from the book transcribed by their granddaughter August 11th, 1945. Wednesday. Ahoy Patunia. Say, you know, last night I went to the show and saw over 21. It was a small picture and all that. There were a couple of shots with Alexander Knox that made me sit with my mouth open. Holy Huckleberries, he looks so darn much like your pop. I was actually amazed. He's a little bit thinner, but outside of that there's great similarity. Make sure you see it. Friday. Flew all yesterday, just got time now to finish this. I checked with the photo department, found out I got six hits on those radar runs. Goody goody. Aside from that, there is nothing of technical interest that I can think of. I suppose I should say something about all the news floating around. I will. Let's wait until it's all over and then we can get excited. There are still guys getting killed. If by some chance it is all over in a couple of weeks, you can start collecting some of my trousers. Size 11 stockings, bobby sock style, must contain bright red, red, green, purple, neckties, must be able to see be seen at 500 yards at midnight. I reserve the right to pick out my own unmentionables if there are any. See if you can send a yellow hat with blue and yellow feathers in it. That's for me. Do you need people's do you people need soap? Got another letter from Eddie which I must answer today. That's uh Shirley's little brother. My uh portraits will be ready next Saturday. You know, you gotta buy three of them. What am I going to do with the extra one? Should I send it to Hollywood? Was last week horrible? Say, does the collapse of the Japanese stock market have any effect on the banks here? Bah humbug, gotta fly. Sunday, still trying to get you some more cigarettes. Not so successful this time, maybe next week. Did you get a flask yet? In one of my letters home I mentioned that Ken and I are getting old. That's his brother uh half brother. My mom and wrote back I'm not going backwards myself. You know something as we get older, most everyone we know gets older too. Isn't that amazing? The whole damn world is getting old. Humph it's time to make one cry it's enough to make one cry in one's beer. The pennies are short of soap, so I must go on one of my reins. You know I could easily become an arch scoundrel. I ain't got no scruples. Did I ever tell you this joke? I think I did. She I like Kipling. He okay let's kipple I I think he was referring to Ruddy Kipling, whose poetry escapes me but I think it's mentioned somewhere in some film I've seen. Unless you're in a certain mood, it isn't quite so hilarious. Well anyway, it's clean. Uncle Gene has a ruptured appendix in the north woods or something. By the way, how are your appendix lately? Some unnice person hooked my HCS HSC hat, so now I must wear an uncrushed one. Confounded. Do you think that oyster dressing is much better than sage? Something went wrong with the laundry and now all my extra white shorts are pale blue. Quite attractive. Gotta go over to the club and check the latest news. Bye darling. I love you. And that is the end of letter one. As promised, or two letters each week. Trying to drop them on Wednesdays sometime. But they could be as much as a day off. But Wednesdays seem to be working out right now. So he's trying to keep your spirits up and he's a little concerned about um some things. August thirteenth, nineteen forty-five. Week after. My darling, I went to town yesterday afternoon, had my ring made smaller. I was pretty lucky and got it fixed while I waited. The jeweler said it was a very fine ring and that the initials were hand carved. He fixed it in less than an hour. It's a size eight now. We allowed for a two-way stretch. The Valley of Decisions was at one of the shows, so I went in. It was a good picture, but not as complete as the book. There were some changes, but they fit in well. I guess Hollywood has to have happy endings, so at the end they got together. The second feature was as good as V of D. I'm not sure what the initials stand for. I never even heard a rumor about it. The Southerner and Zachary Scotts and Betty Field. It was so darn good. After the show I meandered over to the Salvation R union and hooked up four donuts and two cups of coffee. I was back in the field by ten and lost a dime in a red hot running game. My whole weekend was spoiled. I've got to go to the briefing in an hour and a half. Ciao now. I am unwell. After we landed last night the pilot, engineer, navigator, and I went to the club and drank seventeen thousand bottles of beer. We we had a flash that was over at 6 30 and we landed and we were told that was a mistake. So we guzzled and told unnice stories. This morning I feel as if any minute I'm going to explode. I'm not sick of even fuzzy or even fuzzy. I just feel like I'm going to explode. Oh hell hey, from your description of your mom, maybe I'm courting the wrong gal. I'll bet she feels pretty chipper. Hey, how much do you weigh now? Almost blew the barracks up this morning. Damn lighter fluid. I should have put the cork back. Oh how. Somehow or other I've missed eating lunch since yesterday. My stomach is also ready to explode. More damned explosions today. You know there are only three us radar men in this outfit? Last night one of them got shot by an unexpected husband. Just a little bit shot though. Now so now me and a guy named Acosta are the last of the radar department. We're quite exclusive. Speaking of explosions, we had a gas lake somewhere in the ship last night and we all expected to be blown to meat balls. We didn't though. I have absolutely no desire to become an atom. You know, I was wondering if they get together and have little atoms. If so, I'd like to know how the hell they do it. Just can't figure it out. I'm quite sure I wouldn't want to be an atom, though I'll bet atoms don't have hardly any trouble with barbers. Then an atom can't eat roast duck. Say if an atom had a girlfriend and her name were Eve, would that be Adam and Eve? Would they wear Adam sized fig leaves? Do Adams like figs? Gee, there are so many things I don't know. I'm ignorant. Gotta go to class now. I love you, I love you, I love you. Ray, P.S. You're nice. Well that is a little bit of dark humor. Um take what you will of it and um look up some information on those dates and see how close it was to VJ Day and how close it was to the end of everything. It's um just more to research. I keep looking them up and I I write them down. I look them up, I write them down. I want people to go get the information from it's so probably available right now. I'm I'm not in the mood to type my sources for this. I'm sticking with the real documents that I have, the letters that are 80 years old. My grandmother would have been nearly 105 today, I believe. Very close. So celebrating her birthday all the way to the 4th of July was a tradition in our family. So I thought I'd make sure to get that podcast out for now. Um next podcast out for now. It's not a last podcast. I will podcast next week. Link to the book available first edition, Amazon, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover in the bio. Find my link tree. Link tr.ee forward slash the print on demand artist. That's my link tree. There should be a link to it in the uh podcast info. Alright, thank you for listening. Go out and about, celebrate the fourth of this weekend, last weekend, whenever you celebrate it. If you don't celebrate it and you're in another place, thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. And if you are just uh tuning in, please go back to some of the earlier episodes. Um I've got enough funding right now to keep season season three and season two up. Season one I had to take down. I did not have enough funding to keep the podcast up. But right now I'm doing good. I had one tale of the book. We're good to go for another month of the podcast. Thank you.