Cpl Roman F. Klick 36620923
Co "A", 353rd Engr Regt
A.P.O. #502, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
7 November, 1943

It wasn't until one o'clock this morning that we hit the hay. Campbell, Larry and I talked into the night about what we are going to do when we get home again and all the good times we used to have when we were home.

To make up for the lost sleep I stayed in bed until about ten o'clock when the boys began making a little bit too much noise. Instead of coming down to the office as I usually do on a Sunday morning, I just stayed in the tent reading the Chicago Daily News from the front page to the very last sheet including the obituaries and the help wanted ads.

In the afternoon I thought I would catch up on my French so I refused one offer to go swimming. I did get a little French in but not as much as I wanted to. You see, Edie and Joe Bauer were also in the tent all afternoon and we began talking about Chicago. We talked of the different shows downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, people we knew, schools we went to, the different sections of the town, the street cars, the "Ls" and just about everything we could think of.

Censky, Mersing, and Burkard came in the tent also and the six of us sat there chewing the fat for hours. I believe that they do that quite often in the week day evenings but I'm never there to participate in those gabfests so it was a novelty for me.

There was no mail call at noon today and it appears as if we are going to set another record tonight as we have four bags of mail so far ready for distribution. The Atlas and the Christmas cards must surely be in this delivery.

As I sat down to type this letter, I was using my own Remington typewriter but all at once it seemed to start running by itself with a great whirring noise coming from its interior. Then a loud bang and quiet. Whereas before it had been but partly crippled the thing is now unusable since the cord which moves the carriage is broken. The worst part about it is that we were going to start on the payroll tomorrow. I'll have to borrow other peoples typewriters from now on until we can get mine repaired.

John's dad is a conductor on the Madison street cars and has worked for the Chicago Surface Lines for twenty years so you can rest assured that thru John I know the full history of the company, how it is run and what the job consists of. Not casting any reflections on my dad, but I just can't seem to work up any steam over the job of insurance salesman to keep a conversation going on it.

The more one talks with different people, the more one finds out what makes a conversation interesting and what makes it boring. It also gives a person a clue as to what could make his own conversations more interesting and less boring, too. For instance, we began talking of our post-war plans for jobs etcetera when one guy goes off on a tangent talking about some friend of a friend of his and how wonderful of a fellow he is, who his relationships are and what he ever did and said. As a general rule, the fellows like to hear what you personally have done or intend to do and they in turn like to tell their experiences and plans. But to bring in distant relatives and friends twice removed brings the discussion to a nice dull babble.

The fault of mine which was more noticeable than all others back home was trying to put in all the details of an event. You were gifted with the ability to drop details and exactitudes and tell the main thread of the story. I have now noticed more than ever before that those names, places and little trivialities do more to kill the interest than any other thing. Another thing which is not any too popular is to have one fellow start talking about how he acted when he was drunk and sort of take pride in the incident.

However, talking about a person both parties know or talking about the records of your two high schools, or trying to get some event of past years dated, or finding out that both had been to a certain baseball game or to a certain stage play is highly entertaining and can keep the talk going at a fast pace for a long time.

So-long,   /s/ Roman   Roman