Tuesday

 Dearest Gertie, 

            What a life, do we have to do some dumb things they call problems.  So far we have had five of them.  The first one was to walk 300 ft counting the number of steps and then find our average step.  Imagine about 50 fellows walking up and down in front of the frat house for about an hour.  Today we had a chain problem out on the baseball field.  Redmond went around talking about being a fugitive from a chain gang.  One of the fellows knows the prof. quit(e) well so the other day when he told us to go chain the road this guy pipes up with “why chain it it’ll stay there”.           

            Well honey I will have to close now and go get my lunch. The way things look now I won’t be able to come home until Saturday.

Love,
Walt

As this is only the second installment of my “Walt & Gertie” project, I am still working through documenting the letters and copying them.  I’ve learned a little bit about Walt in the process.

Here is some of what I have learned so far:

Walt was a student at the Colorado School of Mines and was a Junior in the year 1938.  He was also a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity the same year.  But so far I cannot find evidence that he graduated from the School of Mines the next year (1939).  It is possible that he might have transferred to another school, because in another letter to Gertie he mentions discussing the possibility of transferring with his father:

Monday evening

Dearest Gertie, 

            Well here it is the end of the first day.  We haven’t done much in the way of work today and from now on they say it gets easier.

            I told mom that your mother wanted you to go with them to dinner, and she said that she was sorry you couldn’t be with us.

            Sunday night when I was getting ready to go to bed Dad came up and started talking to me about school.  He said that next year I hadn’t better think of driving back and forth. He ask me how I came out in Chem.  I told him the straight facts and did I get a surprise when he asked if I wanted to take some other course. It ended by him telling me to inquire at Boulder and Ft. Collins about Mechanical Engineering.  This is rather hard to explain in a letter but I will tell you all about it in my next letter, or the next time I see you. I am coming in Wednesday night and if your home I will tell you then.  Please don’t mention this until I talk to you as there are some facts I don’t like to write in a letter. 

            I hope some of the board members don’t walk in tonight as some of the fellows are throwing a party and it might be embarrassing.  I don’t know what is going on, but I have an idea.

            Well honey I will have to close as it is getting late and I still have some work to do.

 Love,
Walt

I believe Walt was studying some kind of geology or surveying discipline at the School of Mines because he has mentioned having to make maps and of having to do some field work.  An excerpt from one letter says:

           Well here it is the end of the first day.  Today we had a problem in differential leveling which Redmond and I have just finished calculating.  I had to make a mistake in the field so we had to check it all over.

In the same letter, Walt tells Gertie about a good grade he got on a quiz….I thought it was funny:

            In our first lecture the prof gave us our quizzes back and was I surprised when I got a 96.  No fooling! Boy I made some good guesses.

I hope I discover more information about Walt & Gertie as I continue this project, and you can be sure I will share my discoveries here!