Palm trees, ocean breeze script

You asked in your last letter whether the palms on Harlow Street are as ragged as Mother says, and I have to tell you they are worse, and I have never loved anything so much. The fronds rattle like tin all night and the dust off the lot blows in under the kitchen door. Mr Pell at the hardware says the town will never be paved properly while the wind keeps shifting the sand, and he may be right, but I walk to the post office every morning just to stand in it.

Something happened on Tuesday I want to tell you about. The Coyle boy came round with a crate of oranges he'd lifted from the packing shed, and while Mrs Dunning was shouting at him from her porch, a squall came in off the water so sudden that every sheet on the line flew out over the road. Nobody knew whose was whose. We ended up laughing in the middle of Tarrant Avenue with our arms full of somebody's bloomers, and the breeze came straight through the whole street smelling of salt and rot and something sweet from the cannery.

I am not going to be one of those women who writes home that she never wants to leave. But I have written to the agent in Tampa about the rooms above the bakery, and I have asked Mrs Coyle whether she would take a cutting from her big palm when the hurricane season ends. Come and see it before you decide. Bring the good coat, though, for the evenings can turn cold.

Your loving sister, Clara