Sunday Eve

(Postmarked October 11th, 1917)

Dear Brother:-

I am ashamed to think I haven’t written you before but I’ve been really very busy all week pickling and preserving and when night came I was too tired to think decently – to say nothing of writing. I was very glad to get your card and I tell you I watch the papers every day to see what is doing at “Camp Devens”. Hope you like it better than picking potatoes.

Ransom has some business letters to write so he has taken our only pen and I’ll have to finish this with a pencil.

We were up to Bert’s a little while tonight – it’s the first time I have seen their Victrola. It is certainly a fine machine and they have some splendid records too. Ransom got us three new records the other day, “Over There” & “I may be Gone for a Long, Long, time” (it makes me thing of you when we play “Over There”) “Saxophone Sam” & “The Ghost of the Saxophone” and “Shenandoah” and “Somewhere in Ireland”. Shenandoah is one of the prettiest popular songs I’ve heard in a long time. It’s sung by Campbell and Burr.

I am going to send you the “Sentinel” and a sample copy of the Metropolitan we got last week. Wish I took some magazines you’d like – mine are all women’s magazines. I don’t suppose you are interested in the fashions. You will see in the “Sentinel” the list of those in the 1st district to go next time. I haven’t heard who goes from the south district. They must be still examining them in Granville as I know some who have to go tomorrow morning.

I expect to be able to talk to Ed’s folks after tonight. Argyle gets it’s phone service back after Oct 1. Now if you could only manage so we could talk to you I would be quite contented. As it is I’m afraid my pocket book would run out.

The boys are all trying to think they can go down to see you this fall and I do hope they can but I’m afraid I’ll be just a little jealous – I want to go too.

Say how are ALL the girls – for of course you hear from them occasionally (?). I can’t hardly decide WHICH I like best – can you?

I haven’t heard yet what you want in your comfort bag. Don’t fail to let us know for we are waiting to hear.

I guess I’m getting too sleepy to write much more, don’t know as you can read what I have written. Talk about poor writers – what do you think of this?

Write when you can and we sure we are all thinking of “our soldier boy.”

Your sister
Minnie

Camp Devens; According to the Fort Devins website: Camp Devens was established in 1917 on about 5000 acres of land leased then later purchased from 112 owners who sold 230 parcels of land in the towns of Ayer, Harvard, Lancaster and Shirley, to the United States of America. Some was fine farmland along the Nashua River and other was “sprout” land where trees had been cut leaving stumps.

Construction, by the largest labor force assembled in the United States, to build an entire city for 10,000 requiring barracks, training buildings, water and sewer systems, raced at the rate of 10.4 new buildings every day. As one of 16 temporary cantonments, Camp Devens processed and trained more than 100,000 soldiers of the 76th and 12th Divisions. In 1918, it became a separation center for over 150,000 troops upon their return from France.

Henry Burr (tenor) was the most prolific recording artist of the late teens and early 1920s. By his own estimate he had 12,000 recordings. According to the internet tenor balladeer Albert Campbell began his recording career on Berliner Records in 1897. While he was the solo voice behind the #1 hits “My Wild Irish Rose” (1899), he achieved his greatest success collaborating with Henry Burr.