Part of letter to Cathie from Ford Killen

Part of letter to Cathie from Ford Killen

Writes of recent meal he had at the beach. Goes on to describe summer theatre.

1948-07-11

One sided typewritten letter

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

EKillenFReidKM490711-Part

11 July 1948

My dearest darling Cathie:

I received your very wonderful special letter just about thirty minutes ago, and I want to answer it while it is still fresh in my memory … not that anything could be very “fresh” with me this morning, because yesterday was the day of the outing and I am miserable … Although I had a wonderful time at the beach.

I ate about 10 ears of roasted corn (maize), several hamburgers, several hot dogs, drank about 4 cans of beer, and four coca colas, went swimming, ate watermelon, marshmallows, plums, apricots, cake, potato chips (crisps -- we call em crisps … what you call chips we call French fries), cookies, cheese crackers, went swimming again; came in from the picnic and we all piled into a huge truck, went over to one of the members houses, and ate again, and drank crème de menthe and red wine ….. the hospital should be overflowing today by all usual standards ….. but I think everyone is faring nicely. Except for cases of sunburn. Last Monday I went to the beach, for the first time this summer, made a fool of myself and spent just 12 hours baking. Brother I baked, too. For the next three days I looked like a boiled lobster, and had difficulty trying to find a spot where I could lie down without touching the badly burned parts of me, consequently I found that all of me was burned. So yesterday I had a less difficult time than most of the others.

The summer theatre is is [sic] full swing over here now. Maybe I’ve already explained to you what summer theatre is …. but here I go again. Each season, small resort towns that have about a half dozen inhabitants during the winter suddenly become flooded with tourists getting away from New York’s infernal heat. Some years ago, prominent citizens in these towns decided to cash in on the influx of transients by converting barns into theatres, and putting on amateur productions. It was a novel and sparse idea at first -- with only a few communities taking the lead. The leading lady sold tickets just before the performance (usually she was the daughter of the man who owned the barn. During the day you undoubtedly could find here erecting flats and painting signs, or any odd job. They charged small prices, a lot of people came, and the farmer made quite a pro-

[missing pages]