Marcia Kirwan Standley Papers

Thurs. August 17 1956

Dear Mother,

Believe it or not, this is the first opportunity that I have had to write you since I got through finals. Moving out of the dorm was impossible, so it took a while. Sun., Jim and I picked up Jean and Jane and went out to the dorm where we completely filled the back of the pick-up with my junk and a small hat box and clothes sack belonging to Joan Bennett. I don't know if we looked typical or atypical, leaving Lagunita, with Jim and I in the cab with two bowls of fish and Joan's fur coat, with Jean, Jane, and Joan perched in back on top of the load. There was a man standing by the back door watching Jim and the girls carrying my stuff out. He was amused, but when Jim came out with the bricks for my bookcase, the guy started to laugh and said "Hey buddy, it's against the law to tear down the building and take that with you too." We stopped in South Pally for breakfast and a case of beer, and I phoned you from there. I talked to Kevin and he got the number Da 54264. I hope he gave it to you. I expected you to call but you didn't.

Saturday, I did all my packing after my last final in the morning and before I went to work at 5:30. We worked until 3:30 that night, or morning. After work I stopped by the apartment and picked up the bottle of champagne I had the girls get for me and then I went over and woke Jim up (4:15) and we had a gala graduation party in his mother's living-room until 6:00. I started getting up at 8:00 and finally got to 10:00 mass, so we didn't get to the dorm to start loading until about 11:00, but we made it out by the 12:00 deadline, much to the housekeeper's and the director's surprise, as usual.

The apartment is really neat. It is the top floor of an old house, very roomy and not the least bit cramped, also furnished. It even has a very nice upright piano left by some former tenants. Two bedrooms a living-room and a kitchen. Downstairs we have a garage and a storage shed. There is some kind of imitation wood composition on the walls that soundproofs the place terrifically. You can hardly hear the piano outside of the living-room and in the summer that Jean and Jane have been living here they have only hearf the baby downstairs once and that was when the window was open. There is a grocery store across the street on one side, the clinic on the other and St. Thomas Catholic Church one short block away. Anyway, I'm moved in, but getting settled, that is taking my stuff out of the boxes, may take weeks.

In the cannery, I am already a professional success as a cherry counter. I made my original splash as a cherry counter after a brief career in pear trimming, when we were using the larger cans. My natural talent for counting up to four really impressed the forelady, so for a week in big cans, I was at the head of the line putting four cherries in each can. Now we are in small cans and I only have to put two in each, so every once in a while she puts me in pear canning to speed things up since pears tend to drag because the fruit isn't too good. As you can see, this sort of thing takes a razor sharp mind and the ability to make quick decisions (before all the cans go by) and it is for this reason that I have decided that the cannery