Stanford 

Oct 2, 1961: Letter Sam to Parents

Dear mommy and daddy ,

Enclosed is a very important piece of paper. Please sign and send back back to 835 Pine Hill without delay.  (must be here by December 1), or I don’t go to Deutschland.  The enclosed memorandum, which I was too lazy to include, says that tuition over there will be $725 per quarter. I’ll let you know how my scholarship works out. I have to be in Stuttgart at the campus in the evening of January 3, unfortunately; The week of January 3–8 is “orientation week “, dammit, so it looks as if I leave Zermatt sooner than I had planned. Classes are held Monday through Thursday. I am taking intensive German (grammar, reading, conversation, and literature), contemporary German fiction, and Europe since 1914, the last taught by Mr. Mazour.  A stiff schedule, but it should be fun for a math grind like me. My three week holiday between quarters will run from March 18 to April 8, 1962, in case you are planning anything. My last examination at the end of the spring quarter will be on or before June 12, and the last day of residence at the center will be June 14, 1962. I have asked several reliable sources what my expenses will be in Germany, and all seem to agree at around $600 for the weekends and three week holiday ($200 for the holiday.) Summer is anybody’s guest. At this moment I have about $1000 in the bank, $1000 in Boothe Leasing, A few hundred in income tax returns, and a few hundred you owe me for the bills I have been paying, including room and board, etc. I just received my financial statements from Wells Fargo: John has $684.03 as of September 22, and mom has $3576.50 as of September 26. I hope you don’t mind my prying into all these matters. If you need these statements for any reason, I am saving all important stuff in a little bag here at Stern.  Incidentally, mom, you are loading up on stock dividends via Irving Lundborg: a few hundred dollars' worth already. I repeat a query in your last letter by asking you what I should do with these. I could reinvest them, cash them, or leave them alone, the former to alternatives necessarily needing, some type of permission from you in writing. Let me know. Also, for fear that I left it out last time, please let me know what my health insurance status is so I can be doubly sure

Don’t ask me why I started a new paragraph, but I just did. I have to get shots for smallpox, polio, tetanus, influenza, and typhoid. Which have I had, or, better yet, where can I find out which I have had? Also, Stanford is giving the shots, but do I get them somewhere else, like in Palo Alto, FMP and all that?  One final suggestion: please write and let me know the letters you received for me. I just received a postcard from Stuttgart from you, danke, the first piece of mail yet, and I was running under the assumption you were in Florence, so my last letter was sent to the American Express there. I just don’t want you missing all my clever sayings, you know.

I’m sorry I’m being so rigorous about everything, but I’d hate for something horrible to happen accidentally.

What do you think about me buying a car when I get to Germany? Volkswagens are nice little things, and the Chevy, although a very sweet old car, now gets 15 miles to the gallon and needs a quart of oil for about every tank full of gas. Volkswagens, as you undoubtedly know, considerably cheaper, what with their engines running on pressed air and all. If you think another car is out of the question, please let me know. If not, perhaps we can swing sometime in the future.

Well, it is grind time again. I hope you do not shudder when I say that I am not trying for the Dean’s list again this year. Of course, I guarantee a B average for safety sake, but I now cannot see the necessity of spending the entire time I have for my math courses, interesting though they may be, instead of reading up on Germany and getting a little fun out of Stanford. I am going to the symphony once a week, I have arranged with other prospective Stanford in Germany students to have beer bust twice a month, and thus learned the language, etc. (the teachers, of course, will conduct these busts in good form), I am going to continue flute lessons, although I will have to drive to San Francisco once a week, once my flute returns from Boston (incidentally, those lessons cannot be had for less because you teach here, big John: there are absolutely no exceptions to the rules that people other than music majors cannot take music lessons for credit), and I am going to attend every blinking lecture, every blinking film, and every blinking soccer game there is to be had. Liberal education year for me. It’ll be back to math when I’m a junior, so don’t be scared that I have been seduced away from the sciences – I will never forsake logic.

Gooby, and tell me what’s going on over there – I am interested.

Sam