8.24.2014

Letter, September 8, 1974

Dear Mom,

Got your letter and Jan’s both last Tuesday. Was very happy to hear that my letters are getting through and about all that is happening at home. Sorry to hear about all those bulls you’re having, but I’m sure the situation will improve, the law of averages is on your side!

Jan sent me a picture of her with LeRoy’s aged cow. It certainly is a beauty, but I bet he paid plenty for it. My family has been asking to see pictures of my family, so that picture got me off the hook for a little while. Doña Maria thinks the cow is “muy gordo” (very fat), and it took me some doing to explain to her that it wasn’t ours, but belonged to a friend of Dad’s.

Glad to hear Donna is going to technical school. Tell her not to let Bruce buffalo her into doing more farm work than she can handle if she stays at home, studies come first (at least over barn chores!). She’d probably be better off not living at home if she can swing it financially, because I know it’s awful hard to study with so much else going on in the house.

I got the ballot Thursday and sent it back out Friday; hope I had enough postage on it. As you will see, I couldn’t find 2 Wisconsinites here to cosign it; there is only one other in my program and none among the other trainees here.

Glad to hear you got the oats & that the corn looks good. It was very dry when I left and I was afraid that might reduce the crop if it persisted.

I miss having the sweetcorn (I can almost taste it), but the variety of fruits and vegetables that grow here is really remarkable. I’ve had tangerines, mangos (a fruit something like a peach but much tougher skinned), bananas and now oranges fresh off the trees. We have a lemon tree in the back yard and I get lemonade, freshly squeezed every evening for supper.

Since you’re probably making silage now I should tell you how we made it Wednesday. We cut the maicillo (sorghum) using machetes and put in a hole in the ground that was lined with sheet plastic. It makes good silage if you choose the site well, and it is very cheap.

I may be writing later to ask you to send two books I have at home either to El Salvador or to Washington D.C. I am going to write the desk officer for El Salvador and see if he will send them from Washington. If he can it will save a lot of red tape because diplomatic pouches are not subject to customs inspection, taxes, etc. The two books are sociology statistics books (Glass & Stanley, “Statistics in Education and Psychology”, and Hays and Winkler “Statistics for (?)”) which it looks like I will need in El Salvador. Don’t worry about them yet, I will tell you where to send them at a later date.

Tell Bruce to beware of big, mean defensive linemen; life is too short for broken bones!

Hasta Luego {Until Later},

Dean

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