seen H.M. Pullham Esq. don’t miss it. I saw it in Tucson Saturday nite. It is wonderful, Rob’t Young is superb and Hedy Lamarr is extremely good too. I have not really been extremely lonely since I left, but after that I just felt lost. I can see where the book must have been very good—
Lots of love
Bill
$90 a month: about $1260 today. ($1 in 1942 = $14.00 in 2013.)
Yuma: on the Arizona–California border.
Brad Brown: unidentified.
H.M. Pullham Esq.: Pulham, 1940 film directed by King Vidor (based on a novel by John P. Marquand) about a stuffy Bostonian businessman who livens up his dull life with a fling.
To Edith Gaddis
Cortaro, Arizona
[17 January 1942]
Dear Mom—
[...] Well everything is coming along fine out here. I’ve been riding every day for two or three or four hours and it is wonderful.
However I can see where I made a sad mistake. I did as I have been waiting to do since I left, and for my Christmas present bought a handsome pair of boots for $19. They are good looking, but no inlay except around the top. At any rate I was well pleased until I started riding in them, and altho I do really like them—they fascinate me—this land is so rough, and what with riding through greasewood and cactus etc they now by the end of the week are getting pretty scratched up. Every time I pass a bush or cactus that scratches them I feel like it was tearing my own flesh!
They are not flashy: just black with green and yellow stitching and a little inlay around the top. If only I had gotten a cheaper pair to wear riding and bought a good pair to wear around and home. They had a beautiful pair for $30—all inlay etc. However these are good ones—lined and slightly padded and very well made, and I suppose it was a good investment. As a last resort please send my old ones out—I’ll have them re-heeled and they’ll do for rough country. And also my canteen—it’s hanging in the lodge just to the right of the garage door. It will be perfect for these long hot rides.
I have gotten a pair of blue jeans ($1.39) and a flannel shirt (98¢) for this riding—expect to get another pair of jeans today—and later perhaps a pair of “frontier pants” and a gabardine shirt. No hat as yet as they do seem sort of “dudey”—but I can see that it too will become almost a necessity before too long.
As for wanting anything else—well there are things down here that make me froth just to look at them!—belts such as I never dreamed of—rings—beautiful silver and leather work—but I figure I don’t need any of it now and will let it go until I’ve been around a bit more and seen more of these things that I’ve always known must exist somewhere!
My pictures turned out quite well on the trip ’round. I’m sending them under separate cover with the negatives in case you want to see them and you may keep them so I won’t lose them. They most all turned out—some taken in Panama Bay of sunsets which is restricted and I almost lost every thing—and say I don’t know whether or not I told you about what happened at Norfolk—I was caught taking pictures on the pier—trailed all over town by two Naval Intelligence men and finally “relieved” of any film. They said they would develop it and send me any pictures they approved—so if any thing comes to me there from them that resembles photographs please take a look and send them on—there may be some good shots. [...]
I can’t think of any thing I’d want from Saks—perhaps a tux but that will be a long time—I really don’t know what they handle—so why don’t you get yourself something and then later things will straighten out. There just isn’t much in the east that I can think of wanting—except clothes when I return—these wallets and belts and rings and other silver and leather creations out here are just things I have always dreamt of.
Well everything’s fine—just riding—rocking back and forth (what I mean rocking) in these saddles. It’s quite warm tho the natives comment on the “chilliness!” Tell Gram I’ll write and tell her all about Brad and thank her for her letter.
Love
Bill
Gram: aka Granga, WG’s maternal grandmother, Ida Williams Way (see headnote to 16 November 1943).
To Edith Gaddis
Cortaro, Arizona
[26 January 1942]
Dear Mother—
I received both your letters Saturday and the box that evening; thanks so much for the check (I paid it down on my “rent”), and the box—I still get a kick out of opening packages and presents!
And then as you say this slightly ironic setup—about my father. But I suppose we shall do just what might be expected, and wait . . . things always do take care of them selves, and, as “most of our troubles never happen,” by the same token plans and worries often make an unexpected outcome that much harder to meet. As you said it has not been a great emotional problem for me, tho it does seem queer; you see I still feel a little like I must have when I said “I have no father; I never had a father!,” and since things have been as they have, I have never really missed one—honestly—and only now does it seem queer to me. All I know of fathers I have seen in other families, and in reading, and somehow thru the deep realization I have gained of their importance; of father-and-son relations; and families: not just petty little groups, but generations—a name and honour and all that goes with it—this feeling that I have gained from other channels without ever having missed its actual presence: somehow these are the only ties I feel I have with him. You understand, not so much personal feelings, but the sort of feeling that I feel must exist between the father and son of a family as fine and as noble as I feel the name of Gaddis to represent; something far above such stuff as the Good Will Hour thrives on.
The package contained a very handsome pigskin wallet—a very fine gift, and I shall write him and thank him.
I suppose all we can do is wait, and not hope but know that it will all turn out perfectly. And while I realize that perhaps it is an affair between father and son, and I shall try to carry my end thru as a gentleman would, for apparently now I have reached the place where I am old enough to think for myself and act accordingly, and be expected to carry things thru like a man, at any rate Mother, if there is any part of this that you want me to do “your way,” or any advice you wish to give me on any part of it, please do so, and rest assured that I will do as you wish, for far from making a mess of things or being unfair to me at any point, you have done a wonderful job of the whole thing, and people who have never seen you or have just met you to whom I speak of you telling me that you must be a very wonderful woman only substantiate my feelings and make me realize all the more how much I owe not only a wonderful mother but a wonderful person as well for everything good I have and am today, or ever will be—
Love
Bill
