Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, October 15, 1945

Honey I was a bad boy again yesterday when I didn’t get a letter written to you so will try and make up for it tonite by writing two. I believe I have enough things to write about now that I can write two with some news in each.

To begin with, I really had a full day yesterday. Being Sunday and a day off, Jessen and I took off right after dinner, with our cameras, to see some of Salzburg. We hitched a ride in and went up and down and then toured the castle. We were fortunate in running into a group tour so tagged along with the guide. The castle is very well preserved inside considering much of it was constructed in 1077, quite a few years ago. We saw the torture room including the stone blocks and chains plus the stocks where their hands and legs were locked thru a piece of wood. Below this   room was a hugh dungeon with the only entrance being steel bar doors in the floor of the torture room. From the tower of the castle one can see many miles in every direction and the countryside is really beautiful. The weather here is much like late October and the trees on the mountain sides are every color imaginable. The atmosphere was very hazy making it difficult to pick out objects a great distance away however I took the full roll of pictures and hope at least some of them turn out good. I even had Jessen take a couple of me since you asked for more of my puss. I got a kick out of watching the cable cars work, there is no power connected of any kind. There are two cars and one goes up while the other comes down. Each car has a hugh water tank in the bottom and they fill the tank on the car at the top and the extra weight pulls the other car up then when it reaches bottom, the water is drained out. Very clever, these Austrians. After leaving the castle we walked on the mountain road through a park up above the city. I   think we must have walked about five miles and when we finally arrived at the Red Cross I was completely worn out. We had doughnuts and coffee for supper and then planned to see the stage show at the “Playhouse”. It was the girls from “Billy Rose’s Diamond Horse Shoe” but the line, rather two lines, each over 3 blocks long gathered an hour before the show was to start so we decided to come in another evening. While at the Red Cross we ran onto Lupa, Miller and 3 other boys who had come in with a jeep so all of us decided to pile in the jeep (7 altogether) ride over and see the show at the Roxy. It was an excellent comedy, the name, “Out of This World” with Eddie Bracken, Cass Doley and many other stars. It was about 10:30 when we arrived back in Hallein and I was so tired and worn out I went to bed immediately. I enjoyed the outing a lot and hope we have a few more nice days before the snow flies, for similar expeditions.

Well darling I will close this and start another as I still have several things to write about.