Don't trifle with no rifle

Dear Pop

Sorry I didnt write you until just now. They keep us way to busy here and there is no time for a poor body to stop and breath much less write home. If we arent cleaning something then they got us running and doing pushups or getting all our hair cut off like sheep in the summer time. You should see me now. I look like fish bowl with a body. Not a single thing they give me to wear fits right and my boots have made my feet very cruel and ugly with blissters. It is hard times for me but I hope everyone at home is fine. Please make sure Dottie is going to school every day because it is hard to be dumb in this world. Also please mail my true berth date here because my sergent thinks that I am really 18. This was a bad idea and no mistake of that. It is hard and I am always worn out even

with 8 hours of bed. Lights are out by 9 oclock and we are up before it is day and the sheets and pillows here are just awful for sleeping. I think farm animals are better off then us. Some of the rougher fellows will whisper nasty things and pull at themselfs under the covers, and then it is just to noisy and nasty to go to sleep. Thats not all that is noisy thogh. There are panthers and all shapes of night critters that squawl and from very close to the camp. Its awful for sleeping. If you was here Pop you would maybe feel it to. Even in a hot crowded room full of other people its like your the only one there and you feel like some dumb lump of meat shut up in a oven. It can get lonesome very easy in a place like that Pop. Sometimes its so lonesome you could just die. Pop please send up my birth cert

ificate so they will let me home. They do not beleive that I am 15 because I am too tall and I have to shave every morning. The first time I said it they were very decent and told me that it was allright to be scared, and that I was doing a wonderfull thing. I told them again and again and they got crabby and said if I keep being yelow they will tell the other men and then bet your bottom doller I am dead meat. There is a fellow here by the name of Pine with a missing finger who is old and is very decent to me. He says that theres nothing doing for nothing doing and thats the way things go. I think it is a good idea to stay away from any body who trys to tell you “the way things go” because they always seem to forget to put “I think” in the middle. Pine is a decent man but I think I will forget the things like that that he says. I will write again when I can. Remember my ceriticate and keep Dottie in school.


Love

Lewis

(Mmkay, nice had a nice juicy sabbatical to adjust to working full-time. (the pay is absolute tripe, and the job itself is absolute tripe, but it’s full-time tripe!) I will now talk about words.

GODDD THIS WAS HARD. Granite-hard. Triathlon-hard. Cookie-dough-or-cheesecake-ice-cream-hard. Loved shaping and working it up, but man. Tough. My surprise over the fact that it was so tough might have made it even tougher. I mean, I try my hand at a couple different voices - to personal satisfaction, if I may say - and it’s the adolescent, self-alienated young boy whose is the toughest for me? Me? What the hell.

One of my friends can flip through voices like she’s trying on hats. I’m dead jealous. I’m also convinced that she’s some kind of voice-Rubix Cube.)