Friday noon

[June 4, 1943]

Dear Mavis and Johnnie:

Received a very nice letter from you this morning, the one you wrote Monday. Hope you are feeling better today. How is My Little Johnnie Boy behaving himself? He must be a big little fellow if he can pull himself up. I can't hardly believe it for he was so small when he went away. I wish you would tell me more about him (you know it is Johnnie) when you write for I like all the little details about him, and what he is learning to do.

It is terrible hot here now, about the hottest weather for June that I have ever seen. The crops are looking good now. We should have blooms before many days. Everyone still has plenty of work to do for after the rains stopped the crops were about lost. We really have a good garden now for we are living out of it. Mama and Ruthel canned some beans the other day, and Mama and Lu Ella are canning today. In fact we have more of the tings in there than we can use. We have beans, cabbage, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots (you can have them), beets, squash, okra, onions and there is some small tomatoes on the plants that you put out before you left.

This is some of Ruthel's stationery, so I had better go light on it. She used just about all of mine before she sent after this. She does about as much writing as I do. I have to mail three or four letters every day for her (maybe she does write a little more than I do).

I really got into a hot job yesterday afternoon. Alexander and I undertook to pipe water from the pump here at the house out to the barn. We went to town and got three hundred feet of half inch galvanized pipe and then the work started. We had to put the pipe under ground out to the garden and then we left it out of the ground the rest of the way. When it rains I plan to put it all underground. It is a big job to pump water by hand for all the mules and cows. The electric pump here does better than it did when you were here, but it is not just right yet. The clover that we planted in the yard is beginning to bloom out and make seed. I have been keeping the yard mowed and it looks nice.

I am sorry that Howard and Quintine have to go to the Army, my time may be getting close. Sometimes I feel that I should go, for I am no better than millions of other boys who are giving up everything, possibly their lives that the people in this country can be free (and strike if they want to).

Mama go a letter yesterday from Hiram and a card telling her from now on to send his mail to New York in care of a number. By his mailing address being New York they are prehaps sending him to North Africa or to England. Evelyn wrote a card saying she would be back down this way before long.

Mama, Ruthel and I went to a show Tuesday night, the name of it was "Tish"; it was a good comedy picture. There was another picture, but it wasn't good. Going back to Sunday, we all went to Sunday School and preaching. Brother Martin preached. I wonder what is wrong with all the people on the section and at Malvina, for the crowd keeps getting smaller all the time. You remember me writing about the Jenkins and Putman women getting so relegious one Sunday. They haven't been back since that Sunday. Guess they got enough to do for a while.

After preaching we went over to the levee to see the water. Wish you could see it, for it may be several years befoe it gets that high again.

I saw a good show that night, the name of it was "Thunderbirds". It was a good picture about a trainig field out in Arizona. It was quite interesting to me for I imagined that Harding is going through with something just like it at the training centers that he has been attending. I don't think I have what it takes to fly.

I am going to the County Agent's office this afternoon to get my cotton acreage straightened out. Ruthel wants to go with me to do a little shopping.

I expect I have put enough of the little happenings in this letter so maybe I had better stop before I write some little silly and foolish thought in it (you might take it to heart). Kiss My Little Johnnie for me.

Love,

Ruel