April 27, 1932 - Wednesday

Went to my classes in the morning and read until about three. Then George came over. He didn’t stay very long. He isn’t feeling very well. Dress rehearsal for Hamlet tonight, didn’t get home until about 2:00.

George's letter home:

Dear Mother:

I am going to write the answers to your questions down first and then proceed with my news to you.

1.              Mrs. W. K. McCormack
634 E 65^th N.
Portland, Ore

2.              Mrs. C. E. Wells
Hillsboro, Oregon

3.              The Canoe Fete is Saturday evening, and it is probably the thing you will enjoy more than anything else that weekend.

No, mother, I don’t think of food alone; I realize that there are plenty of other things to think of too. Right now I am having a terrible time with a few cry babies like Travis and O’Melveny. They think that the house bills are too high when in reality they are no higher than in years before --- if as high. They have even gone so far as to attempt to interfere in my running of the Alpha’s affairs. They don’t realize that we are compelled by the national fraternity to make a nine percent profit over each school year. It doesn’t matter how much talking Jean and I do, they simply will not understand.  Jean cut expenses down so low this last year that there is really nothing for me to do but to continue the policy that he worked out. Oh well, everything will work out in the end. It has made me awfully depressed in the last week though, and I have wished I could come home from it all a million times. I must stick by the guns though, and see this thing through.

This place does not have the same spirit it used to have at all. The under class is great and the upper class is lazy except for Grady, Norton, and Moran. The dam fools go out and get drunk all the time, and then preach this upper class respect stuff to us every Monday night. How can we respect a bunch of guys that so little deserve our respect? I am just waiting around until next year when a few of these gents are among the departed. My only regret will be that his majesty, the kind of disagreeable person, Travis, will be here.  I haven’t heard him speak a civil word to anyone here all year, and everyone is becoming darn tired of it. This letter may sound like all the gloom in the world rapped up in a bunch of words, but I have to let it out somewhere.

We went to the Theta house for dinner this evening, and I was with a girl that has brown eyes, which even Anne’s can’t match. I have been itching to get acquainted with this gal for some time, and tonight was my lucky break. These girls must be a bunch of mind readers or something. Oh the wiles of women, mother, they are as wild and old as the hills and the funny part of the whole system they use is that the men have never caught on to them. You would think that after one thousand and nineteen hundred and thirty years, they would get wise, but oh no --- not my sex.

Saturday night we are having our spring dance, and I am breaking loose from the old ball and chain and taking Franny Johnson from the Kappa house.

As far as the financial situation of the Hibbard’s pride and joy goes, it is simple lousy. If I don’t have a dollar to get a haircut and to send my laundry home and to buy some toothpaste and to get a few other essentials, I will be in awful straits ere-long. A dollar will do, mother, and that will be all until the next house bill comes due.

You and Dad take care of yourselves a little more than you have been --- sickness is a lousy name and doesn’t belong in our household.

Love, Brother