Miami, May 1 1938
Dear friends,
Now get yourselves seated comfortably in a good chair; it is going to be a letter full of news with surprises that may be could cause Valdemar to fall over backwards if you sit carelessly at the edge of the table and swing with the legs and twirl the toes. Are you moving today? If the answer is, “Yes” hearty welcome to your own new apartment and best wishes, good health and whatever else you may need in this crazy world. Peter is sitting with devout folded hands and listens to his dear “Fuhrer” God save you of him! And it’s for me to collect my thoughts if I can say that about all that is twirling around in my porridge head. Finally, we got away from Puerto Rico. The motor arrived much delayed and we were waiting impatiently since we were in a hurry to reach the mainland where we will hire a new sailor (Mate) since we think Lars deserves to be promoted to first mate and we wanted him to be a little US citizen and not a little dirty Spaniard. One of the last days we made friends with a doctor who had a lot of interest in us since he himself had been sailing in a small sailboat from Puerto Rico to Spain and back. From Puerto Rico he had a man along who several times tried to kill him so that he (the doctor) at last shot the man shortly before arriving in Spain. The doctor was three months in prison but he was then set free and sailed back alone. He wrote a book and has a big beautiful clinic in San Juan. He thought it was best we were prepared if the baby should decide to arrive on the open sea rather than as a proper citizen in a hospital, so therefore he gave us all the necessary equipment to take along on board with the needed instructions for Peter (so when the sail around the world is ended Peter can settle down as a midwife). Peter thought, “Yea, with death and pain, it’s better that we make sure we have lots of gasoline so we can reach a harbor” and of course we sailed close by Haiti and Cuba so it wouldn’t have been quite impossible but the baby preferred to wait and used the opportunity to get the American citizenship and he hasn’t shown up yet. Now we have made arrangements but with a nice little private hospital the best here on the beach and since the Americans apparently have a sore spot what they call publicity and the story about the new world sailor will most probably come in the newspaper. They take care of the whole story without any charge. It’s interesting that the same day we arranged everything with this hospital a doctor came who also had a little private hospital and offered his assistance also without paying. So, there are almost no limits to how many babies we can have here. Now we have to tell about impressions of our first days in USA. And when you think about what you always hear at home about how big everything is over here, how many cars, and how many dollars and all that stuff then at least I haven’t thought too much about it. but like everything else it is surprising here in America. Yesterday a jobless Danish painter came in his car and said “Hallo” to us. He told us that when he had work, he earned 12 Dollars a day!