3 Jan 65 : A slow start to the year : Philadelphia, USA

This continues the letter dated 1st January 1965, which began…

Dear Mum, Dad, Carol and Nigel,

Sunday 3^rd

We left the next morning at about 9 o’clock and drove steadily until we arrived home at Vi’s at about midnight. When we got to Vi’s we had a huge pile of mail waiting for us, and I had my shirt. It’s perfect and thanks very much indeed.

We took all our letters and cards home and were reading them in bed until 2 o’clock in the morning. I had a nice little letter from Mrs Hince, and also one from Mam, and John and Beryl, and Joan in Coventry.

By the way, if any of these letters are costing you money, take it out of my bank account. I would rather have the letters than the money. I had more letters than Colin this time.

On the way back from Florida we drove onto the beach at Jacksonville (this is just north of Daytona Beach, where they do the motor racing). And Herb took movie film of us driving around in the car on the beach. So I hope you will be able to see that fairly soon.

(NOTE: Sadly, we don’t have this footage, and we have few photos of this period, as it seems some of Tony’s earlier photos have been lost. Such a shame!)

Arriving back on Friday night means that we have two whole days with nothing to do before we start work on Monday (it is now Sunday lunchtime), and most of the two days has been spent in bed. It is so cold outside. We arrived back to find snow here, and high winds. Everyone says how brown we look which is very odd for January.

Well – I haven’t much to say at the moment so I will send this off now. More news in a week, when I will be able to tell you about the new job.

Thanks for all the mail, and especially the shirt. Look after yourselves,

Love, Tone

P.S. I have just remembered something I should have told you.

While we were with the people in Miami having lunch, a fellow came in. He was a friend of our host and when he heard that we were driving back to Philadelphia he said we would be passing a restaurant, of which he was a partner.

He gave us his card and wrote a message on the back of it, and the result was that all four of us had a slap-up free meal (with all the extras i.e. cocktails) on him. Naturally we made the most of the offer, and I had a steak which looked like one of your weekend joints!!

We seem to be lucky all the way, let’s hope our luck holds out,

Tone.

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Note: The jobs which Tony and Colin were due to start were the positions at SKF which they had been offered in November. They were lucky – it was a spectacular set-up for two young travellers! The details are in his letter dated 23-25 Nov 1964