Jan 1943: report card

“Debate          ...E
Biology           ...E
English           ...E
Am. History    ...E
Adv. Alg.         ...E”
--Report card of my mother, Ruth Murray, for the fall semester of her junior year at El Dorado High School, 1942-43.  Possible grades were “E—Excellent; G—Good; M—Medium; P—Passing; F—Failing.”  When my mother was a 15-year-old junior at El Dorado High School, my father was a 17-year-old sophomore at Southwestern College, fifty miles to the south.  They did not meet until the fall of 1946.  (I have no letters from my mother until 1946; this report card is one of the few documents I have from her in 1943.)

Sun, Jan 10, 1943: socks I darned

"...We finally got the things I ordered and your shoes came so am sending them to-gether with some socks I darned for you.  Hope the shoes fit.  I think they are pretty nice...."
--Letter from my grandmother, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Winfield, Kans., Sunday, January 10, 1943.  Darning is certainly a much rarer art in our throwaway society than it was in the frugal society of the 1940s.  My grandmother would sometimes darn my socks, when I stayed with her in the 1970s.  Darning is not, however, a lost art, as numerous youtube videos explaining the process indicate.

Sun, Jan 10, 1943: a cold

                                       "Leon Kansas
                                       "Jan. 10, 1943.
“Dearest ‘Sonny’--The first letter to write this year and I didn't put 1942!  How are you making out since vacation? 
"I haven't done so well.  Seemed like I felt tired all last week and by Fri. evening I really had a cold.... Don't know yet whether or not I will try to have school to-morrow.  Surely hate to miss as that will put us farther up in the spring getting out...."

--Letter from my grandmother, Jessie Maybelle (Berger) Brown, 45 years old, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Sidney DeVere Brown, age 17, Winfield, Kans., Sunday, January 10, 1943.  My grandmother taught grade school in Bloomington.