Summer 1950
With school over Barbara worked most days at her dad’s roadside stand nine to five Monday through Friday but insisted she get off early on Saturdays when Morris would come pick her up. It was easy work with only an occasional customer stopping every hour or so. When Barbara wasn’t busy, she would read or write letters to Morris and her friends Joyce, Shirley and Barbara Eaton. Barbara wrote Morris two or three times of week and was lucky to one letter back from him. She wished she could talk to him on the phone, but Morris still had no phone at home, and he wasn’t allowed to use the phone at work for personal calls, especially since Ocklawaha was a long-distance call. Best of all, Barbara had time to plan for when they were married which they were still planning for September. She made up a budget for when they were married but wasn’t sure how much Morris needed for the car asking Morris if $30 was enough. Morris was only making $200 a month.
The first couple of weeks in June were a slow time for Morris with the University students being away on break chemistry department was not busy and the boss would some days let him leave an hour early. With it being slow, Morris had time at work to write Barbara telling her he showed the wedding ring to his mother and grandmother the wedding ring (he had given Barbara the engagement ring) and his mother said, “It sure is pretty.” and then he writes “Wish you had both rings on and were her beside me now.”
Every morning several copies of the local newspaper the Gainesville Sun were delivered to the Chemistry Department and one of Morris’s jobs was to delivery them to the professors’ offices. Morris enjoyed this because it allowed him to read the paper for free. In the paper that June was news about the war in Korea and if the United States would become involved. Morris, asks if Barbara has heard anything about Korea and express concern about if the country became involved, and if he got called to serve, he would go hide somewhere. His younger brother Arnold, who was too young for World War II, was now in the Navy and was preparing to be sent to Korea. In July Barbara writes back that she read in the paper that the war was getting worse, and she hoped and prayed that Morris didn’t have to go.
In July Barbara realizes that getting married in September was unlikely and set the new date seventeen weeks away on Sunday November 12th. Morris writes back saying, “Honey just think it won’t be long before I won’t have to write you a letter, I’ll have you beside me very nite. We might not have much but we’ll have each other.” Morris also said that the Navy will have a hard time proving there is nothing wrong with him if he gets called up but he wondered if Jimmy got reclassified saying, “if he hasn’t they might call him first.” But at time Morris was more concerned about his car which was getting worse all the time and was costing him a lot to continually getting it fixed.
In August Morris tells Barbara that his boss Ross thinks Morris will have his job someday which might be sooner than he thought because the “big boss can’t last much longer, he’s pretty old.”, and Ross would be moving to his job. Joyce and Wyndall stopped by to see Barbara while she was working at the roadside stand telling Barbara they were planning to be married on August 27th. Joyce got a job as a bookkeeper and cashier in Leesburg where she and Wyndall got a furnished apartment for $35 a month but they did have to get a $100 loan which they had to pay back $10 a month over the following year.
Life at the Junior house was a bit hectic with Barbara telling Morris “our house is like a crazy house!”. Dixie and Gary were fighting and Corky had a tantrum because Sue and Jimmy, who had stopped by said he couldn’t go with them to Ocala. Barbara said she wished Morris was there for he seemed the only one that could calm Corky down. Oh, and the dog which her father got and chained up out back was barking all the time and their neighbor said if Fred didn’t do something about it, he was going to shoot it so her father took the dog back to where he got it.
Then on August 22, the day before his birthday Morris, or rather his family, got three letters from Arnold saying that he was at Okinawa where Morris had been in WW-II and was going to Formosa next. They were happy to hear from him after not hearing from him in over a month. And P.S. Billy and Betty bought a house in Gainesville. On August 27th, their friends Joyce Curl and Wyndall Skipper were married as planned and Morris was looking forward to being married to Barbara in November when…
Updated: 01-07-2022