Hello Dolly!

 The mystery is solved.  Our son and daughter-in-law left the 1943 card for us to find thinking I might know someone to give it to, and I think I do.  They bought it at a 'discount bin place' for 50 cents and worth every penny.  But even after I knew this, one part of the card kept running through my mind - the reference to a Betsy Wetsy doll.  I had a Betsy Wetsy doll.  Very "realistic" - you put a tiny bottle with water in it into its little open mouth and squeezed.  The doll 'drank' the water and pretty soon it came leaking out the other end into its little diaper.  I don't remember why that seemed like so much fun.  Dolls were a big part of my childhood.  When I was five my father built me a beautiful little cradle and Christmas morning it was under the tree with little twin baby dolls in it.  They didn't do anything but they were so cute.  I had a cousin just a year older than me and we played with dolls whenever we got together. I had one beautiful doll, a forerunner of the American Girl dolls. We had to replace the wig on that one after my younger brother (not my west coast brother) plucked all the fuzz off its head to rub under his nose while he sucked his thumb. There's nothing sadder than a beautiful doll with a big bald spot on the top of her head.  That doll went from being a curly red head to a blond with long braids.  There was a doll hospital in New Haven where the transformation took place.  In addition to real dolls, my cousin and I spent a lot of time playing with paper dolls - the little dolls with lots of cute clothes that came before Barbies.  We spent hours dressing those dolls in the costumes they came with, usually in book format where all the clothes needed to be cut out.  Being very careful not to cut off the tabs.  We also traced around the dolls and created our own fabulous styles.  Another wonderful source of paper clothes were the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs.  Those big fat books contained pages and pages of women's fashions and we could always find some that would fit our paper dolls.  Those dolls didn't come with beach houses or pink cars but I'm pretty sure we had just as much fun with them as little girls playing with Barbies do now.