Pvt. Oliver Bilhorn                                                                                            10 Aug 1943   

Co. A 3rd Tng Br.                                                                                             11:30 PM

Camp Wheeler, Ga                                                                                           Chicago, Ill.

U.S. Army       

 

 

 

August 10, 1943

 

Dear Ollie,

 

I am waiting for Chester to come home for lunch so will begin a letter for you. He doesn’t get home for his lunch until two o’clock or after.  He often has to mimeograph experiments for the next day and by the time he puts away the material from the day’s work and etc he is rather late. The Tues and Thurs nights he goes to Lewis institute (or what used to be) to a radio course given by the governement. In between times we have painted the house, Colonial Yellow, sounds good anyway doesn’t it? Trimmed ---- brown.  The white was pretty at first but after the first year it was black instead of white.  Chester is working on the garage now, has 2 sides finished I believe.

            The weather here is awfully hot and very sticky a alice Jane said once “There’s so much humility in the air.” Of course she meant humidity.  By the way perhaps you already know, Alice Jane is out at ??? this summer, she was at Elkhorn Wis (?) If a girl ??? camp for 2 weeks. We drove up to see her on visitor’s Sunday and we all got chigger bites and did we have a scratching time.

            Your mother was our guest Sunday and had dinner with us. She doesn’t seem to have much strength and she says when Dr. Leng gets back she is going up to see him.  I don’t see much change in him since you went away.  She got all worked up over what the woman next door said.  Chester fixed the fence temporarily with some wire.

            We have a victory garden.  We are having corn ??? for supper and have had it several times before. We’ve had plenty of beans and there are lots of green tomatoes.  I picked 3 ripe ones Sat. Have beets and carrots too.

            The latest venture is chickens, the first seventeen were all roosters.  So we ate three and have 7 more to do. Then we gave 2 smallers ones and we’d like just a few ?? out of those but time will tell. I think Marlyn is enjoying College more than at first, he works two hours a day in Navy Miss ?? for 2 ??.

            He is getting more aggravated, especially in Tuba Baptist Church where he goes. The pastor there is graduate of Wheaton.

            The real purpose of this letter was to say thank you for the pillow top and penants you sent us. The youngsters always like penants and I always like pretty pillows.

James delivers shopping news twice a week and Clement is working every day dipping litmus paper where Marlyn used to.  So you see we are a busy family but beginning Aug 20 we are going to a lake in Michigan for a little change and rest. Love, Mervil