Letter # 453 August 16, 1944

New Guinea
Wed. eve.
Aug 16, 1944
My perfect wife;
That is still the best description I can think of that takes in everything.  Means you're beautiful, sweet, intelligent, faithful, generous, thoughtful, loving, and have a darn nice, luscious chassis to hold it all together.  Slight bit chubby but that is more advantage than drawback.  Gives bigger and better curves and a jimmy roll to pinch.  Just what I want, sweetheart.  Now you've recently discovered that you can live up to your looks too.  Best loving ever came down the road.  I love you Mummy.  Wish you were coming down the road now.
Still having very dry weather here.  Hasn't rained in nearly ten days now.  Boy is it dusty.  Thought I had seen dusty roads before but nothing ever like this.  Every time a vehicle moves it stirs up a dust trail thick enough to cut and a mile long.  Never very much breeze and it hangs like a blanket of smoke.  Instead of being ordinary dust color, it's black as soot.  Every time I play ball I come in looking like a Negro.
We had another game today.  Easy one 13 - 2.  Even I played a few innings.  Our team has entered a league in this area and the first game is Sunday.  Negro team.  I'm afraid we are taking an awful big bite.  Some of these teams are from big outfits and they play ball like the major leagues back home.  We'll see.
I have another couple days work on the mess kitchen and I'll be ready to start something else.  You can tell Franklin Elder that I have been entirely in charge of the construction with as many as twelve men, most of them buck Sergeants and even a staff or two.  Most of them are damn poor help though.  Ordinary routine they don't work, only see the work is done.  I'll take the privates any day when it comes to working.
No letter again today.  Gosh I'll have a nice bunch of them again when they do come.  Be way behind in answering for a few days.  I haven't anything more to say so I'll continue with the second installment of my trip.  Hope you like to hear all about it.  I know you were interested in the route.  The extra comments are added attractions.  If you don't like them you can always stop reading.  You might miss an I love you or something along that line that seems to slip into whatever I'm writing about.  I do love you and think of you all the time.  Seems I don't do much for me anymore, it's always for us.  You got me tied to your apron strings permanently and loving it.  I always did like apron strings, pajama strings, and other strings.  Remember?  Later, hooks and means of unfastening became very enticing.  Bad boy, ain't I?
Guess I ended the trip last night at Douglas, Arizona.  This southern part of Arizona was a pleasant surprise to me. I know it had become a popular winter vacation spot and that irrigation had reclaimed a lot of what had once been only second rate range land, but some how or other, the very name Arizona is associated  with semi desert.  Some of it is.  A continuation of New Mexico but as we approached Tuscon small patches of irrigation showed up as a green island in a sea of hilly wasteland.  Then we came into the bog areas of irrigated land.  Large sections of almost perfectly level land between low, barren mountain ranges were now as beautiful farms as you could ever see anywhere.  Wide variety of crops too.  Grains, cotton, rice, vegetables of all kinds, and fruit.  It all looks so pretty.  The contrast from the barren mountains which are always in sight in the distance and the green, growing valleys crisscrossed by the network of shinning irrigation ditches.  Beautiful too.
On to Tuscon and one of our daily breaks to get off and stretch.  Pretty little city.  Well landscaped parks.  Palms, flowers, and everything.  U.S.O. there at the station tended by some Red Cross women.  Coffee and doughnuts free.  Then we stood around and looked things over.  Of course most of the things we saw were the female of the species.  Seemed to be an over abundance of them too.  I'd have been willing to stay there a while.  The boys were calling and whistling at them as usual.  I didn't but I didn't keep my eyes shut by a long way.  Some peaches.  The efforts to attract attention were meeting with only moderate success so Charlie, the outfit's bugler, got out his trumpet and played a few numbers.  He's real good and that did attract attention.  A specially nice looking girl was passing and trying to appear unconscious of the admiring looks and sounds and carrying it off very well.  She also had a red dress that didn't help any if she wanted to remain unseen.  Charlie played "The Lady in Red" as she went past.  That got her and she broke down, waved and gave us all a nice big smile.  The boys all cheered.
Chandler.  Resort town and very pretty.  Almost as nice as the photo cards of places.  Most of the architecture through all this borderland is Spanish.  It sure is pretty set off by palms, flowers and trees.  One fellow in our company had worked at Chandler a couple years.  He says the winters are perfect.  Only an occasional cold day and very little rain.  Hot days in the summer and cool nights.  Sounds attractive doesn't it?  Saw my first orange groves, olive groves, and grapefruit orchards or whatever they are called.  Very little difference in appearance between orange and olive trees to a stranger.  For miles I sat with this fellow, he is T/4 Rickey, and guessed and was corrected until I could tell the difference.
Phoenix.  The same as Tuscon, only larger.  No girl in red either.  You'd almost think I was girl crazy wouldn't you?  I am, about you.  I like to look at all the rest but none has ever had enough of what it takes to get more than a good looking over. I've got the best of the lot waiting for me back home, so why fool with second rate stuff.  I'm spoiled.  I love to be spoiled that way.  I love you.
The southeast part of Calif is largely like New Mexico.  Some spots of irrigated farming.  Into the rail yards of Los Angeles to make our connection and pick up another engine for the long hard haul over the mountains.  Didn't see very much of the city except the industrial part.  What I did see was much the same as Frisco.  Back home we think Akron is a hilly city.  You should see these.  Good thing they never have snow or ice or there'd be hell to pay.  Roads so steep it takes low gear to climb them.  Houses set on side hills, the fronts level with the ground and the basement entirely out of the ground in back.  How would you like to mow lawns on a place like that?
Well honey, I guess we'll take a break  at Los Angeles for tonight.  More in the next installment.  I wish we were really taking this trip, just you and I.  Stopping for a break at L.A. or any place would be something to write home about.  We'll have number five honeymoon someplace, only it will be number one in ecstasy and enjoyment.  Night, bubbles, I'm loving you.
Your dreamer
Norm.