Sometimes I pretty near wish I had a wife like Sebastian’s thats so homely you can’t hardly look at her but still and all you get a chance to once in a while.
Well I wrote to that poor kid down in Texas and told her I didn’t want to bother her to make me a helmet or a sweater but I all ready got a helmet. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about Florrie or tell her to quit writeing to me but I give her a kind of a hint that I was to busy to spend much time writeing letters and I hope she don’t try and keep up a correspondence because it can’t do neither of us no good and the best way would be for us to both forget it and of course that wouldn’t be no trouble for me but I am afraid a girl don’t forget so easy.
Well Al this ain’t what you might call a happy letter but I don’t know no good news to write only they have gave up our choir practice as a bad job and we don’t have to worry no more about letting the fires go out.
Camp Grant, Dec. 2.
Friend Al: Well Al I just got back from Chi and of all the tough luck a man ever had I had it.
You remember me telling you about the last time I come back from my leave and I got in late and Capt. Nash says I couldn’t have no more leave for a month. Well the month was up Friday and I had it fixed so as I could go to Chi Saturday a.m. with the gang that was going to the football game between our club and Camp Custer and the only ones that was allowed to go was the ones that had boughten tickets to the game so I bought a ticket though I didn’t have no intentions of waisting my time out to no Willy boy football game.
Well we got to Chi about noon and we had to march all over town and everybody stood on the sidewalks and cheered us to the ecco and I couldn’t get away from the bunch till the parade was over though I don’t enjoy marching and have everybody stare at you but when it was over I beat it for home. Well I hadn’t said nothing to Florrie about comeing because I wanted to surprise her and I thought of course little Al and the Swede would be home and I and little Al could walk in on Florrie over to the beauty parlor and surprise her, but when I got to the flat and rung the bell they wasn’t no answer and I rung and rung and finely I seen they wasn’t nobody home so I went to the beauty parlor and 1 of the girls there told be that Florrie was takeing the p.m. off and wouldn’t be back till Monday a.m.
So I went back to the flat and looked for the janitor to let me in and when you don’t want janitors they are always snooping around at your coat tails but when you do want them they are hideing in the ash bbl. or something. So it took me about a hour to find this bird and another hour to get him to open the door up for me and of course they wasn’t nobody home so the janitor says maybe I could find out where they went from the neighbors so I rung the woman across the hall’s bell and she come to the door. So I said “I’m Corp. Keefe and I wanted to know if you knew where is my wife and kid.” So she says “They went out.” Well Al I suppose I didn’t know they had went out and I felt like saying to her “Oh I thought they might maybe of crawled in between the wall paper to take a nap or I thought maybe they might of left the stopper out of the bath tub and got drained off or something.” But I just asked her did she know where they went and she said she didn’t.
Well I seen she didn’t know nothing about them or probably nothing else so I went back in the flat and waited and waited and it come along 5 o’clock and I called up a saloon over on Indiana and asked them to fetch me over a doz. bottles of beer and I had 2 of them and then went out to a restaurant and had supper and come back and nobody home yet. Well to make a short story out of it I finished the beer up and finely went to bed and I didn’t know nothing more till 9 a.m. this morning when the Swede come snooping into the room and seen me and let out a screem and beat it and I got up and dressed and went in the kitchen and she said Florrie had took little Al somewheres to stay all night with some friends and give the Swede permission to go to a ski jumpers dance out to Berwyn and Florrie would be home about 11.
Well Florrie come strutting in with the kid about 12 looking like she hadn’t done nothing out of the way and when she seen me she squeeled and come romping over for a kiss. Well Al she didn’t get it. I kissed little Al all right but I didn’t see where she had a right to expect favors. Well she seen how things stood and begin trying to explain something about spending the p.m. down town shopping and then going to a show with some friends of hers on the
