The Good Humor Man Is Coming Around

May 8, 1953

Vintage Good Humor Ice Cream truck and vendors,
image courtesy of Classic Concessions

Hi Honey Doll, 

I wrote you last night, but I got three letters from you today and I can't get as much behind as I did before.

This is one refueling day that I rested. I haven't done anything at all but sleep.

The boys in my section all call me "the old man" [Jim was 23 when he wrote this]. There are 7 of them and only one is over twenty. Just now, one of them walked up and gave me a book he said would be appropriate for me. The title was "Sex After Forty." HA 

One of the guys got a letter from his girl friend today. She sent him some real seductive pictures of herself. In one, she had nothing on but a pair of lace panties, but it isn't too revealing. In fact, she doesn't have very much to reveal. HA  He is sitting on his bunk, looking at them now and every so often he says, "Damn, I wish I was home."

Honey, if you sent me pictures like that, I would swim the Pacific getting home.

"No," I never read "Hamlet" in school. I read "Ivanhoe" and "Lady of the Lake." 

"Yeah," if the Good Humor man is going around, it is spring. I think that's what I'll be when I get out, a Good Humor man. HA 

If those damn Tigers don't start winning pretty soon, I'm gonna get razzed off this ship.  If they don't do better, I might refuse to see a game when I'm home. 

[Editor's Note: Jim shouldn't get his hopes up. The Tigers finished the season 40 games behind the Yankees who took the American League that year.]

So, you have been "swinging the swab," eh? Well, you have nothing on me. The "X.O." makes us wash bulkheads (walls) in our spare time.

We got good news today. The air officer got his orders. I don't know when he's leaving, but it won't be long.

Yesterday, we were putting on an air show for 48 big "wheels" that came aboard. The weather was too bad to fly strikes, but they flew off and came right back aboard. I asked one pilot why he wasn't flying.  He said he wasn't going up in bad weather for nobody, not this close to going home. And that pretty well sums up my feelings, too. I'm not gonna take any chances at all. If one of those birds spins in, I'm gonna run in the opposite direction.

That raise sounds good. Wish I could get one.

Well, darling, I've got to sign off. So answer soon.

With all my heart, I love you,

Jim

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