Dear Folks,

That bed looks awfully good so don’t expect me to last very long. In fact I have already decided to finish this letter tomorrow. The captain inspected today so thye kept us up pretty late last night to G.I.^[1]G.I. in this context means clean up the place. No matter how late you get to bed they still get us up at 5:15. Sam and I sleep in the room and the C.Q.(charge of quarters) has to wake us twice every morning. Sam is as hard to get up as I am and you know what that is.

The post received new orders starting Mon. we will not be allowed to talk to any civilian, buys, girls, man, women or children between 3:00 P.M. Sun. and 3:00 P.M. Sat. However, starting next weekend we get 20 hr. passes from Sat. afternoon till Sun. afternoon. We have to be back in time for parade. You get this if your grades are up and you don’t have more than 5 gigs.^[2]A “gig” is a demerit for poor performance or a rule infraction. My grades are O.K. but they can pile 5 gigs on you in 20 sec. if they feel like it. So far the school work has been easy. Even in Eng. which is the only one I don’t like I got a 99 the first test. It was very simple and if you had read the stuff you were O.K. so I didn’t feel very proud. Navigation is really practical and interesting but will probably get harder.

I received the cookies just the other day. They were a long time on the way and to keep them from spoiling we didn’t let them sit around very long. Besides that I needed the box to keep writing material in, so you can take my word for it that nothing was wasted.

I hope you can read this but Sam is typing right across the table and he doesn’t use the touch system. He claims it is the touch system but he might as well have a hammer in each hand. Goodnight will finish this in the morning. I threw Karen a goodnight kiss I hope she received it.

(8:00 A. M.)

We haven’t much to do this morning. Just finished cleaning our room and have a lecture pretty soon. I think we are suppose to go up town soon. They usually take us up by flights once or twice a week to get things that we need. Most of us have to get a can of shoe polish every week, you shine more shoes in a day here than I would in a year of civilian life. I just finished shinning three pr.

I don’t know if I told you or not be we are suppose to start flying in a week or so. I think it will amount to about 10 hrs. flying time. It will be in trainers with civilian instructors. I think that will make it a little more interesting.

(I am going to get some stationary)

They are getting things alot better organize now. We have a movie every Sun. night and some other forms of entertainment that the USO puts on in the evening. No one studies very much and we usually spend our study periods writing letters.

It has been alot cooler here the past few days but if you remember the time we were in Phoenix along time ago it wasn’t very cool so I am expecting anything.

There isn’t much more news and I expect that whistle any time so had better close. Thanks again for the cookies.

Love, Tom