Sat, Jun 19, 1943: bell bottom trousers

“It seems there will be a large number of us former Southwesterners at Cape G.  We should have a happy time and a big reunion.  We may spend many evenings sitting on the levee, throwing rocks in the Mississippi and whispering sweet nothings to an innocent young thing beside us.  Ah, the romance of the Navy!  I also understand we have to wash our own underwear et al.  Such will be our life in bell bottom trousers.  My mother insists that I go to bed now.”

-- Letter from Bob Owen, Wellington, Kans, to my father, Bloomington, Kans., Sat, June 19, 1943.   Bob Owen was my father’s college classmate and fellow boarder at Mrs. Sellars’s. He, along with my father, were preparing to join a naval officer pretraining program at Southeast Missouri State Teachers College in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.