Busy Year

From letter dated November 24, 1964

I never have had such a busy year. As you know, I am bookkeeper for Scott Towing and Shipping. It started out involving a couple of afternoons a week and now it is every afternoon and some mornings, if I want to keep up with everything. That leaves me remarkably little time for marketing (which is a rather slow process here), supervising housework, sewing for my growing daughter, etc. I enjoy it, but will be simply delighted when Bucher finds he can afford to hire a replacement!

 

The children had their two-month summer holiday during July and August, but there was no possible chance of our getting away this year. Carli kept herself busy with friends. Alex went to work with the labor crew on a steel barge Bucher bought and has made over into a fuel barge.

Alex used to come home powdered from head to toe in rust while they were scraping the hull. He worked long hours and made only the equivalent of us$7.00 a week, but seemed happy about it. I was delighted when the husky foreman (a British Honduran, more-or-less boss stevedore and odd-jobs man) told me that Alex really had a touch at welding and that I should see that he got some training since he could make a fine living as a welder, judging by the way he picked it up on the job.

 

In August Bucher added to our household one baby ocelot, whom we named Oscar.

He’s a perfect beauty and we have high hopes of being able to keep him tame. He lives on our screened porch, but we bring him in with us as often as possible. He plays with various toys…a paper on a string dangling from a chair back, an old sock with a knot in it, a squeaky plastic mouse.

Oscar and Pedro the Beagle wrestle by the hour. They adore each other. I have clipped Oscar’s claws (just the sharp tips), which has helped his relationship with Pedro as well as saved my furniture. However, even when his claws were long, we never felt anything but those satiny soft pads.

Oscar’s leaps from one piece of furniture to another are magnificent. And since we don’t have a decent piece in the house anyway and enjoy watching him, we let him leap about until he gets wild…at which point he’s banished to his porch. More and more now he’ll play for a while, then curl up in a chair or sprawl over the end of a ledge and nap, happy just to be with us.

I was worried about Oscar’s eventual size but gather he’ll be slightly smaller than Pedro, except for his very long tail. He’s so lithe and light on his feet that you don’t have the sense of bulk.

 

In late September we had very, very sad family news. Deezy’s husband Frank has incurable cancer. You remember that I worked with Bucher’s sister Deezy in New York and she introduced Bucher and me. She left United Press and set up her own publicity agency in Atlanta and did extremely well. She and Frank married only about five years ago. He’s a wonderful person and we are all heartbroken about it. In October I was in Atlanta for a week to see them both and offer our loving support.