January 17, 1953 Thrilled to Pieces, Fixing the Machine, Blue Cold Again and Bobby is 5

L to R, Janis, Bobby, Lynn, Button and Ann

Dear Mother & Daddy,

"Your letter hasn't come this week so I'm wondering how you both are.  With the flu raging across the country you never know where it will hit next.  So far, we haven't any of it here.  Bob got his birthday card and the silver dollars.    He was thrilled to pieces and said, "Wow!  I'm the luckiest boy in the world.  Are they really real silver dollars?"  He was very interested in the way you had them sewed up and wanted me to do it again.  One dollar was really enough but he has played with them constantly and appreciated them so much.  Lynn, Janis and Button will eat dinner with him Sunday and then Ann and I will take cupcakes to school on Monday so they can have a little party there with the children in his kindergarten. 

I finally got the doll clothes made and started on the cowboy shirt for Bob.  I'm afraid I won't get it done for his birthday, though.  I think I told you that my machine hadn't been working right.  We've been trying to get it fixed since we came home from your house.  The Sears repairman would get it sewing right and then it would go off again.  Finally he took the whole head down to the store and put in a new one for me to use while he worked on mine.  He told me today that if he couldn't get it to suit me he'd just leave the new head in mine.  They are exactly alike but sew a lot differently.

We're going to school to a party for a little while tonight and it is really time we went.

Dr. Ball dismissed me today.  My blood count and blood pressure are where they should be now and the temperature charts show that I'm producing my own hormones correctly so I don't have to go back.  I haven't had a shot since the last of Oct. or early Nov.  He still wants me to take vitamins and some iron until spring comes and then the sun will supply them.

We have had some wonderfully warm days but it is blue cold again.

I must stop so we can go and get home at a decent hour.  We probably won't have to stay too long."

                        Lots of love,

                                Bonnie

NOTE:  The building pictured above is the Thomas Metcalf School on the ISNU campus, only a couple of blocks from home.  It housed the kindergarten through 8th grades, prior to the construction of a new building.  It also served as the High School until new facilities were built for it as well.
Source of the photo:  Grandest of Enterprises by Helen Marshall, 1956.