Jaci Dawn

Eugene, April 28, ’17

Dear Mother and Dad,

      Your letter hasn’t shown up yet this week, but I am expecting it tomorrow.

      I moved into the dorm last Tuesday. It is great here. I can get much more done now, get better stuff to eat, don’t feel so lonesome, and get along better. Since I have come here, I would never advise anyone to try to go to school and batch, unless he wanted to pinch himself on the eating, because if you eat all you want and have a fairly decent place to live you make nothing at it, if your time is worth anything at all. I don’t see how the management here can put up the meals th it does for $3.75 per week and furnish a room with steam heat, sheets and towels, lights, rugs etc. for seventy-five cents per week. I don’t see why I didn’t come here before. I have missed a lot.

     We put on our play last night. Some people said that I was the best on the stage. At least, the Roland Players, a professional company, said that they might be able to use me in a play a couple of weeks from now. That will be good, for I can make some money out of that.

     I must collect as much of my verse as I can and turn it in to the professor, as he is going to send some of the best poems to some publishing house. It is a bad time now for anything of the kind to succeed, but we might possibly be able to get it accepted. If we do, that will mean a steady little income to each one. Not much, of course, but probably a few dollars every year. I don’t think the thing will go through, at all.

     “The Masses” sent my peom back to me, with a personal note from the editor besides the regular form, saying that he was very sorry that he couldn’t use the poem, which was good enough, he said, for the magazine. That helps some. Bob Case has been sending stuff away for years and got his first personal letter a week or so ago, while I got a personal letter on my first manuscript.

    I saw in the paper that the drafting bill has passed both houses. We fellows who are lucky enough to be between the ages of 19 and 23 will begin to be weeded out now. I think we who are not engineers, mechanics, etc, are to be the first goats, because we are not as valuable to the nation as the others are. Well, they cant make me mad. If I am drafted, I’ll make a fine soldier. There is no use to flop after you are on the bank in the basket. Of course no one can tell how long the war will last. I wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted a long time, though. Russia may conclude a separate peace with Germany, and if she does, a good many of us will have the chance to bleach our  bones somewhere in Europe. Russia has just what Germany needs, men and supplies. Germany has the organization and the driving power to do anything. All she needs is food and men. The U.S. will see harder times than ever when not only the munition factories draw the labor that used to be used making shoes and food, but the army and navy take more of the workers away. If the war keeps up at this rate for five years more, the world will be starving to death, because no one will be left to work making food and clothing. The world’s energies will be used for destruction instead of production.

     I hope you folks are having good weather for spring’s work. We certainly have fine weather here when it isn’t raining. It is raining today, but the past week has been fine You ought to see this campus It is great in the spring and in the fall.

     I am sending a picture of my mug. I had to have it taken for a couple of places in the Oregana, (the Annual) and so I had a half dozen made. I don’t think the picture is well finished, but I guess it comes as near resembling me as anything could.

    This is about all I have to say this time.

Your son

Dale D.

*whew* Dale was certainly feeling long-winded when he wrote this six page note! He covered everything from the struggles of a young actor and poet to the Great War, and turned it around with a snippet about the weather. I can’t find anywhere that his poetry was ever published, and except for the same I shared in my last post, nothing was saved by the family.

His rant about the war is especially poignant because he would be drafted. Economic collapse of the kind he predicted would come right between the two wars, in 1928, but for very different reasons. WWII would see a shift from men in manufacturing jobs to women as Rosie the Riveter was hired to replace the men who marched off to war and left those jobs unfilled.

I have no photos of Dale. I suppose they must exist, perhaps in a family album in my brother’s care (as we hauled everything from the estate as far as Reno in 2011). I certainly haven’t one in my possession that I know of. I did a search for the 1917 Oregana and found it has been preserved and is available in .pdf format for anyone to access. I scrolled through to page 175 where I found a tiny photo in the right hand column: Dale Melrose.-This man, with a name like a rose, takes lots of courses in the Lit department. We’re glad there is at least one man there for Prof. Howe to appeal to for the gentlemen’s ideas on the r~form stuff.

Dale is also mentioned on page 128 as the Officer in A Comedy of Errors.

Read Full Post »