Financial Guidance: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Frequently I am asked: “Is financial advice worth it?” The underlying question is whether, in the end, you will have more money or less for having paid for such advice.

The simple answer is that good financial guidance can easily be worth many, many times what is charged for it. On the other hand, a great deal of what passes for advice out there in the marketplace is worth nothing. The challenge lies in discriminating between the good, the bad, and the worthless.

It would take far more than one column to describe which financial assistance has real value. Indeed, it would take a book. A long journey begins with a single step, though, so let’s start with a few basic principles. Good financial advisors can give you extraordinary value by guiding you in what economists know to be true about investing, taxation, and finance and, most importantly, by using that knowledge for your benefit rather than that of their own.

It is worth noting that investment advice and financial advice are not at all the same thing. Financial advice concerns the entire range of economic issues facing your family, now and into the future. Investment advice, on the other hand, is a small subset of that. Investment advice alone is deeply inadequate as a means of planning one’s financial future. With that said, though, let’s think about investment guidance.

Economic science knows a great deal about investing, markets, and what actions an investor should take. By extension, highly trained economists have tremendous insight into what financial talk is nonsense, reflects nothing but random chance, or is dishonest. Using established economic facts as a polestar in financial decision making is one of the smartest things you can do. I am indebted to Apollo Lupescu, Ph.D., of Dimensional Fund Advisors, for suggesting the term evidence-based investing.

pullquoteAmong the ways that evidence-based guidance can help you are diversifying fully, avoiding excessive risk, understanding how markets actually work, changing investments efficiently, and holding costs to an absolute minimum. Beyond these, a skilled advisor can create tremendous value by optimizing the tax consequences of how you invest.

Taking advantage of the various preferences and pitfalls in the tax code can often put even more money into your pocket than excellent investment advice.

Most valuable of all, a worthwhile financial advisor can offer help in avoiding the excessive costs, bad ideas, scams, and “gotchas” that seem endemic in the financial arena. Perhaps because there is so much money at stake, there is no shortage of terrible advice. Robert J. Shiller and George A. Akerlof, both Nobel Prize-winning economists and authors, argue that as long as it is profitable, sellers will systematically exploit lack of knowledge and psychological vulnerabilities. Markets are not solely the bringers of material wealth and the greater good, say Shiller and Akerlof, they are also inherently filled with “tricks and traps and will ‘phish’ us as ‘phools.’”

The best financial advisors can deliver extraordinary value by using their superior knowledge, training, and diligence to steer us away from the promises of easy money and the very human inclination to make decisions by gut instinct. They must point like a laser at what economic science knows to be true. And if they will do all this as true professionals, with their sole intentions focused on what advances your best interests without being swayed by their own desires or needs, then they will truly be worth their weight in gold.

Why the FDA Is Bad News for Cancer Patients

image
Uphill struggle:
Cancer patients with precious little time need answers, but the FDA restricts and obstructs research, says the former head of the National Cancer Institute.
Illustration by Gwenda Kaczor

When I left the National Cancer Institute (NCI), I was proud of what I had done to reshape it into an organization capable of managing the war on cancer. But one challenge had eluded me: I was unable to persuade the administrators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the way they reviewed new cancer drugs. What might work when it came to a new diabetes drug or a cholesterol-lowering pill did not work for cancer drugs. The FDA’s failure to recognize this was impeding our progress. And patients who could have been saved were dying.

Admittedly, the FDA has the most difficult job of all government agencies. Whatever it does, it receives a barrage of criticism. The world outside the FDA seems to be split into two groups. The first includes the many lawyers, doctors, and activists who want every aspect of our food and our drugs to be examined in fine detail before being approved so that we can eliminate as many potential risks as possible. The second group again includes lawyers, doctors, and activists, but this group holds that new drugs are too tightly regulated and that we should relax regulations so we can get potentially lifesaving drugs to patients sooner. Many members of this second group also believe that what we eat is none of the FDA’s business.

If the FDA approves drugs rapidly, it angers the first group. If the FDA approves them too slowly, it angers the second. Of course, both groups have taken things too far. Most of us recognize that we need regulations; we don’t want the FDA to go away. But we do want it to get out of the way. We need some regulations, but we don’t need all that we have now.

Here’s an example of what I mean: aspirin, one of our truly miracle drugs. In its early testing, it produced adenomas (small benign tumors) in the lungs of mice. Nothing like that has been seen in humans, but if aspirin were being developed today, the presence of adenomas might prevent the pill’s approval. Aspirin, like all drugs, has some risks, but that doesn’t mean we should take it out of patients’ hands.

The FDA has brought criticism on itself by seeking (and getting) more and more control over our lives. Twenty-five percent of every dollar we spend in the United States goes to a product regulated by the FDA. The agency has more authority and control over our lives than almost any other government agency. Yet it still wants more.

To read the entire article, pick up the March/April 2016 issue of The Saturday Evening Post on newsstands or …

Purchase the digital edition for your iPad, Nook, or Android tablet:
order-now

To purchase a subscription to the print edition of The Saturday Evening Post: subscribe

Kids Need More Time Outdoors

America was still mired in the Depression when my family moved into the south Los Angeles neighborhood of 61st Street, just east of Main Street, which was characterized by peaceful stillness, interrupted in the afternoons and on weekends by the shouts of children at play. My brother Raul and I were 5 and 7 when we moved into that house, oblivious to the difficulties facing the nation.

On the contrary, we felt blessed by the abundant opportunities to explore nature in our new home, even as it stood in the middle of the big city. A bedraggled yucca plant stood in the middle of our front yard, besieged by crabgrass. Even there we found things to study up close and wonder at — the grasshoppers that hopped in during the summer months and the bright yellow dandelions that grew there in profusion. When the dents-de-lion went to seed, they became translucent globes that we held up and blew at to watch their tiny filaments fly off into the air and disappear.

Our summers provided endless opportunities for exploration, as well as a challenge for us to entertain ourselves on days that languidly stretched themselves ever longer.

In the heat of summer nights, as we sat in the front room, we heard loud pinging at the front door — hard-shelled June bugs that, attracted by the house lights, came crashing against the screen. We learned to coddle ladybugs and recite to them the verse that urged them to fly away home because their house was on fire.

Once in a great while, we saw turtles that we suspected were brought in from the desert and had wandered away from their keepers’ homes. We fed them lettuce leaves and looked on as they munched on them. Many were the times, especially when intense summer heat made staying indoors intolerable, when we played outside well into the night, our child sounds competing with the chirping of the crickets.

Nights in Los Angeles were very dark then, and the stars shone brightly. The sight of shooting stars was not uncommon in the era before we became a megalopolis. Occasionally, the darkness was pierced by enormous shafts of light that moved dramatically across the sky, from searchlights placed in front of a market or a carpet store announcing a grand opening. Or a movie premiere.

When the war came, I was in fifth grade. The nights became even darker, as blackouts were ordered to hide us from marauding Japanese planes. Several times, we heard the nighttime wailing of sirens that announced a practice air raid drill and alerted residents to prepare their windows with blackout curtains.

But for the most part, the real world didn’t intrude much in this realm where we were free to be children, even older siblings like me who were genetically programmed toward seriousness. Raul and I did a lot of digging and playing with dirt in our backyard. We spent many days on our knees, inspecting the legions of red ants that entered and exited holes they had dug in the ground. I’m not proud to confess that, like boys before and after us, we indulged in macabre experiments on the poor ants, involving a magnifying glass and concentrated sunrays. Enough said on that.

Digging in dirt was great fun. We flooded an area with water from the garden hose and ran it through little ditches we had dug, damming the water up at intervals with pieces of wood we half buried in the muck. We made little paper boats and sailed them down our boy-made rivers.

But the best way we used our dirt paradise was as a spot for playing a game at which we spent countless hours — marbles. Ernie, my friend from across the street, often joined us. Playing in dirt got us very dirty. We tried to avoid kneeling in the dirt by squatting, which didn’t work at all. We wore overalls, like the ones worn by farmers and garage mechanics, and canvas tennis shoes.

We flooded an area with water from the garden hose and ran it through little ditches we had dug, damming the water up at intervals with pieces of wood we half buried in the muck.

With a stick, we traced a large circle in the dirt and, in its center, placed several marbles that formed the pot we would play for. That is, assuming we were playing “for keeps.”

The boy whose marble stopped closest to a line drawn in the dirt played first. The shooter selected a spot on the circle and, forming a fist with his shooting hand, he knuckled down to play. With his thumb, he propelled a marble toward the pot with the aim of knocking one or more of the marbles out of the ring. He pocketed the ones he knocked out and earned another shot. If the shooter was very good, he could continue until all the marbles were knocked out.

We’d play for countless hours, so many that the fingernails of our right, shooting thumbs developed holes from the pressure of the hundreds of marbles they had propelled.

Marbles and other games taught us the importance of playing by the rules. Arguments occurred when a player insisted on not conforming to them. Ernie’s father, an otherwise extremely mild-mannered man, came over to our house one evening demanding of our parents, for Pete’s sake! the return of his son’s marbles. Losing one’s marbles was not a good thing, then or now.

In summertime, we’d also play a lot of tag with other neighborhood kids, as well as hide-and-seek. The cry of “olly olly oxen free” rang out, signaling the all clear when hiders could emerge from their hiding places. After Frankenstein became a cinematic sensation, the child who was “it” became the monster. The mere thought that a monster was on the hunt for us was chilling, even though we knew it was only a boy or a girl.

On hot summer days, the iceman from Kirker Ice Company made his customary rounds. While he was out of sight, lugging a block of ice into our house for the ice box, children clustered around the back of his truck, packed floor-to-ceiling with ice, and engaged in a harmless but refreshing bit of thievery, helping ourselves to shards of ice that remained on the damp truck bed.

We had roller skates that we fitted over our shoes and tightened against the leather sole. A neat little metal key did the tightening. We skated only on the sidewalk. I never got the hang of braking so I just headed onto the grass until I stopped moving.

Police radio dramas and cowboy movies were popular at the time, and boys liked to wear badges. We made our own. The metal caps of soft drink bottles were lined with cork that we pried out. Then we held the metal cap on the outside of our shirts and pushed the cork into the cap from the inside. The cap stayed put. We became walking advertisements for soft drinks, including that new drink, Dr. Pepper. We wore holster sets that handled two pistols — the large, silver-colored ones being the most popular. Some boys had BB guns that actually shot steel or lead pellets. We didn’t. Mother considered them dangerous and beyond the pale.

Flying kites was fun, too. Raul was much better than I at maneuvering a kite, running to get it airborne and flying like a good kite should. Mine had a maddening tendency to fly in frustrating circles. And then crash.

On especially hot days, we made use of the garden hose and sprinkler that we set in the middle of the lawn. Other neighborhood children would join in as we frolicked around in our bathing suits through the fountain of cool water the sprinkler created for us. Loose grass and weeds and little twigs stuck to the bottoms of our feet.

When you’re 10, your summer is one big block of freedom to be a kid. When it’s 4:18 p.m. in the middle of July and you’re scraping those twigs off your feet and laughing with your friends, the life ahead of you is one of infinite possibility. Mostly, all things, starting with your own imagination, just seem wondrously infinite. I worry that kids today aren’t allowed such space.

As we grew older, the summers got shorter, and our playtime scarcer, until it all became a sepia-tinted memory in a life full of purpose, work, and seriousness.

But that’s another story.


Originally published at Zócalo Public Square (zocalopublicsquare.org)

Lights Out!

Darkness.

As power shuts down, there is darkness and the sudden loss of electrical conveniences. As batteries lose power, there is the more gradual failure of cellphones, portable radios, and flashlights.

Emergency generators provide pockets of light and power, but there is little running water anywhere. In cities with water towers on the roofs of high-rise buildings, gravity keeps the flow going for two, perhaps three days. When this runs out, taps go dry; toilets no longer flush. Emergency supplies of bottled water are too scarce to use for anything but drinking, and there is nowhere to replenish the supply. Disposal of human waste becomes a critical issue within days.

Supermarket and pharmacy shelves are empty in a matter of hours. The city has flooded the streets with police to preserve calm, to maintain order, but the police themselves lack critical information. There is a growing awareness that this power outage extends far beyond any particular city and its suburbs. It may extend over several states. Tens of millions of people appear affected. The assumption that the city, the state, or even the federal government has the plans and the wherewithal to handle this particular crisis is being replaced by the terrible sense that people are increasingly on their own. When that awareness takes hold, it leads to a contagion of panic and chaos.

Preparing for doomsday has its own rich history in this country, and predictions of the apocalypse are hardly new. We lived for decades with the assumption that nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a real possibility. Ultimately, Moscow and Washington came to the conclusion that mutual assured destruction, holding each other hostage to the fear of nuclear reprisal, was a healthier approach to coexistence than mass evacuation or hunkering down in our respective warrens of bomb shelters in the hopes of surviving a nuclear winter.

We are living in different times. Whether the threat of nuclear war has actually receded or we’ve simply become inured to a condition we cannot change, most of us have finally learned “to stop worrying and love the bomb.” In reality, though, the ranks of our enemies, those who would and can inflict serious damage on America, have grown and diversified. So many of our transactions are now conducted in cyberspace that we have developed dependencies we could not even have imagined a generation ago. To be dependent is to be vulnerable. We have grown cheerfully dependent on the benefits of our online transactions, even as we observe the growth of cyber crime. We remain largely oblivious to the potential catastrophe of a well-targeted cyberattack.

On one level, cyber crime is now so commonplace that we have already absorbed it into the catalogue of daily outrages that we observe, briefly register, and ultimately ignore. Over the course of less than a generation, cyber criminals have become adept at using the Internet for robbery on an almost unimaginable scale. Still, despite the media attention generated by the more dazzling smash-and-grab operations, the cyber criminals whose only intention is to siphon off wealth or hijack several million credit card identities should have a lower priority among our concerns. Their goal is merely grand larceny.

More worrisome is the increasing number of cyberattacks designed to vacuum up enormous quantities of data in what appear to be wholesale intelligence-gathering operations. The most ambitious of these was announced on June 4, 2015, and targeted the Office of Personnel Management, which handles government security clearances and federal employee records. The New York Times quoted J. David Cox Sr., the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, as saying the breach might have affected “all 2.1 million current federal employees and an additional 2 million federal retirees and former employees.” FBI director James Comey told a Senate hearing that the actual number of hacked files was likely more than 10 times that number — 22.1 million. Government sources were quoted as claiming that the intrusion originated in China. The Times report raises a number of relevant issues: The probe was initiated at the end of 2014. It wasn’t discovered until April of 2015. It is believed to have originated in China, but the Chinese government has denied the charge, challenging U.S. authorities to provide evidence. Producing evidence would reveal highly classified sources and methods. “The most sophisticated attacks,” the Times noted, “often look as if they were initiated inside the United States, and tracking their true paths can lead down many blind paths.” All of these issues will receive further attention in later chapters. But as disturbing as these massive data-collection operations may be, even they do not come close to representing the greatest cyber threat. Our attention needs to be focused on those who intend widespread destruction.

The Internet provides instant, often anonymous, access to the operations that enable our critical infrastructure systems to function safely and efficiently. In early March 2015, the Government Accountability Office issued a report warning that the air traffic control system is vulnerable to cyberattack. This, the report concluded with commendable understatement, “could disrupt air traffic control operations.” Our rail system, our communications networks, and our healthcare system are similarly vulnerable. If, however, an adversary of this country has as its goal inflicting maximum damage and pain on the largest number of Americans, there may not be a more productive target than one of our electric power grids.

Electricity is what keeps our society tethered to modern times. There are three power grids that generate and distribute electricity throughout the United States, and taking down all or any part of a grid would scatter millions of Americans in a desperate search for light, while those unable to travel would tumble back into something approximating the mid-19th century. The very structure that keeps electricity flowing throughout the United States depends absolutely on computerized systems designed to maintain perfect balance between supply and demand. Maintaining that balance is not an accounting measure, it is an operational imperative. The point needs to be restated: For the grid to remain fully operational, the supply and demand of electricity have to be kept in perfect balance. It is the Internet that provides the instant access to the computerized systems that maintain that equilibrium. If a sophisticated hacker gained access to one of those systems and succeeded in throwing that precarious balance out of kilter, the consequences would be devastating. We can take limited comfort in the knowledge that such an attack would require painstaking preparation and a highly sophisticated understanding of how the system works and where its vulnerabilities lie. Less reassuring is the knowledge that several nations already have that expertise, and — even more unsettling — that criminal and terrorist organizations are in the process of acquiring it. Our media report daily on increasingly bold and costly acts of online piracy that are already costing the U.S. economy countless billions of dollars a year. Cyberattacks as instruments of national policy, though, tend to be less visible because neither the target nor the attacker is inclined to publicize the event.

image
America unplugged: “There are three power grids that generate and distribute electricity throughout the United States, and taking down all or any part of a grid would scatter millions of Americans in a desperate search for light.
NASA/Shutterstock

History often provides a lens through which irony comes into focus. The United States, for example, was the first and only nation to have used an atomic weapon, and it has spent the intervening decades trying to limit nuclear proliferation. And the United States, in collaboration with Israel, mounted a hugely successful cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2008 and now finds itself dealing with the consequences of having been the first to use a digital weapon as an instrument of policy. Iran wasted little time in launching what appeared to be a retaliatory cyberattack, choosing to target Aramco in Saudi Arabia, destroying 30,000 of its computers. Why the Saudi oil giant instead of an American or Israeli target? We can only speculate. Iran may have wanted to issue a warning, demonstrating some of its own cyber capabilities without directly engaging the more dangerous Americans or Israelis. In any event, Iran made its point, and a new style of warfare has, within a matter of only a few years, become commonplace. Russia, China, and Iran, among others, continue on an almost daily basis to demonstrate a range of cyber capabilities in espionage, denial-of-service attacks, and the planting of digital time bombs capable of inflicting widespread damage on a U.S. power grid or other piece of critical infrastructure.

For several reasons, the clear logic of a swift attack and response that enables a policy of deterrence between nuclear rivals does not yet exist in the world of cyber warfare. For one, cyberattacks can be launched or activated from anywhere in the world. The point at which a command originates is often deliberately disguised so that its electronic instruction appears to be coming from a point several iterations removed from its actual location. It is difficult to retaliate against an aggressor with no return address. Nation-states may be inhibited by the prospect of ultimately being unmasked, but it is not easily or instantly accomplished. For another, the list of capable cyberattackers is far more numerous than the current list of the world’s nuclear powers. We literally have no count of how many groups or even individuals are capable of launching truly damaging attacks on our electric power grids — some, perhaps even most of them, uninhibited by the threat of retaliation.

There is scant consolation to be found in the fact that a major attack on the grid hasn’t happened yet. Modified attacks on government, banking, commercial, and infrastructure targets are already occurring daily, and while sufficient motive to take out an electric power grid may be lacking for the moment, capability is not. As the ranks of capable actors grow, the bar for cyber aggression is lowered. The unintended consequences of Internet dependency are already piling up. Prudence suggests that we at least consider the possibility of a cyberattack against the grid, the consequences of which would be so devastating that no administration could consider it anything less than an act of war.

Ours has become a largely reactive culture. We are disinclined to anticipate disaster, let alone prepare for it. We wait for bad things to happen and then we assign blame. Despite mounting evidence of cyber crime and cyber sabotage, there appears to be widespread confidence that each can be contained before it inflicts unacceptable damage. The notion that some entity has either the ability or the motive to launch a sophisticated cyberattack against our nation’s infrastructure, and in particular against our electric power grids, exists, if at all, on the outer fringes of public consciousness. It is true that unless and until it happens, there is no proof that it can; for now, what we are left with, for better or worse, is the testimony of experts. There will be more than a few who take issue with the conclusions of this reporter that the grid is at risk. But the book from which this article is taken reflects the assessment of those in the military and intelligence communities and the academic, industrial, and civic authorities who brought me to the conclusion that it is.

Widespread recognition of the vulnerability of our power grids already exists. Lots of smart people are already offering partial remedies and grappling with solutions. But there is not yet widespread recognition that we have entered a new age in which we are profoundly vulnerable in ways that we have never known before, and so there is neither a sense of national alarm nor the leadership to take us where we need to go. Our national leaders are in a precarious place. They recognize the scale of danger that a successful cyberattack represents. However, portraying it too graphically without having developed practical solutions runs the obvious risk of simply provoking public hysteria.

The clear logic of a swift attack and response that enables a policy of deterrence between nuclear rivals does not yet exist in the world of cyber warfare.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in an atmosphere of national trauma. The world’s greatest superpower was made to realize its vulnerability to a handful of men armed with box cutters. We remain distracted to this day by the prospects of retail terrorism when we should be focused on the wholesale threat of cyber catastrophe. In such an event, the Department of Homeland Security would be working with industry to help them restore and maintain service. It should be focused on developing a more robust survival and recovery program for the general public; but DHS has neither the capacity to defend our national infrastructure against cyberattack nor the wherewithal with which to retaliate. A criminal attack would be the responsibility of the FBI; an attack on infrastructure by a nation-state or a terrorist entity would become the immediate responsibility of the Defense Department. Anticipating and tracking external cyber threats to U.S. infrastructure should be, by virtue of capability if nothing else, the responsibility of the NSA.

Limits that were established in a different era still exist on paper, but they are eroding in practice. The CIA is precluded, by law, from operating within the United States, but maintaining national boundaries in cyberspace may be impossible. Cyber Command is a military operation tasked with organizing the defense of U.S. military networks. The extent to which it can participate in the defense of critical infrastructure within the United States remains murky, but sidelining critical U.S. defense capabilities because we haven’t quite adapted to the notion that a major cyberattack can be as devastating as an invasion makes no sense.

The imposition of order, the distribution of essential supplies, the establishment of shelters for the most vulnerable, the potential management of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of domestic refugees will be complex enough if the general public knows what to expect and what to do. In the absence of any targeted preparation, in the absence of any serious civil defense campaign that acknowledges the likelihood of such an attack, predictable disorder will be compounded by a profound lack of information. It would be the ultimate irony if the most connected, the most media-saturated population in history failed to disseminate the most elementary survival plan until the power was out and it no longer had the capacity to do so.

There is, as yet, no real sense of alarm attached to the prospect of cyber war. The initial probes — into our banks and credit card companies, into newspapers and government agencies — have tended to leave us unmoved. Past experience in preparing for the unexpected teaches us that, more often than not, we get it wrong. It also teaches that there is value in the act of searching for answers. Acknowledging ignorance is often the first step toward finding a solution. The next step entails identifying the problem.

Here it is: For the first time in the history of warfare, governments need to worry about force projection by individual laptop. Those charged with restoring the nation after such an attack will have to come to terms with the notion that the Internet, among its many, many virtues, is also a weapon of mass destruction.


image
Lights Out by Ted Koppel
Crown Publishers

Adapted from Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a
Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, Copyright © 2015 by Ted Koppel. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

November/December 2015 Limerick Laughs Winner and Runners-Up

Dad wobbling on ice skates with son and daughter at each arm

Right now I am seeking assurance
As I start on this test of endurance.
It’s not that I fear
Falling hard on my rear;
It’s worry about my insurance!

—Adele Suga, Vassalboro, Maine

Congratulations to contest-winner Adele Suga! For her limerick describing the George Hughes illustration Ice-skating Class for Dad (above), Adele wins $25 and our gratitude for an entertaining poem. If you’d like to enter the Limerick Laughs Contest for our next issue of The Saturday Evening Post, submit your limerick via our online entry form.

Adele’s limerick wasn’t the only one we liked. Here are some of our other favorite contest entries, in no particular order:

This awkward young dad’s in a bind,
But his teachers are patient and kind.
He’s learning a skill
With a slippery drill
That will yield a most sore behind!

—Rose Hester, Brooklyn, New York

He thought he would gracefully glide;
Instead he did clumsily slide.
With his offspring at hand,
He was able to stand,
So all that he hurt was his pride.

—Carolyn Tourville, Tullahoma, Tennessee

We didn’t just go ’cause we HAD to …
To skate with our Dad, we were GLAD to.
“You kids will do great
Once I teach you to skate!”
But we ended up teaching our DAD to.

Our Dad enjoys making the case
That skating is all about grace:
“It’s rhythmic, poetic,
Refined and aesthetic…”
HEY, DAD JUST FELL FLAT ON HIS FACE!!!

—Guy Pietrobono, Washingtonville, New York

On Wall Street, a respected CO.
On the ice … he just couldn’t go.
With some slides and some slids,
Even help from his kids,
He always ended up in the snow!

—Marlayne Jackson, New Cumberland, Pennsylvania

When it came to outdoorsy-type stuff,
My dad liked things rugged and rough.
But when it was icy,
Things got a bit dicey.
It turned out he wasn’t so tough.

—Neal Levin, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

“That looks so easy,” he cried.
“I got this — shuffle and glide.”
Now Dad’s steering is errant,
His lost balance apparent.
Here comes a THUD to his pride.

—Dan Rogers, Garland, Texas

The Wonderful World of Dr. Seuss

In the summer of 1957, Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, had just published a children’s primer called The Cat in the Hat, and his newest story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was ready for publication later that year. It was during this interlude that Geisel granted his first Post interview with Robert Cahn, revealing why he became Dr. Seuss, the simple reason he draws the way he does, and the undeniable effect his wife, Helen, has had on his career.

The Wonderful World of Dr. Seuss
By Robert Cahn

July 6, 1957 — Theodor Geisel, alias Dr. Seuss, has captured the imagination of millions of children with his fanciful spoofs: Gerald McBoing-Boing, the Drum-Tummied Snumm, and other creatures from a world of happy nonsense.

For a man whose mind is inhabited by such creatures as a Mop-Noodled Finch, a Salamagoox, or a Bustard — “who only eats custard with sauce made of mustard” — Theodor S. Geisel looks disarmingly rational. As the renowned Dr. Seuss (rhymes with “goose”), he is not, as a few children have pictured him, a wizened old man with flowing white beard. He is whiskerless, has the standard number of arms and legs, and lives quietly with his wife and dog on a hill overlooking La Jolla, California.

Yet for the past thirty years, under the protective alias of Dr. Seuss, Ted Geisel has been an apostle of joyous nonsense. He has fathered a whole modern mythology of bizarre creatures like the Remarkable Foon, “who eats sizzling hot pebbles that fall off the moon,” or the Drum-Tummied Snumm, “who can drum any tune that you might care to hum—doesn’t hurt him a bit ’cause his drum-tummy’s numb.” He has created young Gerald McBoing-Boing, the little boy who cannot speak, but makes sound effects instead. And he is still remembered for the impertinent bugs he concocted along with his famous advertising slogan: Quick, Henry, the Flit!

His annual output of picture books, like Horton Hatches the Egg, Thidwick the Big- Hearted Moose, and On Beyond Zebra, have become a part of the basic children’s literature of the country. They are in constant use at the overseas libraries of the United States Information Agency and have been translated into several foreign languages, including Japanese.

In suburban La Jolla, however, Geisel’s madcap alter ego is completely obscured. Here Theodor Seuss Geisel — Seuss is his mother’s family name — is considered a paragon of propriety. He is a director of the town council, and a trustee of the neighboring San Diego Fine Arts Gallery. His hair is cut regularly, his shoes are always shined, and he gives up his chair when ladies are standing.

The first impression of conservatism is emphasized by his polite attentiveness, not unlike that of a middle-aged bank vice president. Slim and tall, he has graying dark hair parted more or less in the middle. He is as sharp-eyed as a bird, with a long aquiline nose and a wide mouth which has a habit of twisting into puckish grins. And he speaks in the terse hesitancies of the painfully shy man.

But beneath this outer austerity beats a wildly impulsive heart. Even with the most serious intentions, the mind of Ted Geisel is so fanciful that he has never been able completely to subdue it. And he depends at all times on the levelheadedness of his wife, Helen, to pull him out of entanglements in which he has become errantly involved. Yet the unorthodox appearance of the Seuss animals is not entirely due to Geisel’s imagination. The fact is, as Geisel admits, “I just never learned to draw.”

“Ted never studied art or anatomy,” explains Helen. “He puts in joints where he thinks they should be. Elbows and knees have always especially bothered him. Horton is the very best elephant he can draw, but if he stopped to figure out how the knees went, he couldn’t draw him.”

Although the greatest audience for his animals is children, the nonsensical creatures are also in great demand among advertisers seeking a humorous presentation for their products. Sometimes, however, his business clients have lacked the willing imagination of his younger devotees. Once he had to do a horned goat for a billboard. The job was done and paid for, and everyone seemed happy, when the phone rang.

“Now, Geisel, about that goat,” said the advertising-agency executive. “We like it here and it’s a fine goat, but there is just one little thing wrong. Our client thinks it looks like a duck. So would you mind doing us another one?”

To resolve the problem, Geisel drew a duck and submitted it. The client called him up. “Geisel,” he said, “it’s perfect. Best goat I ever saw.”

Children, of course, understand and accept Geisel’s pictures, a fact which led to an unusual assignment two years ago during the height of the controversy over why Johnny can’t read. Textbook publishers and some educators and parents had realized that one trouble was that Johnny’s reader wasn’t readable. Most creators of children’s primers, though experts in form, failed miserably as storytellers. What was required, the publishers knew, was the kind of story that would lead a child from page to page with suspense and delight. Yet most writers were unwilling to accept the severe vocabulary limitations required for a first-grade reader.

Into the impasse stepped Geisel. He offered his services to one of the nation’s leading textbook publishers and was assigned to prepare a book that six-year-olds could read themselves. Unfortunately, the situation soon got out of hand.

“All I needed, I figured, was to find a whale of an exciting subject which would make the average six-year-old want to read like crazy,” says Geisel. “None of the old dull stuff: Dick has a ball. Dick likes the ball. The ball is red, red, red, red.”

His first offer to the publisher was to do a book about scaling the peaks of Everest at sixty degrees below zero.

“Truly exciting,” the publisher agreed. “However, you can’t use the word scaling, you can’t use the word peaks, you can’t use Everest, you can’t use sixty, and you can’t use degrees.

Geisel shortly found himself with a list of 348 words, most of them one-syllable words, which the average six-year-old could recognize — and not a Yuzz-A-Ma-Tuzz or Salamagoox among them. To one who was used to making up new words at will, it was a catastrophe. And yet the publisher had said, “Create a rollicking carefree story packed with action and tingling with suspense.”

Six months after accepting the assignment, Geisel was still staring at the word list, trying to find some words besides ball and tall that rhymed. The list had a daddy, but it didn’t have a caddy. It had a thank, but it had no blank, frank, or stank. Page after page of scrawls was piled in his den. He had accumulated stories which moved along in fine style but got nowhere. One story about a King Cat and a Queen Cat was half finished before he realized that the word queen was not on the list.

One night, when he was almost ready to give up, there emerged from a jumble of sketches a raffish cat wearing a battered stovepipe hat. Geisel checked his list—both hat and cat were on it. Gradually he worked himself out of one literary dead end after another until he had completed his children’s reader.

The Cat in the Hat was published last spring by Houghton Mifflin as a supplementary school text for first graders, and in a popular edition by Random House. It already has been greeted enthusiastically by parents and educators. The story line concerns fanciful adventures occurring when a vagrant cat drops in to play with two small children while their mother is out. The verse, composed from only 220 different basic words, has a delightful meter and builds repetitions through devices such as the cat adding object after object to a juggling act. And the drawings, of course, are pure Seuss.

Although the principal character of The Cat in the Hat turns out all right in the end, he is not quite in keeping with most Seuss animals, which are usually gentle, loving, and true blue. Horton, for instance, is a long-suffering elephant who sits on the egg of Mayzie the Lazy Bird through 12 trouble-filled months. And Thidwick is a moss-munching moose who is victimized by an inconsiderate assortment of freeloading friends nesting in his antlers.

“Ted’s animals are the sort you’d like to take home to meet the family,” says Helen. “They have their own world and their own problems and they seem very logical to me.”

Ted first met Helen Palmer in 1925, at Oxford. Young Geisel was studying English literature, seeking a doctor’s degree so that he could qualify for the faculty at Dartmouth, his alma mater. In one of his classes, he found himself sitting next to an attractive young schoolmarm-to-be who kept admiring the flying horses he doodled in the margin of his notebook.

“I was naturally flattered,” says Geisel, “and in a short time the horses were taking up the middle of my notebook, and my Shakespeare notes — such as they were — were in the margins.”

Within a year, Helen Palmer and Theodor Geisel were engaged. Aware that Ted loved drawing better than studying Shakespeare, Helen encouraged him to forsake temporarily his scholarship quest. In the spring of 1927, Geisel returned to his family home in Springfield, Massachusetts. For 10 weeks he drew cats, elephants, bears, and rejection slips. His family was not especially pleased that their son had junked a promising career as an educator in favor of concocting knock-kneed brown bears. On the other hand, Theodor Geisel, Sr., felt partly responsible. After all, as commissioner of parks in Springfield, he had long had a doting interest in the city zoo, where young Ted had often entered the lion cages, and had played with the kangaroos and cub bears.

Toward the end of the trial period, Geisel’s artistic talents finally were recognized when The Saturday Evening Post bought a cartoon for $25. Geisel moved to New York, sold a page of eggnog-drinking turtles to Judge, a humor magazine, and parlayed the fee into a grubstake for marriage.

It was not as Theodor Geisel that he first broke into print. Desiring to save his name for the great serious work he planned someday to write, he adopted aliases such as Quincy Quilp, Dr. Xavier Ruppzknoff, and Dr. Theophrastus Seuss.He finally settled on just plain Dr. Seuss.

It was an early Dr. Seuss cartoon published by Judge late in 1927 that abruptly changed his life. The cartoon showed a knight in bed, with armor strewn about the castle room and a dragon sticking his snout under the covers. It bore the caption, “By gosh, another dragon! And just after I’d sprayed the whole castle with Flit.”

The cartoon caught the eye of Mrs. Lincoln Cleaves, wife of a McCann-Erickson advertising executive who handled the Flit account for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. For three weeks Mrs. Cleaves badgered her husband to contact this Dr. Seuss, whoever he was. Finally weakening, Cleaves agreed. Geisel was signed to a contract, and he quickly created the slogan, “Quick, Henry, the Flit.”

A major crisis arose early in the campaign. Some company officials felt the Seuss bugs looked so sweet and lovable that no one would want to use Flit to kill them. Geisel finally convinced the executives that this was just part of a scheme to overcome women’s natural reluctance to think about bugs. “Quick, Henry, the Flit” became a standard line of repartee in radio jokes. A song was based on it. The phrase became a part of the American vernacular for use in emergencies. It was the first major advertising campaign to be based on humorous cartoons.

But Geisel had to find additional outlets for the stream of his invention. For several years he built up his own fleet, the “Seuss Navy,” as a promotion for Standard Oil’s Essomarine products. He awarded honorary admirals’ commissions in the Seuss Navy to noted yachtsmen, steamship-line captains, and naval officers and presided over a yearly banquet for the group. The Seuss admirals even flew their own burgee—a plucked herring on blue field with red trim.

As an added outlet for his fancies, Geisel dreamed up devices to make a fortune. One scheme was for an “Infantagraph.” It was just before the opening of the New York World’s Fair, when everyone was thinking of ways to make money from the out-of-towners who would swarm out to Flushing Meadows. Musing over these vistas of dollar bills, Geisel envisioned a booth on the midway with a huge sign: IF YOU WERE TO MARRY THE PERSON YOU ARE WITH, WHAT WOULD YOUR CHILDREN LOOK LIKE? COME IN AND HAVE YOUR INFANTAGRAPH TAKEN. Certainly this come-on should bring couples into the booth in droves. There they would be photographed, and out would come a composite picture of their features on a naked baby sprawled on a white bearskin rug.

All that was necessary was to devise a camera which could do the trick. Geisel acquired financing and brought a German camera technician to New York from Hollywood. A camera was built. Tests showed that the project was feasible. However, there were many problems, especially in preventing a mustache from coming through on the baby’s picture. They couldn’t perfect the camera while the fair was on, and the enterprise terminated when the war prevented importation of special lenses from Germany.

“It was a wonderful idea,” Geisel says. “Somehow, though, all the babies tended to look like William Randolph Hearst.”

Yet out of the restlessness of the Flit days, there came a rewarding byproduct. Trying to while away the hours on a long, rough Atlantic crossing in 1937, Ted began composing verses to the rhythm of the Kungsholm’s pulsing engines. “Ta-da-da-ta-da-da-ta-da-da-ta-da,” went the engines. “And that is the story that no one can beat,” wrote Geisel. “Ta-da-da-ta-da-da-ta-da-da-ta-da,” went the ship. “If I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.”

“My contract had nothing to prohibit my writing children’s books,” says Geisel. “When we docked in New York, instead of going to a psychiatrist to get that crazy rhythm out of my head, I decided to illustrate the verses for a children’s book.” After turndowns from several publishers, Geisel interested Marshall (Mike) McClintock, a Dartmouth classmate who was working for Vanguard Press. Vanguard decided to take a chance, and in 1937 published And To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.

Mulberry Street, which relates how a little boy lets his imagination run loose while walking home from school, is today in its 11th printing. It is still in demand at bookstores and libraries, although it must now compete with 12 other Seuss picture books.

Three of them —The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, The King’s Stilts, and Bartholomew and the Oobleck — are in prose and have sometimes been compared to the stories of Hans Christian Andersen.

In all his books, Dr. Seuss starts out with a premise so believably fantastic that what follows seems entirely logical. Thus, in On Beyond Zebra, once you admit that the alphabet can extend beyond Z, it follows that the letter Um is for spelling Umbus:

A sort of a cow, with one head and one tail,
But to milk this great cow you need more than one pail!
She has ninety-eight faucets that give milk quite nicely.
Perhaps ninety-nine. I forget just precisely.
And, boy! She is something most people don’t see
Because most people stop at the Z
But not me!

The all-time Seuss favorite is Horton Hatches the Egg, which in 1956 sold 15,000 copies, three times as many as when first published in 1940. Horton, a loyal, lovable elephant, gets conned by Mayzie the Lazy Bird into hatching her egg. Horton sits and sits and sits, though ridiculed by friends, frozen by cold, captured by hunters, and finally sold to a circus. When Mayzie returns to claim the egg, just as it starts hatching, it seems that Horton’s faithfulness will go unrewarded. But wait! Coming out of the egg and flying over to Horton is an Elephant-Bird, with ears and tail and a trunk just like his.

And it should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!
Because Horton was faithful! He sat and he sat!
He meant what he said and he said what he meant
And they sent him home happy, one hundred per cent.

Soon after his first book had been published, the demands on a successful author brought Ted Geisel face to face with a long-standing dread of making public appearances. He was then living in New York and he casuallyagreed to speak at a young women’s college in Westchester, thinking he had ample time to contrive an excuse to get out of it. Unfortunately he forgot the engagement until too late to break it. When Helen insisted that he live up to his agreement, he pleaded sudden illness to no avail. Finally he departed. A couple of hours later, the school called to inquire what was keeping Mr. Geisel. Alarmed, Helen instituted a search. She called his publisher, his friends, then hospitals, but he was nowhere to be found. When Geisel finally returned home, it was discovered that instead of taking the train to Westchester he had hidden out all afternoon at Grand Central Station.

As happens sooner or later with most writers, Geisel has had hit-and-run encounters with Hollywood. During the war, he was an officer with Frank Capra’s educational-film unit and won the Legion of Merit for helping to produce and direct indoctrination films. Shortly after the war, he teamed with Helen to write a screenplay about the rise of the war lords in Japan. The picture, Design for Death, won the 1947 Academy Award for the best feature-length documentary.

In 1951, Geisel created the character of Gerald McBoing-Boing. Young Gerald, whose first words were boing, boing instead of da-da or ma-ma, was originally written for a phonograph record as a satire on parents who fear that slowness in learning to speak indicates a child is dimwitted. The movie cartoon of Geisel’s story won an Academy Award for U.P.A. — United Productions of America — and for Gerald a place in the folklore of America.

In La Jolla, Ted Geisel, citizen, far outranks Dr. Seuss, artist and writer. In addition to his work on the town council and with the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, he has a special interest. This is to protect La Jolla from Creeping Urbanization. When Ted and Helen Geisel went to La Jolla in 1940, it was a quiet village mostly populated by the wealthy and retired. They bought an old tower on the highest hill and built a house around it. Then came the burgeoning growth of Southern California. Soon they found themselves in the landing path of jet planes, while the town below was invaded by big spenders. A pox of garish neon lights began to blight the community.

While he could not stop the tourist invasion or the jet planes, Geisel has been the prime mover in a campaign to ban commercial billboards and objectionable signs in La Jolla. He even enlisted Dr. Seuss to do an illustrated booklet. In it, two competitive cave men, Guss and Zaxx, engaged in a war to ballyhoo their products, Guss-ma-Tuss and Zaxx-ma-Taxx. Horrendous signs spring up all around, dwarfing their cave sites:

And, thus between them, with impunity
They loused up the entire community.
Sign after sign after sign, until
Their property values slumped to nil.
And even the dinosaurs moved away
From that messed-up spot in the U.S.A.

In their tower, the Geisels have a relatively quiet oasis. Their two-acre spot is screened by hundreds of flowering shrubs. Inside the house, all is in perfect order except the den, where Ted spends hours at his drawing board. He loves to draw, but hates to write, and sometimes will spend hours just drawing animals on large sheets of tracing paper. Many of his books, he confesses, have had their start by accident. Horton Hatches the Egg came about because Geisel inadvertently superimposed an elephant over the branches of a small tree he had drawn earlier. So he worked for days trying to figure how Horton could have got into the tree. Then Helen had to figure out how to get Horton down.

The process of turning out a Seuss book is definitely a family affair. “I keep losing my story line and Helen has to find it again,” says Geisel. “She’s a fiend for story line.”

Once the basic idea is set, nearly every line is worked and reworked until both Ted and Helen are satisfied. Geisel’s workroom is always littered with swatches of verses pinned to sketches or taped to a large plate-glass window overlooking the ocean.

All business affairs are run by Helen. Checkbooks confuse Ted, who prefers to count only in large round numbers. Helen also tries to protect Ted from visitors, although in this area she is not always successful. At the slightest provocation, Geisel will halt his work and lead the visitor into the den, where he displays the sketches for his latest book and enthusiastically reads off the verses. There is little doubt that Ted Geisel is himself the first small child for whom he writes.

A few weeks ago, the Geisel household was in one of its “deadline-time-again” emergencies. As usual, Dr. Seuss was in trouble because Geisel couldn’t figure out an ending. He had started off with a wonderful idea — he would do a Christmas book. A bad old Grinch would try to stop Christmas from coming to Who-ville. The suspense had built panel by panel as the little Whos got all their gifts and trees and fixings ready while the Grinch plotted his devilish mission. Then came the stumbling block. How could he end it without being maudlin?

“Helen, Helen, where are you?” Geisel shouted, emerging from his den into the living room. “How do you like this?” he said, dropping a sketch and verse in her lap.

Helen shook her head. Geisel’s face dropped. “No,” she said, “this isn’t it. And besides, you’ve got the papa Who too big. Now he looks like a bug.”

“Well, they are bugs,” said Geisel defensively.

“They are not bugs,” replied Helen. “Those Whos are just small people.”

Geisel retreated to his den to fix the picture and try again with the verses. The dilemma was finally resolved, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas will be published this fall.

On occasion the mother of a young Dr. Seuss follower may wish that the author were less imaginative, especially if her eight-year-old has just ruined two dozen eggs while trying to make Scrambled Eggs Super-dee-Dooper. But most parents consider the Seuss books surefire bedtime stories and are pleased by the hidden gems of wisdom. In Horton Hears a Who, for instance, kind Horton protects the microcosmic inhabitants of a kingdom which exists on a dust speck — “For a person’s a person, no matter how small.” The Whos, about to be boiled in a Beezle-Nut stew because their voices cannot be heard by the outside world, are finally saved when a lone shirker adds his tiny “Yopp” to the united efforts of the citizenry.

And that Yopp, that one small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From that speck on that clover
Their voices were heard! They rang out clear and clean.
And the elephant smiled. “Do you see what I mean?”
They’ve proved they are persons, no matter how small.
And their whole world was saved by the smallest of all!

“In our books there is usually a point, if you want to find it,” says Geisel. “But we have discovered that the kids don’t want to feel you are trying to push something down their throats. So when we have a moral, we try to tell it sideways.

Although the Geisels are childless, Ted long ago invented a daughter to vie with the progeny of their friends. Chrysanthemum-Pearl, to whom one of his books is lovingly dedicated, is a comfort to the Geisels, especially when the after-dinner conversation swings around to children and grandchildren. As might be expected, Chrysanthemum-Pearl is a precocious girl who has been able to “whip up the most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and flaming Roman candles,” or who can “carry 1000 stitches on one needle while making long red underdrawers for her Uncle Terwilliger.”

Despite his label as a “children’s author,” Geisel refuses to write down to children. Because of this viewpoint, the Dr. Seuss books are enjoyed by the parents as well as the youngsters. And though contributors to the children’s-book field are often snubbed by the literati, Geisel finally received his reward. One June day in 1955, he was called back to the Dartmouth College commencement exercises.

“Theodor Seuss Geisel, creator of fanciful beasts,” the college president read from a scroll as Geisel walked to the front of the platform. “As author and artist you singlehandedly have stood as Saint George between a generation of parents and the demon dragon of exhausted children on a rainy day. You have stood these many years in the shadow of your learned friend, Dr. Seuss. But the time has come when the good doctor would want you to walk by his side as a full equal. Dartmouth therefore confers on you her Doctorate of Humane Letters.”

Occasionally these days, Doctor Geisel runs into someone who slaps him on the back and says, “Geisel, with all your education, you should be able to do better. There must be some way you could crack the adult field.”

Geisel raises an eyebrow, then smiles. “Write for adults?” he replies. “Why, they’re just obsolete children.”

This isn’t the only time Dr. Seuss has appeared in the pages of the Post. Find out more about him in “The Unforgettable Dr. Seuss.”

Fiction by Dalton Trumbo

Rooting for Bryan Cranston for the Oscar win? Before settling in to watch the 2016 Academy Awards, brush up on fiction by Dalton Trumbo (played by Best Actor nominee Cranston in Trumbo) from our archive:

Woman covering ears

“Darling Bill—” by Dalton Trumbo

April 20, 1935
A love-struck Congressman’s secretary sends an errant press release that leads to political corruption. “Darling Bill—” was the first story published in a series of political satire Dalton Trumbo wrote for magazines and film.
Man giving note to newsboy

“Five C’s for Fever the Five” by Dalton Trumbo

November 30, 1935
A gambler uses his doppelganger to pull off a can’t-lose bet — or so he thinks.

“Darling Bill—” by Dalton Trumbo

Editor’s note: “Darling Bill—” was the first in a series of political satire Dalton Trumbo wrote for magazines and film. The epistolary fiction first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on April 20, 1935.

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Things have let up a minute, so maybe I’ll get a chance to write you. It isn’t that I don’t want to write oftener, honey. I just don’t get the time. Being secretary to Congressman Bilchester is no party. He is a gloomy old guy, as you must know from seeing him around Dubroc’s store at home so much, and he is always very much alarmed about what is going on here in Washington. He has been having what he calls his nervous stomach all morning about some silly statement to the press. So please excuse all the scratchings-out and misspellings you may find in this letter, because he has been hounding me and I’m so nervous I could just bawl. The thing that has upset him is the Sparling Bill, and I just know he’ll pop in right in the middle of this letter with some more old dictation about it.

Believe me, Bill, I sure wish I was back in Chillburg with you and Mom and Pop. Don’t you be blue about not getting a job. A young man with a fine engineering education like you is bound to get somewhere. If I can ever get old Bilchester cornered long enough, maybe I can talk him out of an appointment for you. But it seems the other side is building all the dams—a thing which I can tell you certainly does not help Mr. Bilchester’s stomach. He says it’s nothing but a scandal anyhow, and that he has a hard enough time getting a janitor appointed, much less somebody important like an engineer. And anyhow, a girl is so unimportant around here she hasn’t much chance to do anything but act dumb and take press statements.

Just a minute, sweet. Here he comes with his press release about the Sparling Bill. I’ll run it off and then finish this letter to you. Until then, darling—

PRESS STATEMENT, REPRESENTATIVE BILCHESTER,
re Federal extravagance:
“The country is being stampeded into insolvency,” declared Representative George W. Bilchester, minority keynoter, in his weekly press conference today. Pointing to billions being “poured into administration rat holes,” Rep. Bilchester reiterated his successful campaign cry of last November by declaring that “nobody is going to shoot Santa Claus, but the old man can be bled to death.”

Decrying Federal appropriations as “mass buying of votes equaled only in decadent ancient Rome,” Bilchester pointed to the Darling Bill as a typical example of legislation which is “saddling unborn generations with present debt.” “The project as outlined in this bill,” warned the prominent conservative, “is not only unnecessary; it is impossible of achievement, unsound in conception, obscure in meaning. Construction at this point is totally unwarranted by the needs of the surrounding community. After the first orgy of Federal spending, it will actually impose a handicap upon all legitimate business men of the district.”

… Well, Bill, here I am back again. Mr. Bilchester has been blowing off to the press about the Sparling Bill, which, I think, calls for a dam somewhere. Gosh, I wish you could help put the darned thing up! Anyhow, honey, don’t worry. The minute you get a job, I’ll be back. I’m not going out with any fellows here, and I don’t even want to, so what you said is all wrong. Lots of them ask me—cute looking ones, too—but I’d rather go to my room and dream about a house of our own, with you and me in it. I hope it’ll be in Chillburg, because Mom and Pop are getting old, and, besides, they would be handy to take care of the children. But I guess an engineer lives most anywhere there’s work. Anyway, I want you to quit worrying and talking about yourself being a hound, because it will give you a complex or something.

Your lovingest,

DORA.

WASHINGTON SKELETON
By A. E. McBride

Representative George W. Bilchester, one of the few to escape last fall’s steam roller, roared into page 1 of the conservative press yesterday with a denunciation of the Darling Bill. Unpleasant repercussions on Capitol Hill may result. Administration spokesmen are inclined to pooh-pooh the veteran congressman as a black reactionary, but Bilchester has a fanatical following in his fork of the creek, and his thunderings are not to be taken lightly. Moreover, he has selected a vulnerable spot for his attack. If the considerable study I have given the Darling Bill is worth anything, it is just the measure to crystallize opposition opinion in the House. Majority whips, unawed by meager opposition, fear most the possible insurgents within the party. They are clubbing down opposition to avoid any semblance of a party schism. Upon this fact I base a prediction that we will hear much more about the Darling Bill.

 

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Oh, gosh, honey, what a mess I’m in! You keep writing me and accusing me of not loving you and of going out with other fellows until I just want to cry. I’ve been crying pretty steady now for almost all night. And it’s all because I love you, Bill, with all my heart and soul. I should think you’d believe in me, darling; and after you hear what has happened to me, I guess you won’t need any more proof. I’ve got to tell somebody, and when I’m tired and homesick, I always think of my darling and of Mom and Pop in Chillburg. So now, at three in the morning, I’m writing, and maybe you’ll see the tear spots on this very paper.

1935_04_20--008_SP-DAltonValentine2

1935_04_20--008_SP-DaltonValentineHe kept waving a paperweight in front of me, and I thought he was going to kill me. He said he would smash my head, except that he was no Moses and couldn’t strike water out of a rock. (Illustration by D’Alton Valentine, © SEPS)

Do you remember the letter I wrote you that was interrupted by Mr. Bilchester coming in with an old press statement? Well, in that statement he got awfully mad at the Sparling Bill, which, as I explained in that letter, is going to be a dam somewhere which I sure wish you could help put up. But, honey dear, all the time I was taking his dictation for that statement, I was thinking of you and how you say that you’re a hound, and that I don’t love you and all, and I wrote it down in my notebook as “Darling Bill” instead of “Sparling Bill.” Because, sweetest, whatever you think or hear, you are always in my mind and in my heart. So this statement went to all the newspapers in the world with Mr. Bilchester talking about a Darling Bill which simply doesn’t exist anywhere—except you know where, honey.

Goodness! I never saw anything like Mr. Bilchester when he read that statement in the papers. He came running into my office and yelled at me that I’d ruined him after sixteen years of fearlessly fighting for the people of Chillburg. Fighting for Mom and Pop, he said, and for everybody, including the country and the Constitution; and then I had run a knife in his back, and brought the temple crashing down on his head like Delilah, and disgraced him before all civilization, and set him up in the stocks for history and the administration to hoot at. He said I had betrayed my country and made it possible for the depression to last forever—and a lot more, darling, that I can’t remember.

He kept waving a paperweight in front of me, and I thought he was going to kill me. He said he would smash my head, except that he was no Moses and couldn’t strike water out of a rock. He said he was only Job, and that I was his affliction, and that he was going to purge himself of uncleanliness, and that I was fired. Well, honey, I just broke down and bawled. With that paperweight waving and him yelling and hollering, I lost my head, and first thing I knew I was screaming for Gladys Satter, who is two offices down. I yelled, “Help, Gladys, help!” Then Mr. Bilchester put his hand over my mouth, and I thought maybe he was going to strangle me, and I bit him good and hard.

Just then the phone rang. I guess that sure was a lucky phone call for me, because he stopped with his hand raised in the air, and hollered for me to get out and never show my face in his office again.

I ran out of the office and straight home, and I’ve been here ever since, even though a boy did call me up and ask me to go down to the Mayflower Grill with him. I guess I had a nervous chill, because the landlady said I looked terrible, and asked me if I had any statuary charges against Mr. Bilchester, because if I did, her brother was very good at that kind of thing. Then she put me to bed. I’ve been crying ever since, until it got so I just couldn’t stand it. So now I am writing to you. And I guess I’ll be home pretty soon, honey, and everybody’ll know that I was fired.

I hope you still love me, Bill, because if you didn’t, I’d just die. I want you so bad, and I will be glad to get away from this crazy town. It is no place for a person with refinement, honey. I’ll send you a telegram to let you know when you should come down to the station to meet

Your lovingest,

DORA.

INTEROFFICE CORRESPONDENCE

Memo from: E. J. S.
To: SENATOR MAPES

MY DEAR MAPES: Bilchester ran wild again yesterday. The administration doesn’t want to horn in on this, because the Darling Bill is fairly unimportant. But you know we can’t give an inch, or some of these funny new party members may kick over the traces.

Will you get the press boys together this afternoon and give old Bilchester the works? Make it strong. Believe me, I’m going to work on that district of his from now on.

E. J. S.

WASHINGTON SKELETON
By A. E. McBride

In one of the most withering blasts of recent months, Senator Chester L. Mapes today named Representative George W. Bilchester as “archconservative public enemy Number One.” The senator’s attack, in which he accused Bilchester of being “brazenly in league with Wall Street piracy,” was a response to Bilchester’s choleric denunciation of the Darling Bill, now pending in the House.

Challenging Bilchester to “name one constructive piece of legislation fostered by his party in the last three years,” Mapes denounced the small but potent bloc in Congress which, he declares, “values a balanced budget above a balanced diet.” Mapes asserted that “so long as there is human misery, this administration will spend money to relieve it, and so long as there is a need for such constructive projects as that embodied in the Darling Bill, the Federal Government will open Treasury gates for their realization.”

Astute observers, among them your correspondent, take the senator’s statement as indicative of the administration attitude. Opposition leaders declare the Mapes statement to be a brazen threat of punishment in the form of patronage limitation for anyone who tosses a wrench in the smooth passage of the Darling Bill.

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Well, sweetness, things are beginning to look better, and I may not be back in Chillburg as soon as I thought I would be. You know what you always say about people having to have self-confidence and fighting for the right whenever they are clear on what the right is? Well, I got to thinking about that. And finally I decided that it wasn’t right for Mr. Bilchester to fire me just because I misspelled a tiny little word. And then I figured, like you say, that you should fight for the right just as hard when it’s yourself you’re fighting for as when it’s somebody else.

So the next morning I went down to the office just as if I was still working there, only I had much more self-confidence than usual, because I knew I really wasn’t. I walked right up to Mr. Bilchester, who was looking like he hadn’t slept all night, and told him that I had thought the matter out. I said I had decided that if the mistake I had made was so important, I guessed I would just go down to the newspapers myself and tell them there wasn’t any Darling Bill, and save Mr. Bilchester all that embarrassment. I told him also that I would tell the newspapermen how mean he had been in firing me, and how he had tried to break my head with a paperweight and strangle me, and how I had had to scream for help.

When he heard that he almost jumped across the desk. He told me I shouldn’t take that attitude, and began to pat my back. He told me that, after all, I shouldn’t take things so seriously, and that, of course, I wasn’t fired, and that he wouldn’t think of me taking all the blame for that mistake; just to let it pass and say nothing. He said he hadn’t meant all he said about Moses and Job and firing me, and that maybe I’d get a nice little present from him later. So I went into my office and he cocked his feet on his desk and began reading the morning papers.

caption
They’d give a million dollars for just some little swap. (Illustration by D’Alton Valentine, © SEPS)

In just a minute he came running into my office and showed me a piece in the paper where Senator Mapes had said a lot of nasty things about Mr. Bilchester and a lot of nice things about this old Darling Bill. I got all shaky when I read it, and started to bawl again. But Mr. Bilchester patted me on the head and said something about “out of the mouths of babes.”

“Scoundrels, all of them!” he said. “And this proves it! They don’t even know their own bills! That fellow McBride doesn’t know either. They’ve fallen into my trap! Oh, I’ll bet they’d give a million dollars for just some little swamp named ‘ Darling.’ For years I’ve fought the rascals, and now I have them where I want them! We’ll scourge ’em, Dora! We’ll scourge the Philistines!”

He gave me a funny look, like a crazy man or something, and I almost started hollering for Gladys again, I was so scared. He said something about justice, and told me I was going to get a raise for sure, and not to mention to anyone about my mistake, because it might make it hard for me ever to get another job. So, please, honey, don’t mention it down at Dubroc’s store. Then he said: “I’m going to issue a statement to the press. And it’s going to be about the Darling Bill—get it? And if you dare make a mistake and say Sparling Bill, I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.” So I took his statement, and my, you never saw anything like the things he said about the Darling Bill. He even challenged Senator Mapes to a debate about it, and he dared anyone from the President down to come out and tell the people what the bill called for.

So, you see, darling, everything is all right, and it’s all because you told me about self-confidence and fighting for the right. I’ve got my job, and Mr. Bilehester seems happy again with something to make press statements about, and although I’m crying my heart out to see you again, still it’s just as well one of us has a job, especially if what Mr. Bilchester said about my mistake helping the depression along to get worse is true. If things do get worse on account of a little mistake in spelling, it may be a long while before there are dams enough to go around, since, I understand, there are lots of engineers out of work; although none are as smart as you or half as sweet.

I am not going out with any fellows, darling, although, as I told you, I don’t go without plenty of invitations. I wish you’d stop accusing me of things which I don’t do. Goodness, it’s bad enough around here getting accused of things you really do do. I would like to be at the Gem Theater with you tonight instead of lonesome in my room. Stella wrote me, and said she saw you there with Vergie Peck. I hope you had a good time. Good night for now, honey.

Your lovingest,

DORA.

THE NEW YORK CALL HOME OFFICE

Memo from: CITY DESK
To: A. E. MCBRIDE
ANDY: Notice a lot of stink about the Darling Bill lately. Give us fifteen hundred words to catch the Sunday-feature sheet. Bilchester may stir up quite a mess out of this, and I think we should be protected. Your column notices on it weren’t very specific.

WALTER HARRIS.

THE NEW YORK CALL
WASHINGTON BUREAU

SENATOR CHESTER L. MAPES,
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MY DEAR SENATOR: The Call plans to run a detailed analysis of the Darling Bill Sunday. I remember it only vaguely as a hang-over from the last session. I ran something on it then, but I want to avoid a rehash. Perhaps you will dictate to your secretary those points involved which you consider most important.

Yours respectfully,
A. E. MCBRIDE.

INTEROFFICE CORRESPONDENCE

Memo from: SENATOR MAPES
To: E. J. S.
DEAR ED: What the hell is this Darling Bill about? I thought I remembered it vaguely as a hang-over from last session. Bilchester is heaping coals on me in the newspapers. McBride wants a story on it. On your suggestion, I saw Jim Lacey. He tells me there is no Darling Bill, has never been any Darling Bill. Now, if there isn’t any Darling Bill, we’d better find one damn quick. Bilchester will crucify the whole administration. You were the one who wanted me to lower the boom on Bilchester re Darling Bill, so what are you going to do about it? I’m not going to be the goat this time.

Yours,

CHET MAPES.

INTEROFFICE CORRESPONDENCE

Memo from: E. J. S.
To: SENATOR MAPES
CHET: Did you, or did you not, make a statement to the press praising the Darling Bill? If not, you have a swell libel suit against four press agencies and every first-rate daily in the country. If you did make such a statement, what were you talking about? Looks like you’ve got us in another jam. Agree we must find a Darling Bill. Suggest we meet tonight, 7:30, Mayflower. This is no time to be talking about goats.

E. J. S.

OFFICE OF SENATOR CHESTER L. MAPES

MR. A. E. MCBRIDE,
WASHINGTON BUREAU,
NEW YORK CALL.
MY DEAR McBRIDE: I hope you will pardon a little delay in regard to the Darling Bill. To tell you the truth, I have been ill since this matter came up, and am not at all well yet. Rotten weather here, for one from my part of the country. However, I am now going into the bill carefully, with a view to giving you a complete history of the thing. It is entirely too important to be slighted in any way. I suggest you postpone your story a week, in the meanwhile dining with me Monday at the Mayflower, at which time we can have a pleasant chat and also clear up any questions in your mind. Accept again my regrets for the delay.

Sincerely,

CHESTER L. MAPES.

THE NEW YORK CALL
WASHINGTON BUREAU

REP. GEORGE W. BILCHESTER,
HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MY DEAR CONGRESSMAN BILCHESTER: The Call is very anxious to run an analysis of the Darling Bill for the Sunday-feature section, and, of course, no summary would be complete without your opinion. While I know you oppose the bill, I am extremely desirous of having something specific from you upon it. What do you think of the type of structure it calls for? Is, in your opinion, the appropriation for it too heavy? What do you think of the circumstances surrounding its introduction to the lower House? I confess I’m a bit hazy on its history, and I know you can give me the most accurate résumé available. I’ll call at your office tomorrow for a good talk.

Sincerely,

MR. A. E. MCBRIDE.

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

MR. A. E. MCBRIDE,
WASHINGTON BUREAU,
THE NEW YORK CALL.
DEAR McBRIDE: I am leaving tonight for New York, hence am sending you herewith the material you request in connection with the Darling Bill. It would be sheer presumption for me to go into detail concerning this grave piece of legislation when addressing the shrewdest correspondent The Call has ever turned loose on us poor legislators. I won’t, therefore, insult your intelligence with petty details, for I suspect you press boys really know as much about the Darling Bill as we do. However, you may quote me as follows:

The project is typical of the porkbarrel legislation being foisted upon the backs of American taxpayers by the most bureaucratic administration in the history of the republic. It calls for millions of dollars to be thrown into a project which no single engineer of repute has declared practical. The surrounding terrain is entirely unadapted to the plan in view. The benefits to be derived from the project are illusory; indeed, one would be tempted to say that the whole matter is essentially an illusion. Senator Mapes and his little coterie of exploiters are trying to bludgeon the people into accepting this infamous plan. Only a few of us dare oppose the present orgy of Treasury tapping. I shall fight the project with every weapon at my disposal. I pledge myself, to my constituents and to the country at large, that this project will never materialize. You may look for something sensational to develop from this latest evidence of administrative incompetency.

I guess that will hold them. If I can help you again, McBride, you know the doors of my office are wide open to the press.

Cordially,

GEORGE W. BILCHESTER.

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Honey, things are looking awfully bad again. When Mr. Bilchester first fired me, the only thing I had to think of was the disgrace of losing my job and all. But now the fuss about the Darling Bill looks even more serious. I think I’m in actual danger. I think maybe I’m going to jail. Oh, darling, how I wish I had your brains and self-confidence! Because if a girl ever needed something to bolster her up, that girl is me.

Everything seemed to be going fine until a newspaper writer named McBride, who does a column called Washington Skeleton, came in to see Mr. Bilchester while Mr. Bilchester was in New York. Honest, Bill, that Mr. McBride is the nastiest man I ever saw. He got to asking me so many questions about the Darling Bill so terribly fast that before I knew what I was saying, I told him there wasn’t any Darling Bill anywhere but you. I thought he was going to have a fit, Bill. He began to yell and rave something awful, so I had to run and close the door.

I’m not going to write down here all the things he said, because it would make me ashamed. All I can say about his language is that if anybody in Chillburg talked to a lady like Mr. McBride talked to me, he would have a good fight on his hands, because Chillburg may be a little town, but it still has good morals and good sense, which, as far as I can make out, is something Washington has never heard of.

Anyway, it seems that Mr. McBride had written something in his column about that old Darling Bill as though it was something that really existed and which he knew all about. He said that put him up a creek without any paddle to get home. He said, just like Mr. Bilchester said at first, that I had betrayed him. He said I had polluted the great institution of the American press. He said I had written the obituary of the smartest Washington correspondent that ever lived. He said I had starved his wife and children. He told me he had a story that would make the whole world laugh itself sick, and that he couldn’t touch it, because if he did it would ruin him. He said that the biggest chunk of news ‘in the history of America, was lying festering and dead in my lap.

He said he’d kill me if I ever said a word about it. He said there would probably be a revolution, and that they would burn the Capitol and probably hang Mr. Bilchester and Senator Mapes and me from the White House portico. He said he would light the first match himself, and be the first to kick the boxes out from under our dangling feet. He said he was getting the secret service to watch me, and that if I even moaned in my sleep they would hear me and cut my heart out. He said if I breathed a word to Mr. Bilchester about his visit, he would get the President to put a decree on me, so that no decent person would speak to me as long as I live. He said that even if I did keep my mouth shut, he might decide any minute, just for the fun of it, to call the Army out and have me thrown into a leper colony.

And there I am—just because I loved you so much, darling. Oh, honey, honey, you write how I don’t love you, when I’m sick to see you and crying myself to sleep every night, and maybe will be dead or in jail or watching my skin and fingers drop off by the time this gets to Chillburg. Please, darlingest, love me lots. I take back all that I said about you taking Vergie Peck to the Gem. Of course, I want you to have a good time. Of course, you mustn’t mope and get morose. But please believe me that I love you; and if anything happens to me, tell Mom and Pop that I loved them, too, and even in my grave will be theirs and your

Lovingest,

DORA.

THE NEW YORK CALL
WASHINGTON BUREAU

Memo from: A. E. MCBRIDE
To: CITY DESK
DEAR WALT: You know, Walt, that I don’t like to be rushed on a thing like this Darling Bill. I should think the desk would realize sometime that the man in the field has some conception of his job. I’ve been watching this Darling squabble like a hawk. I have more inside dope on it than any man in Washington. I know it like a book. I expect something sensational to develop shortly—something that will nullify any story I might send now. I’ve got Bilchester and Mapes both in my pocket, and when I knock this story out, it’ll be Page 1, not a lousy inside filler. So please believe that little Andy McBride is missing no tricks, and lay off until I can break the thing right.

ANDY.

 

THE NEW YORK CALL
WASHINGTON BUREAU

SENATOR CHESTER L. MAPES,
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MY DEAR SENATOR: I have received your invitation for dinner Monday and a discussion of the Darling Bill. I feel that the time has come for us to talk plainly, and Monday may be too late for any kind of talk. Since I am unable to reach you personally, I’m obliged to write what never should be set down on paper, particularly in this town. I am one of the three people living who know the full story of the Darling Bill. The other two are Bilchester and his secretary.

The secretary is a mental paralytic from the sticks who is in love with a home-town boy named Bill. When Bilchester dictated to her a press statement intended to denounce the Sparling Bill, she, being the possessor of a decidedly single-track mind, wrote “ Darling” instead of “ Sparling.” When Bilchester’s rave against the Darling Bill was published, I editorialized about it as though it were right up my alley. The next day you spoke warmly in its defense. When I queried you for facts concerning the bill, you gave me excuses. When I queried Bilchester, he presented me with a mess of fire-eating generalities which, incidentally, he released to the press at large. With each succeeding day he bellows more loudly against the bill you are defending, against the bill about which I have written so learnedly, and against the bill which he knows is nonexistent. He is having the time of his life.

This puts everybody concerned on the spot. I am the only columnist fool enough to touch the thing. The press agencies have confined themselves to quotes, hence have clear skirts. But I must protect you to the last, worse luck. The first newshound who gets wind of this phony Darling Bill will break the damnedest story since the Cardiff Giant. That story will blow A. E. McBride into purgatory, while Senator Mapes will go one degree further. It will even be used with devastating effect in the next election.

I trust I have made it plain that we share a mutual peril, hence must devise mutual protection. Bilchester is going to spring the inside dope very soon. I feel it. I know it. You must realize that it will be impossible at this late date to sneak a Darling Bill into the House calendar without some bright newsboy smelling the general bad odor. And still you go on talking about the Darling Bill. Please, please take a tip from Andy McBride, and refer to it, when you have to, as the Darling project. If anybody says, how come the change from “bill” to “project,” say you were misquoted—the same gag you pulled on me when you said reports of Prof. Rawlings’ resignation were lies, and he resigned next day. Doesn’t this suggested change from “bill” to “ project” give you an idea of your only possible out? If it doesn’t, then we are all sunk. I don’t know why I pull your chestnuts out of the fire like this. It must be because half of them are mine. If you are interested in any more ideas on the subject, drop into my office. But drop in quick, because in a day or two it’s every man for himself, and I may decide to protect myself by throwing you to the lions. I don’t want to, but a job’s still a job.

Cordially,

A. E. MCBRIDE.

 

INTEROFFICE CORRESPONDENCE

Memo from: E. J. S.
To: POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
BUREAU OF RIVERS, HARBORS AND FISHERIES
UNITED STATES FORESTRY SERVICE
UNITED STATES TOPOGRAPHICAL SURVEY
GENTLEMEN: It is imperative you discover in territory within your jurisdiction a junction, reservation, mountain, creek, river, lake, valley, plateau, mesa, arroyo, gulley, desert, plain, canyon, harbor, cove, bay, sound, estuary, beach, peninsula, island or any other natural object which bears the name “ Darling.” Drop all current projects, devote all available men and energy to above-mentioned search, and report progress twice daily until order rescinded.

E. J. S.

 

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Well, honey, Mr. Bilchester says that we are living here on the edge of a volcano which is boiling with the righteous wrath of a sorely oppressed people, and soon will erupt with results that will be very unpleasant to Senator Mapes, Mr. McBride and the Philistines who have impudently plundered our great nation.

I wouldn’t be a bit disappointed if things would erupt all over that Mr. McBride, although I don’t care much about the rest.

My job is going along fine. I have an assistant now who does nothing but clip references to Mr. Bilchester out of newspapers. I don’t understand it very well, but it seems that all the people who didn’t get elected last fall, or who don’t have any money to build dams, have decided that Mr. Bilchester’s fight against the Darling Bill makes him about the smartest man that ever lived. Since Senator Mapes said he didn’t want to debate about the bill, Mr. Bilchester calls the reporters together every day and gives them statements about the “craven minions of a tottering administration.” I think Mr. Bilchester should be a little careful, and I told him so, but he says that Moses didn’t hesitate to smite the golden idols, and that he is the Moses leading America out of bondage. He also said it is my place to take dictation, not give it, which shows it doesn’t pay to take a personal interest in your work.

So far, Mr. Bilchester has received 146 invitations to address protest meetings. He is awfully depressed because of Congress being in session and him having to stay here instead of going out and “enlightening the people.” The news-clipping girl has 1,378 pieces in her file which say that Mr. Bilchester is the man to lead his party to victory in the next election. There are now twenty-seven Bilchester-for-President Clubs, and many more forming. He has been made what they call an honorary member of fourteen labor unions, eight lodges and two tribes of wild Indians, and a college somewhere in the South wants to give him a diploma for political economy or something like that, although, if they could see the measly paycheck I get, they’d understand he knows plenty about economy already.

Mr. Bilehester says that he is practically ready to spring the trap on his enemies. It seems that he is now taking all the credit for that mistake I made in the first place. He goes around mumbling about the great hoax he has worked on the administration to see how far they would go in defending something which doesn’t exist. Everybody has spies in this town. You never know when somebody is in your pocket and when he isn’t. Mr. Bilchester has some in the departmental offices, and they tell him that everybody from E. J. S. on down is hunting like mad for something called “Darling.” Mr. Bilchester sits in his office and sometimes laughs for as long as ten minutes at a time.

In your last letter you told me that you didn’t think Mr. McBride would of talked like he did to me unless I gave him some sort of encouragement. You said no gentleman would dare say insulting things to a girl without she gave him some opening so’s he’d know he could get away with it. Sweetheart, I wish you wouldn’t say or think things like that, because you can’t understand a town like this. They don’t need any encouragement here to say insulting things, and as far as being a gentleman, why, I guess a gentleman wouldn’t last in Washington more than a minute. So please don’t think I go around trying to get insulted. I just act sensible, and when you’re mixed up with congressmen, it is a very, very hard thing to do. Don’t worry about not having a job, Bill, because if things go like Mr. Bilchester thinks they will, you’ll end up by being a cabinet member or something. Because, darling, someone who loves you like nobody’s business is going to be a very influential person around Washington when Mr. Bilchester gets through scourging the Philistines. In fact, she may be secretary to the President of the United States, but in private life she will always be

Your lovingest,

DORA.

MR. A. E. MCBRIDE,
WASHINGTON SKELETON,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR MR. McBRIDE:

“To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” —Shakespeare.

This is my motto and I am only trying sincerely to live up to it. I am a man of few words, so right off will tell you who I am. My name is Bill Johnson. I live in Chillburg, which is the home town of Representative George W. Bilchester. His secretary, Dora Stamm, is crazy about me. I am going to marry her when I get a job. I do not have a job now. I have been a victim of the depression since I left State U three years ago. I am an engineer, having had two years at State U in that subject.

Due to overcrowded conditions and lack of funds, the university was obliged to raise their grade standards and flunk many students out. I was among those flunked. Since great minds in all fields have been unable to squeeze themselves into the narrow, conventional routine of academic education, the fact that I was flunked makes no impression on me at all. I have self-confidence and a wholesome attitude toward all things, and I will make my mark.

By this time you are wondering why I am writing you, although you have seen that I am a man of insight and intelligence who would not waste your time for nothing. You are right. I am writing you about the Darling Bill. Dora has written me every step about it. I know all. I even know more than all, for I have figured out a solution. It looks to me like this: You made a fool of yourself, writing about the Darling Bill. Senator Mapes also made a fool of himself, talking about the Darling Bill. And the Government will make a fool of itself if it can’t find some place where it can build something with the name of Darling. This will make a bigger stink than anything since the Teapot Dome if it ever comes out. Since I have the solution, I know I am probably the most important man in the whole country. I am modest, but not falsely modest. I am clear-sighted, and you know that I am right.

I have been worried for some time about how to get this information before the right people. At first I hated to think of tripping up Congressman Bilchester, which I am going to do. But after thinking about my motto, I decided he has had a good job for a long while, and is trying very hard to trip up somebody else, so, if he gets tripped up himself, why, it is all in the game. I thought very earnestly about whether I should write you or Senator Mapes, because I want to make absolutely certain that I am not doublecrossed in this matter. I finally decided I would rather trust a newspaperman than a senator, which may or may not be a compliment to you. It is all in the way you think about senators.

When my future wife wrote me that everybody in Washington but Mr. Bilchester was hunting some place called Darling, I got to thinking. As you probably know, the country around Chillburg is very wild, and there is likely to be a place called almost anything in it. I seemed to remember something named Darling Creek, but after inquiring around, I could find no citizens who recalled such a stream. So I went out looking for it myself. If you knew me better, Mr. McBride, you would know that when I look for something, it is practically the same as found. I found Darling Creek. It is 136 miles north of Chillburg, one valley to the west of Jenson Canyon. It is not mentioned on any of the maps, due to the fact that it is only a big spring which comes suddenly out of a mountainside, flows for one mile and fifty-eight feet, then goes into a hole in the ground, never to be seen again.

The reason I thought I remembered this particular stream is because it was beside its banks that Dora Stamm promised to marry me. You will be doing me a big favor by not mentioning this to her. I am very displeased that she should have forgotten Darling Creek, in view of the tender circumstances surrounding it, and since she hasn’t mentioned it in her frequent comments about the search that is going on, I know she has forgotten it. So please say nothing to her about it, and I will take that phase of it up with her by letter. I have found it always the best policy to be very firm and determined in all dealings with women, and when a girl forgets the name of the stream beside which she was proposed to, things have come to a pretty pass.

Now, about the specifications of Darling Creek. I have carefully measured its flow of water and find it to be ten gallons per second, 600 per minute, 36,000 per hour, 155,520,000 per every six months. Unfortunately, this stream dries up part of the year, but I figure that, allowing for seepage, dryness and all, we can count on six months’ flow. 155,520,000 gallons is a lot of water, Mr. McBride, and it is all running into a hole in the ground. My next problem was to figure out what to use it for. The nearest town is Chillburg, 136 miles south, which has plenty of water anyhow. There is only one resident living within fifty miles—this being very wild country—and he is Horace Jenson, who has no need of water in such quantities.

But there is one thing we could do, Mr. McBride. We could stuff up that hole in the ground, and let the stream flow 413 feet into a large, shallow valley. Those 155,520,000 gallons equal 20,790,000 cubic feet, which in turn equal 477 acre-feet of water. All of these figures are approximate, because you don’t come to them until your junior year, which, as I explained, I was unable to attend. But because I have a good head for figures, you can rely on them. Now, as I say, we can back up that 477 acre-feet of water, and it would be swell for ducks, a great many of which pass over this district every season. I have read practically every pamphlet from Washington on wildlife preservation, and can easily see that there is a crying need for something like the Darling Water Foul Preserve. I know that in some respects this doesn’t sound very important. But think. What else are you going to do with 477 acre-feet of water 136 miles from the nearest town, and with only Horace Jenson living anywhere within fifty miles of it? The answer, of course, is nothing—unless you make it a Wild Foul Preserve. I have even gone farther. I have secured from Horace Jenson a petition—inclosed—pointing out the necessity for such a project. Horace’s signature to that petition means that all of the citizens within a fifty-mile radius of the stream have unanimously urged the Government to get busy.

There is the Darling Project for which you are all anxiously looking. Naturally, I have personal reasons for giving it to you. It is not because I love you, for you have said some very uncultured things to my future wife. I have a selfish end in view. I want to be engineer in charge of construction of the Darling Water Foul Preserve. With two men and a cement mixer I can stuff up the hole, and there is nothing more to do but let the water flow. I should have a good fee for thinking of this and doing it. No less than $25,000, because of nobody knowing what the dollar will be worth tomorrow. When it is built, I want to be in charge of its care. I will need a crew of maybe half a dozen men, and for myself a salary of $5000 per annum, with a six-room furnished house, one of the rooms to be a nursery with pictures of the Three Little Pigs painted on the walls. The house, of course, to be strictly modern. I will want my job to be under civil service, because I have no faith in politics, and do not want to be thrown out whenever somebody else is elected to Congress. In return I promise to care tenderly for all ducks that pass our way, and to study up on them conscientiously.

I know this is a perfect set-up for you and Senator Mapes and a lot of gentlemen higher up. I know you will jump at Darling Creek as if it was your long-lost brother, and I will not blame you at all. However, if you should jump at it, and then fail to fulfill the terms I have outlined in this letter, why, then I will simply go to Congressman Bilchester and tell him the circumstances surrounding the selection of Darling Creek, along with a carbon copy of this letter. I have no doubt he will make it known in a great many newspapers, which certainly will be a heavy price for you to pay for cheating me out of what is rightfully mine. I know that when you consider this, you will see that everything I have said is just and reasonable. I do not think we will have any trouble.

I will be waiting for your reply. The check should be certified, because I will need cash to get the cement mixer moved so far. I know you will all be very grateful to me, but I am not doing it for thanks. So please notify me immediately when the Chief Engineer and Maintenance Supervisor of the Darling Water Foul Preserve sets about his duties.

Yours very respectfully,

BILL JOHNSON.

 

BILCHESTER DECLARES DARLING BILL A HOAX CHARGES GO UNANSWERED

“The Darling Bill, which administration spokesman Mapes has been defending so noisily for the past week, has never existed except in my own imagination!” With this startling declaration, Rep. George W. Bilchester this afternoon ripped the lid off official Washington, and started a political bonfire which may signalize the most serious congressional revolt in recent years.

“The bill was invented in my office,” explained Bilchester, “as a hoax to see whether or not the administration itself has any clear knowledge of the legislation it is fostering. The day after I publicly denounced the fictitious bill, Senator Mapes obliged me with a scurrilous personal attack and a defense of the legislation in question.

“Curious to know how far the majority leader would go in his desperate attempt to lend reality to a fairy tale, I continued to goad him and he continued to extol the virtues of the Darling Bill—with results which I now lay before the nation. I have nothing to say, aside from drawing the obvious conclusion that the Darling Bill symbolizes two-thirds of the legislation currently being rammed down Congress’s throat.”

While unprejudiced observers frankly declared the Bilchester hoax to be the most serious attack—and the most deadly—ever made against the administration, conservative forces quickly rallied around Bilchester, with an eye to grooming him for the White House. Newsmen scurrying over Capitol Hill in search of an administration reply were informed that none was forthcoming. It was intimated by one high official that a statement will be released early tomorrow. Senator Mapes, confined to his hotel by illness, could not be reached.

 

MAPES HURLS LIE AT BILCHESTER ATTACKS PROJECT OUTLINED

“Brazen chicanery!” was the retort issued from the sick room of Senator Chester L. Mapes, majority whip of the Senate, when informed of charges by Rep. George W. Bilchester that the much-publicized Darling Bill is a fiction invented by the veteran congressman to bait the administration.

“We have patiently given Mr. Bilchester the rope for which he has been screaming,” said Mapes grimly, “and he appears to have hanged himself with it. He erred from the start. There is not and never has been a Darling ‘Bill.’ In my controversy with the legislator I have always referred to the matter—save when misquoted—as the Darling ‘Project.’ For a project it is, under the administration of the PAP, hence completely divorced from Congress. It was here that Bilchester made his first and most serious mistake.

“He has continually referred to the project as involving millions. The actual appropriation is $825,000. He has declared his office to be flooded with protests. The PAP has in its files a petition urging the project signed by every registered voter within a fifty-mile radius of its site. He has stated that no competent engineer has declared the plan feasible. Mr. William Johnson, whose reputation certainly cannot be challenged, has submitted surveys which demonstrate it is not only feasible but necessary. As Chief Engineer, he is now engaged in the first phase of construction. Bilchester has further accused the administration of vote buying with the project. Actually, the district in which it is located was one of the few to turn in a heavy anti-administration vote last fall.

“Because he obviously hasn’t the faintest idea what the Darling Bill involves, the legislator has carefully refrained from informing his constituents that the project in question is the Darling Water Fowl Preserve, which forms the final link in the nation’s great string of game preserves extending from the Canadian to the Mexican border. And, finally, in none of his vicious attacks has Bilchester once mentioned that the project is situated in his home district, 136 miles north of the city of Chillburg, in which he maintains his legal residence. Further comment seems unnecessary. The entire fabrication demonstrates the hysterical quality of the present reactionary attack.”

Congressman Bilchester’s secretary informed reporters that the legislator flew to New York City yesterday afternoon to fill a speaking engagement. At a late hour last night he had not been located.

 

WASHINGTON SKELETON
By A. E. McBride

Concluding the most dramatic political battle of the current session, Representative George W. Bilchester last night resigned his seat in the lower house and announced his affiliation with the Great Atlantic Life Insurance Company of New York. The veteran legislator, located in his New York hotel, refused to amplify his stand on the Darling Bill. Neither would he confirm reports that his sudden withdrawal from public life at a time when the Presidency seemed almost within his grasp was hastened by an inundation of protest telegrams representing approximately 60 percent of the voters in his Congressional district.

It is not without a touch of melancholy that your Washington correspondent records the passing of one of the town’s greatest political showmen. Once hailed by his constituents as “The Last Conservative,” he has participated in many colorful congressional battles, the most spectacular of which is the Darling controversy, which admittedly occasioned his downfall. His stand on that issue remains a mystery which the most astute political observers are unable to solve. Only one fact can be established in the whole history of the dispute: Bilchester somewhere along the line made a colossal blunder. No one probably will ever know the full history of the Darling affair, unless Bilchester chooses to reveal it. And apparently the ex-congressman, like another famous conservative, “does not choose.” Suffice it to say that a grand fighter has departed from the arena—the last, perhaps, of his kind. The old order passeth, but it is not forgotten.

 

OFFICE OF REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. BILCHESTER

DARLING BILL: Oh, honey, I feel so cheap and small and ashamed of myself! I’ve been crying almost from the minute I got your letter. I don’t see how I could have done it, Bill dear. And I do understand why you feel so hurt. I remember everything else about that afternoon. You grabbed me all of a sudden, and put your arms around me, and squeezed me real tight. “Dora,” you said, “all I need is the love of a good woman, a woman who will understand and appreciate me. I will go to the top, Dora, if you want to marry me!” And I was so scared and tickled and funny-feeling inside that I bawled. Oh, honey, I thought you’d never get around to saying it! And I remember the water in the creek, and how we waded, and how you caught me when I almost fell off that slippery rock. But I never did once think of that being Darling Creek. And I’ll kiss you a hundred times for every minute you’ve felt hurt about it. And I’m sorry, sweet, forever and ever. But, Bill, with you there, how could I remember anything like the name of a silly old creek?

Well, as you must know, everything here is finished. I got that awful clipping which the Chillburg Herald printed about Mr. Bilchester. I’ve only heard from him once since he left for New York. It was a little note attached to a letter. The note said:

DEAR DORA: The Greeks were very clever people, and they proved it with a wooden horse. If the inclosed letter fulfills its purpose, I shall have surpassed the Greeks both in strategy and deadliness. I hope it will get you a job to replace the one you have lost through my resignation. May you bestow upon your next employer the same talents you gave so unstintingly to me. George W. Bilchester.”

And what do you think the letter he had attached to it was? It was addressed to Senator Mapes, recommending me to the senator for a secretary! I was never so surprised in my life, and I think it’s the nicest thing Mr. Bilchester ever did. But I guess he didn’t know that I am going to be the wife of the Chief Engineer and Maintenance Supervisor of the Darling Water Fowl Preserve, and won’t ever need any job but loving my husband—and that’s no job, sweetness!

I also noticed an item in this afternoon’s paper about Mr. McBride. It said that he was resigning from his job writing for that column, Washington Skeleton. It said that because of his rare understanding of Government procedure, and the wide respect he enjoys among newspapermen, he has been appointed to take charge of all Government news which is given out to the press. It also said that Senator Mapes is going to give a big dinner tonight in his honor at the Mayflower. I am beginning to think that Mr. McBride may be a nice person after all, except when excited, because just about an hour ago I received a great big bouquet of the prettiest roses you ever saw, with a little note attached to them. It said:

“My apologies for ungentlemanly behavior toward the future Mrs. Bill Johnson. Please tell your husband that, were I rewriting a certain part of Longfellow, I should change one word in one line, and make it read, ‘A lady with a typewriter shall stand in the great history of the land.’ Andrew E. McBride.”

I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s awfully nice of him, don’t you? But I didn’t answer, Bill. Because you’re the only man I’ll ever write to. And there is absolutely nothing between us. And if I thought you’d want me to, I’d throw his nasty old roses into the garbage right now.

I am leaving Washington tonight on the 6:10, and will telegraph you from Chicago when I will arrive in Chillburg. I can hardly wait, Bill! I’m so proud of you I could die. I really could. Our own house and you with a fine job and me your wife—oh! What will Vergie Peck think? And, oh, honey, I’ll be so glad to get away from this town! A woman here is just a cog in a machine, and never is paid any attention to, and never gets a chance to do anything that really means something. But with me being with you—well, I guess a baby would mean something, wouldn’t it? Woman’s place is in the home all right, just as you always say, and that’s where a certain party I know is headed for as fast as wishes and wheels and engines will take her. Maybe you never heard of her, dearest, but her name is

Your lovingest,

DORA.

“Five C’s for Fever the Five” by Dalton Trumbo

Editors note: “Five C’s for Fever the Five” was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post on November 30, 1935.

Men in pool hall
Although Fever the Five had an enormous interest in contemporary events, particularly those occurring in South Chicago, he numbered among his superstitions a positive conviction that it was bad luck to gain firsthand knowledge of anything from a newspaper. (Illustration by Raeburn Van Buren © SEPS)

The boys in Mufti Joe’s place had just returned from a fortunate crap game in the Shore hotel down the street. Now they were sitting around the pool hall in various attitudes of relaxation. Fever the Five, however, remained a little apart from them, listening alertly to their conversation. Louis Parconi had a newspaper, and it was, therefore, upon Louis Parconi that Fever the Five bestowed his closest attention.

Although Fever the Five had an enormous interest in contemporary events, particularly those occurring in South Chicago, he numbered among his superstitions a positive conviction that it was bad luck to gain firsthand knowledge of anything from a newspaper. Just how this idiosyncrasy had crept upon him Fever neither knew nor cared; it existed, and hence was worthy of respect. Whenever the latest editions were at hand, Fever the Five invariably could be found lurking in the background, where he might assimilate verbal comments on the news of the day before perusing the sheet for himself.

“I see,” Louis Parconi was saying, “where they fry this Nick Kosteff in the morning. The governor just turned thumbs down on a reprieve.”

The observation elicited a round of sympathetic tongue cluckings. The habitues of Mufti Joe’s place themselves lived so perilously on the hairline of crime that they were bound to take a melancholy interest in one who had slipped irrevocably to the other side.

“No!” breathed Ziggety Dockstadter. And then, morbidly: “Read us about it, Louis.”

Fever the Five leaned against a pool table and listened intently.

“As the sun faded upon his last day of life,” read Louis Parconi, “Nick Kosteff, protection racketeer and convicted murderer of two Chicago fruit merchants, tonight received word from the chief executive’s office that his appeal for a reprieve has been rejected. Kosteff, who inherited the organization of the so-called Sicilian Syndicate, was convicted in August, after two previous trials had resulted in hung juries. With the governor’s denial of reprieve, his long fight for life comes to an end. He will march from the death cell to the electric chair at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Louis Parconi lapsed into a silence which endured for almost a minute before it was broken by Ziggety Dockstadter, who had followed the case from its inception with avid interest. “It shows,” pointed out Ziggety Dockstadter, “that shooting fruit peddlers is the wrong way to beat a depression.”

“And such a young guy too,” mourned Willie Jeems sentimentally. “Oh, well, in one ear and gone tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Louis Parconi grunted, and gave a little shudder. “Tomorrow he’ll be so hot he’ll melt and run down his own leg.”

At this point, Fever the Five decided he might risk looking at the newspaper himself. He sauntered to a position directly behind Louis Parconi and glanced obliquely at the item. There it was, just as Louis Parconi had pointed out:

GOVERNOR DENIES KOSTEFF REPRIEVE
KILLER OF TWO DOOMED TO CHAIR

Having verified the item with his own extraordinarily skeptical eyes, Fever the Five went into a one-man huddle. To his mind, the case presented interesting possibilities, and interesting possibilities played a large part in Fever’s financial well-being.

Fever the Five, fundamentally, was a very slick guy. He could spot a doped bobtail at fifty paces, a phony game of twenty-one at fifty feet, and a loaded set of dice in fifty seconds. And why shouldn’t he? He came from that section of Loo’siana where they nourish their young on whisky and ‘lasses, teach the ABC’s from a racing chart, and abandon all hope for a ten-year-old who can’t run the family roulette wheel to a heavy house percentage.

At seventeen, in his father’s Mississippi waterfront saloon, Fever the Five had handled three telephones simultaneously, quoting odds from his own fertile mind on every up-and-up track in the country. Now, at twenty-eight, his eyes were smart, and his ways were smart, and his clothes were even smarter than anything else about him.

In addition to his better-known virtues, Fever the Five—the name intoned by the priest at his christening had been John Baptist Edwin Michael Joseph LeFevre—had the rare gift of analyzing his talents, estimating his limitations, and keeping rigidly to the safe side of both. In his own circle, bounded by the four walls of Mufti Joe’s Chicago billiard parlor, he was nonpareil. He went around with his head full of long-shot figures, and he made his bucks as he needed them.

He had never been in serious difficulties with the law, either. Oh, a hot crap game here, perhaps, and a raided bookie joint there, but nothing that fifty fish wouldn’t sweeten. Of late, however, he had been afflicted with police trouble of a most irritating nature. It was his misfortune closely to resemble one Waddles Bellefonte, newly risen larcener who was achieving spectacular publicity for his ability to steal other people’s property—chiefly negotiable jewels— and the state’s inability to convict him. More conscientious citizens than you might think, seeing Fever the Five here and there in brightly lighted spots, had been impelled by this coincidence to sum- mon the gendarmerie, with results which were never serious, but which were bound to be intensely annoying to a man of Fever the Five’s vanity.

By now, of course, most of the police were aware of his unhappy likeness to Waddles Bellefonte, and didn’t bother him more than once or twice a week. But there had been a period when Fever the Five had scarcely dared thrust his nose beyond Mufti Joe’s doorway. Time had enabled him to accept the circumstance with philosophical resignation. His disposition was not soured by it, and the only permanent effect upon his character was, naturally enough, a deep resentment toward conscientious citizens.

But now, listening to conversation about a murderer he had never seen and for whom he could gen- erate only professional interest, Fever the Five felt that the injustice of his resemblance to Waddles Bellefonte was about to be turned into profit. Having pondered over the miserable fate of Nick Kosteff for an appropriate period, he delivered himself of a remark which was destined to a high place in the annals of Mufti Joe’s billiard parlor.

“You’re never sure a guy’s dead until he’s dead,” observed Fever the Five. “Anything might happen.”

Louis Parconi wheeled slowly in his chair and stared up at the speaker. Experience had taught him that Fever the Five’s remarks were never ill considered, yet in the present instance he felt that the condemned man’s fate was a matter beyond academic or even philosophical discussion.

“Nuts,” he stated simply. “One appeal’s been thumbed. The guy’s got no dough to go higher. The governor says to turn on the juice. That’s enough for me. As far’s I’m concerned, the guy is six feet deep right now.”

“I hear the exits to that death house are very, very strong,” pointed out Willie Jeems.

“ Um-m-m,” murmured Fever the Five enigmatically. “Just the same, I wouldn’t give too big odds on it if I was you.”

“ Odds !” exclaimed Louis Parconi. “I’d give 20 to 1 any time.”

“Would you give 10 to 1 right now?” gently inquired Fever the Five.

Silence crashed over Mufti Joe’s place like a pineapple in a dry-cleaning joint. The faces of Louis Parconi and Ziggety Dockstadter and Willie Jeems and Ace Cardigan and even of Mufti Joe himself fell into blank defensive masks. Like sheep startled by an interloper, they stared at Fever the Five. They stared placidly, stolidly, and waited for him to repeat his incredible proposition.

“I said would you give 10 to 1 right now?” insisted Fever the Five’s suave monotone.

“ You want 10 to 1 this guy don’t fry,” stated Louis Parconi contemplatively.

“No. I want 10 to 1 he’s alive tomorrow night.”

A nervous shifting of positions seized the boys in Mufti Joe’s. Louis Parconi glanced sleepily from face to face. Not a feature changed, not an eyelid twitched, yet by the time he had completed his inventory Louis Parconi knew precisely how each man felt about the proposition.

“How much?” he inquired languidly.

“I’ve got fifty that’s waiting for five C’s to cover it,” declared Fever the Five.

“Personally,” averred Louis Parconi, with elaborate disinterest, “I don’t care to lay out so many bucks in one stack. But I might scrape up a C if the rest of the boys would like to climb on.”

Again a faint restlessness passed through them. Dockstadter’s voice froze them to immobility.

“Maybe you’ve got inside dope on this party,” said Ziggety Dockstadter irritably. “Before I send a C out after a ten-spot, I call up the newspaper and find out if this yarn is not a phony.”

“Call now,” urged Fever the Five.

With the eager haste which had won him his mon- iker, Ziggety Dockstadter scuttled up front to the telephone booth. During his absence Louis Parconi calmly turned the pages of his newspaper. Fever the Five retired once more to a discreet distance, while the others resumed the stances which had been disturbed by his aberration. Then Ziggety Dockstadter returned.

“It’s straight,” he announced. “The guy says the only thing can save him from cooking is a short circuit.”

Although no one said anything, the very air of Mufti Joe’s place crackled with thought. They all had sufficient money to cover the bet, because it was their business to have money. But the wisdom of risking so much for so little was another matter. On one hand, they had the facts of the case—apparently legitimate—and the facts were entirely in their favor. On the other side of the coin, they had Fever the Five, who was notoriously reluctant to play fast and loose with his wampum. Either Fever the Five was operating on a hunch or upon inside information. • Since they knew his friends and enemies, his women and his party spots, they were comfortably certain that he had no informant who could learn of a reprieve in advance. Hence, weighing all visible factors in the equation, they were forced to conclude that Fever the Five was backing a crazy premonition.

“It’s worth a whirl, Fever,” said Louis Parconi, smashing the silence to fragments. He tossed two fifties onto the green baize of the pool table. “Mufti Joe here all right to hold stakes?”

“Sure,” agreed Fever the Five. “Only, since five is my lucky number, I don’t plan to bet unless I get coverage for the whole fifty.”

Ziggety Dockstadter, hypnotized by the sight of Louis Parconi’s money on the table, shook off his hesitance, broke out a hundred dollars and reverently laid it beside the two fifties. He wet his lips, but no words issued from them.

“I always say there is no worse bet than the long end of crazy odds,” commented Ace Cardigan. “But on the other hand, I don’t believe in miracles either.”

He placed the third hundred on the table.

Willie Jeems said, “Gosh! I didn’t come out near as good up at the Shore as the rest of you guys. But I got fifty here that is very hungry for another fin.”

“I’ll take the odd fifty,” murmured Louis Parconi.

“That leaves a hundred open,” pointed out Fever the Five suggestively.

For an instant they gazed blankly at one another, as if each expected his neighbor to break the impasse. Then Mufti Joe spoke.

“If you don’t mind about the stakeholder coming in, I’ll take that last piece,” he announced softly.

“Shoot,” said Fever the Five.

Mufti Joe peeled one bill from his roll. Five hundred and fifty dollars lay temptingly on the baize.

“Tuck it in your safe, Joe,” directed Fever the Five.

Mufti Joe went up front and stuffed the money into a little safe behind his cash register.

“Watch it,” he said to Frankie Fink, his assistant.

Each man resumed the position which had been his when the fate of Nick Kosteff first became a topic of conversation. Ziggety Dockstadter and Willie Jeems started chalking their cues. Ace Cardigan, his hat well down over his eyes, sank into his high observer’s chair and seemed gently to fall asleep. Louis Parconi buried his head once more in the newspaper. Mufti Joe began to set down figures in a little book which he always carried. But each of them, sidewise out of slanted eyes, watched Fever the Five as he moved jauntily toward the front door.

“So long,” said Fever the Five, giving a little more tilt to the brim of his pearl gray. “ So long, and good-by all.”

Fever the Five walked briskly through a sea of varicolored lights toward his hotel two blocks southward. He paused only once, and that time before Hennfinger’s Cut Rate Nut Shop. In the window of the Hennfinger emporium sat a jar of peanuts, beside which a placard proclaimed that ten dollars would be awarded to the lucky customer who came nearest to estimating the correct number of nuts in the jar. Such a proposition was calculated to appeal to the sporting instincts of any South Side gentleman, and Fever the Five was no exception. He read the placard twice and squinted appraisingly at the jar.

Such was the depth of Fever’s cynicism that he confidently believed Papa Hennfinger for a half of the ten-dollar prize would be not at all loath to reveal to him the correct number of peanuts, thereby netting an easy fin both for Fever and Papa. Although it was not what one might call a big deal, Fever had learned in a hard school that twenty fins make a C, and that a C is worthy of any man’s devotion. But of course the current business was too important to delay. Perhaps tomorrow—

“Figurin’ where your cut comes in?” inquired a pleasant voice behind him.

Fever the Five whirled to see who had interpreted his thoughts so correctly. It was Mike Geraghty, a member of the constabulary who upon several occasions had mistaken Fever for Waddles Bellefonte, with much accompanying confusion.

“Flattie,” responded Fever affably, “that’s one reason you’re pounding a beat—while you think of ten bucks, I’m geared to five C’s.” Fever tapped his own immaculate chest to emphasize his point. “I’ll be wearing diamonds as big as those nuts when you’re still shining brass buttons.”

”Sure,” said Mike Geraghty soothingly, “sure you will, Fever.”

Fever the Five felt that the conversation was getting nowhere. Moreover, he had affairs afoot.

“I’ll be going,” he told the grinning policeman. “Every minute I’m standing here talking to you, I’m throwing coin to the ducks and geese.” He moved away from Hennfinger’s window, pausing only long enough to deliver himself of a final insult: “Those bunions’ll freeze on you one of these days unless you give ’em more exercise.”

Without a backward glance, he continued his journey hotelward.

In his room with bath he rummaged through a bureau drawer, from which he presently withdrew a sheet of hotel stationery. With great care he tore the heading from the page. Then he extracted a gold pencil from his vest pocket—at least the man in the hock shop had sworn by Abraham that it was gold, although Fever the Five was prone to discount such protestations. He sat down by the nightstand and began to write. When he had finished, he read his handiwork twice, grunted pleasantly, and folded it into his inner coat pocket.

Although it was a hot summer’s night, he lifted a natty blue double-breasted overcoat from its rack in the closet and swung it over his arm. He inspected his reflection in the mirror, twitching his eyebrows in a manner which he considered fascinating to women.

At the door he paused, taking quick mental inventory. Then, well satisfied, he swung from the room.

On the street again, he hailed a taxi, drove six blocks and debouched. In a corner drugstore he carefully closed the telephone-booth door behind him, consulted the directory and dialed The Call. He was familiar enough with newspaper argot to ask for the city desk. When the Cerberus in charge issued his tersely professional challenge, Fever the Five spoke softly and swiftly:

“Listen to what I say, and listen close, because it’s the last time you’ll ever hear it. There won’t be time to trace this call, and I’m not answering any stall questions you throw to me. If you send somebody around to the Painter Street telegraph office in the next ten minutes, they’ll find something very interesting which might make a swell story for the midnight edition. That’s all, toots. So long, and good-by all.”

He killed a protesting yelp from the other end of the wire by the simple expedient of snapping the receiver to its hook. Then he walked from the drugstore and entered a second taxi. This one he permitted to transport him within two blocks of the Painter Street telegraph office. There he dismounted and paid the driver.

He strolled nonchalantly through the crowds until, in the middle of the block; he spotted the conveyance for which he was searching—a limousine flaunting a “For Hire” sign. Lolling in its front seat, the driver smoked a cigarette and meditated upon the dark traceries of a chauffeur’s fate.

“Hey, toots,” said Fever the Five. “How’d you like to make fare and a ten-spot?”

The driver regarded Fever the Five thoughtfully, but he did not permit the suggestion to take him by storm.

“If there’s any shooting, it costs fifty bucks,” he declared in a flat voice.

“No shooting,” protested Fever the Five. “ It’s very simple.”

“It’s gotta be simple for a ten-spot,” averred the driver. “What’s the angle?”

“Cover your license plates and drive me four blocks. If the cops get you on the plates, I pay the fine. When we hit the corner just beyond the telegraph office, you pull to the curb. I step out and talk to a newsboy for a minute. I step back again. You drive me two blocks farther to the taxi stand. There I leave you. You circle the territory and come back here with plates uncovered. That’s all. How’s it sound?”

“It sounds good,” said the driver, after the fashion of a man accustomed to making prompt decisions.

He climbed out of his seat and produced two rags from a side pocket. These he affixed to his license plates fore and aft. No one noticed, because no one ever notices. The driver’s knowledge of this fact enabled him to perform the illegal task with magnificent aplomb.

“Climb in, brother,” he invited as he dusted his hands against trousers.

“Pay you first,” said Fever the Five softly, pressing fifteen dollars into the suddenly outstretched palm. “Understand,” he cautioned, “this is strictly confidential.”

The driver closed one eye, nodded waggishly and opened the eye again.

They were off.

Man giving note to newsboy
Fever produced the note he had written in his hotel room. The newsboy had seen too many strange things in his young life to ask questions. (Illustration by Raeburn Van Buren © SEPS)

As they passed the telegraph office, Fever the Five noted with satisfaction that three men were loafing beside the counter, and that none of them was sending a telegram. The Call had not failed him. He leaned forward and wriggled into the blue double-breasted overcoat. At the corner, the limousine slid gently to a stop. Fever the Five stepped out and hailed a newsie. The collar of his coat was hoisted, the brim of his pearl gray drooped, and all that remained visible of his face was a nose and a mouth.

“Hey, bud,” greeted Fever the Five.

The newsie ran to him, paper extended.

“No, not that!” With a little grimace of horror, Fever the Five waved the paper aside. “Want to make a fin?”

“Yar!” said the youngster, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.

“All right. Here’s a pencil and paper. Now copy what you read off this piece of paper onto the clean one.”

Fever produced the note he had written in his hotel room. The newsboy had seen too many strange things in his young life to ask questions. With the utmost care he copied Fever’s words onto the blank piece of paper.

“Now give me that.”

The boy handed back the original note.

“What you have there is a message,” explained Fever precisely. “Take it into the telegraph office. Don’t pay them for it, because you can see it’s marked ‘collect.’ Hand it to the man in charge and run like hell. You don’t have any idea what I look like, or that I’m wearing an overcoat, or that my plates are covered. Understand? Because I’m taking it on the lam. Compre?”

“Sure, I compre.”

“Right. Here’s the five. Now remember what I told you, baby—and don’t get mixed up!”

“Okay, mister! And thanks very much for the —”

The response faded rapidly, because Fever the Five was already back in the limousine, moving sedately toward the taxi stand two blocks distant. There he climbed from his equipage for the second time. His overcoat was hanging across his arm. He stood on the curb and made a flat-palmed, circling gesture of farewell.

The driver grinned, clashed his gears and departed. Around the corner he pulled to a stop and removed the rags from his license plates. Then he continued happily back to his stand for a resumption of interrupted meditations.

Fever the Five, leaning back against the cushions of his cab, considered the two hours which lay immediately before him. He resolved upon a movie as the most agreeable time-killer. Before one which heralded Wild for Women in flaming red letters, Fever the Five ordered a halt.

“One ticket, beauty—and the change is for you,” he chortled to a ticket girl whose hair was as red as the house sign.

“Sixty cents, mister,” chanted the girl through her nose. “Another dime, please—and keep the change!”

Fever the Five produced another coin and grinned. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was two minutes until nine.

At 11:30 the city blossomed with dingy white flowers that were tomorrow morning’s newspapers. Fever the Five, coming out of the theater, avoided them fastidiously. It required all his will power, however, to refrain, from stealing a quick glance at the headlines. He strained his ears to the cries of newsboys, but they were shouting trivialities about Congress and the Supreme Court, in neither of which Fever the Five had ever been able to sustain the slightest interest. He passed rapidly down the street, wondering how he was going to obtain the information he needed without reading it.

Then sheer inspiration descended upon him. He turned in his tracks and headed for Abe Bernstein’s Kosher Restaurant. There was a good chance one of his friends would be dropping by for a bite to eat, and if not, the place was always infested with old men who solemnly dissected the newspapers item by item, making each story the subject of acrimonious debate. When he reached Abe Bernstein’s, he took a seat at the counter, ordered a cup of Java and watched the door alertly.

The sight of Sammy Schiff shuffling through the entrance was a thing to cheer Fever the Five’s heart. Sammy Schiff had a small piece of a minor slot-machine racket, and was usually a very pleasant guy. Besides, he carried a morning newspaper.

”Hi, toots!” greeted Fever the Five. “Howsa boy? I been waiting for you to come in, so’s I could buy you a pastrami sandwich!”

Sammy Schiff regarded Fever the Five with mild surprise.

“Sure,” he said in a puzzled voice. And then to the waiter: “My friend wants I should have a pastrami sandwich.”

He spread his newspaper flat on the counter and, starting with the upper left-hand corner, began methodically to go over the front page. Fever the Five rolled his eyes upward, downward, toward the door, backward to the tables, but never toward Sammy Schiff’s newspaper.

“I see,” ruminated Sammy Schiff, “where it says that another old bat has plugged her meal ticket and a young skirt. It goes to show that no dame should ever be let have a gat.”

“Yeah,” said Fever the Five. “That’s the hot spot for her. They burning anybody in Joliet today?”

“They’re always burning somebody in Joliet.”

Fever the Five sighed and took a sip of his coffee.

“A rich guy across town has been slugged for a diamond ring, and also I see where they’re talking about they should strike again,” said Sammy Schiff implacably. “What I can’t understand is how us working guys are ever going to get along if there is always someone agitating us to stop working. It don’t make sense.”

“No,” said Fever the Five firmly. “And strikes always end up in shootings, and shootings cause guys to be cooked. Personally, I wonder if anybody is getting ready to be cooked in state prison today.”

“Somebody is always getting ready to be cooked in state prison,” declared Sammy Schiff. “It says here that gents’ clothing is going to be brighter, with a big revolution against dull tints and all that quiet stuff.”

Fever the Five clutched his coffee cup, but made no comment.

“Now, here,” said Sammy Schiff, “is a funny thing.”

“Yeah?” said Fever the Five eagerly through his nose.

“Yeah. It seems that Nick Kosteff is scheduled to be fried this morning. Only now the governor has slipped him seven more days.”

“Oh, no,” tantalized Fever the Five. “You must be reading that wrong.”

“How do you mean—reading it wrong?” demanded Sammy Schiff hotly. “Here, read it yourself!”

Fever the Five almost fainted as Sammy Schiff thrust the newspaper under his nose.

“No!” he babbled despairingly. “It hurts my eyes to read in this light. You read it, Sammy.”

Sammy Schiff looked surprised, then shrugged his shoulders and addressed himself to the paper.

“Nick Kosteff,” he read, “the West Side protection racketeer, scheduled to die this morning for the murder, last May, of two fruit dealers, was snatched from doom at eleven o’clock last night by virtue of executive reprieve. Kosteff’s execution was delayed one week as the result of a telegraphic confession signed ‘Mr. X,’ filed yesterday at 8:56 P.M. with the Painter Street telegraph office. Mr. X is believed by authorities to be Waddles Bellefonte, police character and asserted jewel thief.

“The telegram purporting to confess the double crime was addressed to the governor, and presented at the Painter Street office by Tony De Cenza, a newsboy. De Cenza had received it a moment previously from Mr. X, who stepped from a high-powered limousine to send him on the errand. De Cenza copied the message from one handed him by Mr. X, thus precluding any chance of identifying the sender by handwriting. The car’s license plates, according to De Cenza, were covered. Police obtained a detailed description of Mr. X from the newsboy, after which he was conducted through Rogues’ Gallery. It was there that the youth positively identified Mr. X as Waddles Bellefonte. Two passersby who witnessed the transaction between Mr. X and the newsie have since verified the Bellefonte identification.

“Although authorities are inclined to discount the telegram as a hoax, the mysterious circumstances surrounding its presentation and the injection of the Bellefonte angle determined the governor to postpone Kosteff’s execution until a fuller check can be made.

“‘I cannot stand by and see an innocent man electrocuted,’ began the amazing message which —”

Fever the Five coughed discreetly.

“That’s enough, Sammy,” he interrupted, gulping his coffee and slapping a half dollar onto the counter. “Besides, I just remembered a date. About that newspaper story”—his voice sank to a confidential monotone—“I don’t think anything will ever come of it.”

Sammy Schiff stared up at Fever the Five in milkish bewilderment. Fever the Five clapped him lightly on his pudgy back as a token of farewell, and moved toward the door.

three men
As he entered, they turned gray faces from its front page to Fever the Five. (Illustration by Raeburn Van Buren © SEPS)

Fever hailed a taxi outside and went directly to his hotel, where he left his overcoat. Eight minutes later he arrived before Mufti Joe’s place. Through the window he saw Louis Parconi and Ace Cardigan and Willie Jeems and Ziggety Dockstadter and Mufti Joe standing by the cash register, reading an outspread newspaper. As he entered, they turned gray faces from its front page to Fever the Five. Automatically, but with the exaggerated deliberation of a slow-motion picture, Mufti Joe reached into his safe. When his hand returned to the counter, it pushed a roll of bills toward the newcomer.

“You win,” he intoned reverently. “The governor just signed a reprieve for Nick Kosteff.”

“Thanks, toots !” said Fever the Five. And then, in a lower tone: “I got 10 to 1 says he don’t sign another.”

Fever the Five was back in the street and heading for his hotel when he felt heavy hands upon his shoulders. He whirled to face Mike Geraghty and Slim Bowen, who often traveled with Mike on the night beat. Fever was shocked to see that their faces were grim; he was nearly paralyzed to discover that they also had a gun jammed against his stomach.

“Hey, soft arch,” objected Fever the Five, “you can’t do this to me! What’s the rap?”

“Robbery, me lad,” said Mike Geraghty. “You should of stuck to the ten-buck rackets.” Fever heaved a sigh of relief. A dozen lesser charges would have filled him with consternation, but the obvious absurdity of robbery seemed so amusing that he burst into hearty laughter.

“All right,” he gasped after the laughter had passed, “I’ll bite. Who’d I rob?”

“You ask the questions,” murmured Mike Geraghty approvingly as he snapped a pair of handcuffs over Fever’s wrists, “and we got the answers. Fellow the name of Rankin. Got clipped on the jaw tonight in his room at the Kipp-Harris Arms across town. He woke up missin’ an eight-carat sparkler.”

“Nuts!” stated Fever the Five.

“That’s right,” said Mike Geraghty; “it was you told me you’d have diamonds the size of nuts, wasn’t it? I been tryin’ all night to remember who that was.”

“Go on and let me hear some more,” said Fever the Five, “because I got an alibi that’ll knock your eye out.”

“Glad t’accommodate,” purred Mike Geraghty. “Couple of fellows saw a guy in a blue suit and a gray hat scram out the back door of the Kipp-Harris Arms just about the time Rankin caught it on the button. We took ‘em down to the gallery, and they kinda figure that your mug matches pretty well with the guy they saw.”

Fever glanced sharply at the detective. He felt that the joke was being carried a bit too far.

“What time was the job pulled?”

“Rankin says just about nine straight up.”

Fever the Five tittered nervously.

“You mugs got me mixed up with Waddles Bellefonte again!” he giggled. “The only thing dumber’n a Chicago copper comes with hair all over it!” Gazing at the skeptical faces of the two detectives, Fever was gripped with sudden panic. “Don’tcha understand? It was Waddles Bellefonte pulled that job, because at nine o’clock I was —”

“Forget it,” interrupted Mike Geraghty paternally. “We got three witnesses saw Waddles on a corner next to the Painter Street telegraph office at five minutes to nine. I don’t hardly guess he could have got clear across town in five minutes. Waddles was wearin’ an overcoat too. That double-exposure stuff’s been good for quite a while now, Fever. But I wouldn’t advise you to pull it right this minute, ‘cause the way things look, Waddles is stuck for a nice long sentence himself.”

Fever the Five’s forehead wrinkled with baffled concentration.

“Let me get this straight,” he demanded. “What’s Waddles gotta stretch comin’ up for?”

“Oh, maybe a murder, maybe a conspiracy to impede the execution of justice, or maybe just a false information charge. Any one’ll add up to plenty of years. Come on, boy; let’s go.”

“No!” protested Fever. “You guys got nothing on me. Search me. Go ahead!”

“Okay, mister.”

They went through his pockets with swift efficiency. Mike Geraghty whistled to himself as he drew a sheaf of bank notes from Fever’s wallet and began counting them.

“Five hundred and sixty-seven fish,” he announced reprovingly. “Not so good for an eight-carat rock, Fever. But then, I ‘member you told me you was geared to five C’s.”

As they began hustling him toward the curb, Fever the Five’s heart ached with a great sickness for Loo’siana, where a guy wasn’t always being framed. Mike Geraghty’s voice came dimly to his ears.

“When you graduate from Joliet,” Mike was saying, “the first thing I’d do would be to take a healthy poke at the fence who give me five C’s for a sparkler worth ten grand. ’Twasn’t fair, Fever. He’d never of got away with a deal like that on Waddles Bellefonte.”

News of the Week: Sitcoms of the Past, Sci-Fi of the Present, and the Future of Cereal

Leave It to Kasich

 

Did you see that the classic sitcom Leave it to Beaver was in the news this week? It wasn’t in a good way, though. Here’s the quick back story: GOP Presidential contender John Kasich angered people — people are so quick to be “angered” nowadays — because he explained during a town hall in Virginia how he first got elected back in 1978:

“I didn’t have anybody for me. We just got an army of people who — and many women — who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yard signs up for me all the way back, you know, when things were different.”

Can you pick out the part that has everyone flipping out? That’s right, he dared to say that women left their kitchens! My God, this must mean he absolutely hates women and thinks they should quit their jobs and just go home and raise babies!

There are so many silly reactions to this story, like this blog post at Jezebel and this unfair piece at The Daily Beast, which comes complete with a doctored photo that replaces Hugh Beaumont’s face with Kasich’s (a picture that’s supposed to be insulting but I think is actually a compliment) and a snarky headline about being “a ’50s dad” (thereby insulting all ’50s dads). First of all, what’s wrong with a mother (or a dad) putting their home first? Kasich talked about all people in his quote and said it was a different time (even if he could have said it in a less clunky way). Second, this isn’t current thinking — he was referencing something that happened almost 40 years ago, and while even in the ’70s women had been in the workplace for many years, many were homemakers or juggling both home and career, and he was referring to a real grass-roots campaign. Kasich released a statement explaining his quote a little more clearly, and of course he doesn’t think what people are accusing him of thinking.

In the past 30+ years, it has become the default position that the 1950s were bad, and it’s not a time we want to return to. It’s not? Why? Sure, there were “bad” things about the ’50s, but that means you can’t like the ’30s (the Depression!) or the ’40s (war!) or the ’60s (assassinations and riots!) or the ’80s (all that greed and cocaine, and if you’re on the left, there was Reagan!) because some of it was “bad.” Lots of terrible things about 2016, too, if you haven’t noticed, even if we do have snazzy smartphones and easy access to antibiotics. No era is perfect. But when people wax nostalgic about a certain period, they’re not doing it because they miss the bad stuff; it’s because they want some of that good stuff today.

And to defend Leave it to Beaver specifically, have you watched it lately? It contains a lot more wisdom than you might remember, and we could do worse than listening to the advice of Ward Cleaver.

Believe me, the current presidential candidates are saying plenty of things that we should be angered about. Many, many things. Kasich’s comment isn’t one of them.

The Anger Is Out There

Another finale, another controversy.

Fans of The Sopranos and Lost were upset with those shows when they ended their runs with less-than-satisfying final episodes. But at least those episodes were actual conclusions. You may have hated the way they were handled, and maybe you didn’t like the answers, but at least they were answers. This week’s season (series?) finale of The X-Files ended ‑— SPOILER ALERT — with Mulder (and millions around the world) dying from a mysterious illness, Scully trying to find an antidote to save the world, and an alien spacecraft shining a light on our heroes, about to either abduct them or kill them. Roll credits!

Many fans aren’t too happy about it.

Creator Chris Carter says that this is nothing new, that the episodes and season finales of the show often ended on a cliffhanger. True, but back then we knew the show was absolutely coming back. There’s no guarantee it will this time, though Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson would like to see it continue. Sure, if I were a betting man, I’d say they’ll do another season (or a movie to end the story). The ratings were good and the fans are loyal. But I think those fans were looking for things to be just a little more wrapped up in this short, six-episode run.

Saving America’s Radio Heritage

car radio
Shutterstock

The Radio Preservation Task Force is not a new NCIS spinoff coming this fall to CBS; it’s actually part of the National Recording Preservation Board, an organization that is trying to save the many recordings and other historic information that often vanish after a radio station changes hands or goes out of business. RPTF chair Christopher Sterling is trying to save all of that American radio history.

You can also learn more about the project at the official RPTF site.

What Is Canada?

The answer is: People of this country are currently banned from becoming contestants on Jeopardy!

That’s right, if you live in Canada and want to be on the popular game show, you’re out of luck. Because of a change in Canada’s online privacy laws, including an anti-spam law passed in 2014 and a digital privacy law passed in 2015, you can’t apply to be on the show online. It will probably be cleared up in the future, but it’s really sad that it will be a long, long time before we see Justin Bieber on the show.

The only Canadian allowed on Jeopardy! right now? Host Alex Trebek.

Cereal Killers

Another quick question: Can you guess why millennials don’t eat cereal? (I know, why would that question occur to anyone, but just play along.) Is it…

Actually, it’s none of those reasons. In a rather fascinating piece for The New York Times about the future of cereal, Kim Severson cites a 2015 report that says that almost 40% of Millennials — people born roughly between the years 1981 and 1996 — don’t like eating cereal “because they had to clean up after eating it.”

Is cereal really that messy? I mean, you pour it into one bowl and eat it with a spoon. You just close the box and then clean the bowl and spoon. Seems like one of the more fast and convenient meals. God help these people if they ever have to make spaghetti and meatballs, nachos, or steak.

If he were dead, Jerry Seinfeld would be turning over in his grave.

How to Close a Bag of Chips

Here’s another question about a food problem you might have: What do you do if you open a bag of chips and don’t finish them? You could just use a chip clip to close the bag, but according to this instructional video at Slate, you could also close the bag using a series of really tedious and time-consuming folds that will seal the bag to the point where you might not be able to open it again.

I think that after you watch the video you’ll come to the same conclusion I did: just use a chip clip.

National Pistachio Day​

It occurs to me that I’ve only eaten pistachio nuts in their original form: right out of the shell. I’ve never had pistachio ice cream or used them in salads or rice dishes or in pastries. I don’t know why, because I certainly use almonds and cashews and peanuts in all kinds of recipes.

But since today is National Pistachio Day, I can rectify that by making the recipes above, and so can you. I’ll have to get a bag that has already been shelled because, let’s face it, there’s no way I’m going to sit there and take them out one by one.

 

Upcoming Events and Anniversaries

The 88th Academy Awards (February 28)
You can print out a list of Oscar nominees and make your own predictions. The show airs at 8:30 p.m. on ABC, but of course you’ll want to start watching at 7 for all the red carpet hoopla.

Ohio admitted as 17th state (March 1, 1803)
What’s hi in the middle and round on both ends?

Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game (March 2, 1962)
Chamberlain’s feat is one of those sports records that will probably never be broken.

Pioneer 10 launched (March 2, 1972)
It was the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter. It carries a plaque with a message of greetings if anyone finds it out there.

Knute Rockne born (March 4, 1888)
The Notre Dame football player won one for the Gipper.

Georgia O’Kee​f​fe dies (March 6, 1986)
​The American artist’s 1932 painting “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” sold for $44.4 million at a 2014 auction.

Every Hero an Hombre, Every Wolf a Clown

Hector toasted with arroqueño mezcal brought in from Oaxaca by the bar’s owner. “To the new heavyweight champion of Luchadores Club!”

“This week, anyway!” Alex added.

Ramon grinned. The gold-buckled belt hung over the back of his bar stool, trophy of Ojos Rojos’ victory over El Ruiseñor an hour before. “Gracias, amigos. Salute!”

They clinked glasses, sipped liquid fire. Only gringo frat boys shot mezcal.

Luchadores Club met in a Quonset hut beside Marco’s Bar on Jerry Street. Unless rust over the door counted, the building had no sign. It didn’t need one. Neighbors for blocks around packed the place twice a week to watch lucha libre wrestlers grapple and drop-kick for a cut of the gate. It was half the price of a movie, twice as much fun. If the city cared, concern ended at insurance requirements and the occasional parking ticket.

Hector was El Lobo Gran Malo — The Big Bad Wolf. Dark gray-and-black trunks, matching Chuck Taylor sneakers with extra-high tops that reached mid-calf, a gray mask with yellow trim around the eyes, and jagged white trim — teeth, if you please — around the mouth. He used three signature moves: Huff, Puff, and Blow. He loved hearing the crowd chant, “Soplas la casa abajo!” — Blow the house down! — when he laid the third move on his opponents.

Ramon set his glass, asked Hector, “Has Emilio decided what he wants for his party yet?”

“No.” Emilio was Hector’s son, on the cusp of turning nine. “He’s gone through 20 ideas. Batman. Star Wars. Iron Man. Something called Minecraft. He’s come up with stuff I didn’t even know was stuff.”

“Kids love the luchadores,” Alex hinted. Alex wrestled as El Loco Hombre Azul — the Crazy Blue Man. Crazy about being a luchador, Hector figured. It was Alex’s answer for everything. Flat tire? Call a luchador. Termite problem? Call a luchador.

“It’s Emilio’s choice. He’s never expressed interest in a party with friends before, so he’s getting whatever he wants.”

“What’s wrong with luchadores?” As if Alex had been passed over for a promotion. Labor dispute? Call a luchador.

“Nothing. He’s a kid. Kids have lots of choices. But he needs to decide soon. Three weeks isn’t much time to set something up.”

Alex snorted. “Three hours, you could have a half-dozen wrestlers.”

#

It was after dark when Hector pulled into his driveway. From the porch, Lydia fixed him with a glare learned from her abuela. She swore it wasn’t the evil eye. It looked evil enough.

“You have a problem,” she said as he reached the steps.

“It was just a couple mezcals with the guys.”

“Not booze. The boy. He’s chosen his party entertainment. Came out of his room, said, ‘Mama, I’ve made my decision,’ and gave me this.” She handed Hector a folded sheet of paper.

“That’s not a problem. It’s an answered prayer.”

“Maybe if mass was at the Improv.”

Hector unfolded it. Black letters in a sea of white bond declared:

 

XYLO THE CLOWN

 

Hector studied his wife. “You’re messing with me.”

“No.”

“C’mon. This isn’t funny.”

“Billy Miller told Emilio about the clown at his party. Balloon animals. Magic tricks. The folding xylophone.”

“The confetti cannon?”

“On and on about the confetti cannon.”

Hector rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you think Emilio knows?”

“No. I think you’re a victim of your own showmanship.” Lydia opened the door. Her voice dropped. “And that big lie you live.”

Lie is such an ugly word.”

Hector followed her. Inside, his daughters Katie and Elizabeth python-hugged his legs.

***

In Peninsula, Texas — incorporated 1872 along the Guadalupe River, population 254,000 — luchadores and clowns did not mix.

Peninsula birthed one of the first rodeo clown schools in Texas, circa 1903. Before long, the program expanded to include circus and independent performers. Two of Barnum and Bailey’s boss clowns passed through Peninsula zip codes. One saw them everywhere.

By contrast, the city didn’t meet lucha libre until after World War Two, when Salvador Lutteroth’s traveling exhibition from Mexico City passed through on its way to Houston. The acrobatics, the pageantry, the unashamed fun — the descendants of Mexico cleaved to it. Two recreational leagues popped up in the months following Lutteroth’s visit.

A few still recalled the League Night Fracas of 1961 at the AMF lanes on Brazos Street, but the original slight was lost to history. Whether clowns believed their livelihood impinged upon or luchadores felt marginalized, the blood between them ran black. They entertained in their own neighborhoods and kept to their own sides of the street. No one was bold enough — or stupid enough — to mingle squirting daisies and flying tackles.

Except for Xylo the Clown. El Lobo Gran Malo. Hector Ramirez, plumber.

***

Lost in the shuffle of six siblings, Hector became class cut-up for attention. Acting up shortened to acting, begat drama club, talent shows, roles in local theater productions. He attended LSU, eyes on a dramatic arts degree. When told, his father shook his head and wished Hector luck. “Just never let me see you in tights.”

Xylo, outfitted in a lime green jacket and ruffled shirt, baggy pants, and oversized shoes, was born at LSU. Tuition, fees, textbooks, meals — those demanded every piece of change. One professor suggested greasepaint as a sidelight. “You can read a room. You’re a natural entertainer.”

As a middle child, Hector enjoyed making someone else’s birthday special. Laughter and applause were lagniappe. It beat scrubbing dishes in the dining hall. Dirty cookware didn’t applaud.

Xylo went into a box when Hector met Lydia, was a wistful memory by the time they settled in Peninsula with two kids. He met Ramon on the job with Palmer Plumbing. Ramon introduced him to lucha libre. Hector was a cruiserweight, took to the acrobatics with gusto. It was a year before he even heard about issues with clowns.

Then the economy tanked, killed by the announcement that Lydia was pregnant again. Hector scoured classified ads, seeking another job for months before stumbling across Xylo’s box while cleaning the garage.

Parties paid well. Weekends were typically free. Both wrestling and clowning covered his face. Hector mapped where it was safe to perform as Xylo when not appearing as the Wolf. His double life worked without a hitch for three years until Billy Miller, third grade braggart, soured the deal.

***

Hector knocked outside Emilio’s open door. The boy glanced up from a web page about the Aztecs, smart brown eyes reading Hector from behind gold-rimmed glasses. He frowned. “Mama told you.”

“Yeah.”

“You mad?”

Hector sat on the bed. Old springs squeaked. “No. Why would I be?”

“Because I want a clown for my party, not a luchador.”

“I’m not mad. Surprised, maybe. You really like wrestling.”

“Yeah. But the guys know all the wrestlers, like how you’re Big Bad Wolf, and King Bee is Cousin Juan. It’s not as much fun. I want something … different.”

“Different isn’t always better.”

“How come ‘different’ is always better when Mama cooks something weird?”

“Because she’s Mama.”

“Anyway, Billy Miller knows cool clowns. He goes to the circus every summer. And a clown at a luchador’s house? The guys will talk about it for weeks!”

And there it was. When you’re nine, you want to impress the guys. Too soon, Hector thought, it would be about impressing girls instead. His left eye twitched at the notion. “It’s your birthday. You want a clown? You get a clown.”

“Thanks.”

“You sure you want this Xylo? He sounds kinda goofy.”

Emilio turned back to his computer. “They all would to you. You’re not allowed to like clowns. It might be a law.”

***

“Did Juan bang your head into a turnbuckle again?” Lydia snapped off the lamp and snuggled against her husband.

“No, really. I know how I can perform at the party.”

“In two hours, you’ve got a plan?”

“A bulletproof plan.”

“Wow. Luchador, clown, criminal mastermind. My mother was wrong. I did hit the jackpot.”

“The week of the party, when I’m around Emilio, I’ll mention it’s my on-call weekend.”

“It’s not.”

“He won’t know that. The day of the party, an hour before, I’ll get called in. I’ll have my props in the van. I’ll drive around the block, suit up, and come back on foot as Xylo. I’ll do the gig, leave, clean up, come back, and no one’s the wiser.”

Despite the dark, he could feel Lydia staring at him again. It was a strange sensation. Prickly. “Suppose the other luchadores show up to play ‘Suplex the Clown’?”

“I’m going to encourage them to come. They’re my brothers. They’ll posture, but none of them will come intending to start a ruckus. They’ll let the clown take the first swing, which he’ll never do.”

“Won’t they figure out you’re not on-call and not at the party? Doesn’t some little thing always reveal a secret identity?”

“They’ll be to busy fretting about a clown.”

Lydia was quiet for a time. “Emilio will be upset if you’re not there.”

“He’s nine. He’s elastic.”

“And you don’t think he’ll recognize you?”

“Kids fall for this all the time. Look at Clark Kent and Superman.”

Lydia kissed his neck, under the ear. “Except Superman is bulletproof.”

***

Commotion ensued at practice the next night, word spreading about Emilio’s clown. Hector was the Lawrence Olivier of Jerry Street: exasperated luchador and long-suffering father, trying to make his child happy. He played on their sympathies, begged their indulgence. “Don’t let Emilio’s party go bust. Let your kids come. If you’re really concerned, hang around to see the show.”

Everyone manned up in Hector’s time of need. Even Alex, who had no children. “I just want to see this joker up close.”

***

Emilio’s frown was the Grand Canyon the day of the party, when Hector grabbed his tool belt from the peg beside the door. “But I wanted you to see him.”

“Mama will shoot video. If I’m late, we’ll watch it together tonight.” He tussled Emilio’s hair. It brought the boy no solace. “I’ll try to be quick, but it sounds like a pretty bad leak.”

Emilio offered a half-smile. “Will you come in your mask?”

“Sure. Then you can have a luchador and a clown.”

Having both proved a non-issue. When Xylo the Clown entered the yard through the side gate an hour later, 11 masked faces greeted him with grim silence. The luchadores formed a row before the tall wooden fence, arms crossed, jaws firm. They returned neither Xylo’s smile nor wave. They might have been wrestling-themed lawn ornaments.

Xylo was setting up on the deck when Lydia motioned him to the side yard. Xylo shuffled down the steps and across the yard, rocking side to side.

“Did you call the cavalry?” Lydia pointed up the street.

A dozen clowns ambled single-file down the sidewalk, a rainbow waiting to be curved across the sky. Hector recognized several of them: Sprinkles, Polka Dot, Clapper. The others were strangers, but the show of solidarity was unmistakable.

Led by Sprinkles, they marched up the driveway to the side gate. Sprinkles tipped his neon blue bowler hat to Lydia, gloomy. “Good day, ma’am. We understand one of our brethren is performing here.”

Xylo waved. Sprinkles grinned and waved back, then grew dour again. “We also understand there are luchadores present.”

“Yes. Friends of my husband.”

“We’re here to ensure there are no unfortunate incidents.”

“Oh, everyone’s on best behavior.”

“With your permission, we’d like to tarry in your driveway until Xylo’s done, and afford him safe passage home.”

Lydia bit her lip to tame her smile. “It’s your show, Xylo.”

Xylo gave Sprinkles a thumbs-up. “See you soon!” he squeaked, a cartoon. He could feel an unfunny sweat on his brow.

***

Maybe it was the pressure, but Hector gave the best performance of Xylo the Clown’s life. The children clapped, stomped their feet, whistled in all the right places. Lydia and the other mothers shouted encouragement while tending the party.

The luchadores were noncommittal, eyes like hawks in the holes of their masks. Only Alex tried to stir the pot, when Xylo unfolded his namesake instrument. Xylo cupped his hand to his ear, asked the kids for requests. They shouted classics — “Old MacDonald,” “This Old Man,” “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

From the back, Alex called, “El Carretero.” The luchadores chuckled.

Xylo pointed at Alex and nodded, excited. He licked a gloved fingertip, tested the breeze. He gripped the two mallets, raised them, and banged out a simple version of the Mexican folk song with which Alex had tried to stump him.

The kids cheered. Cowed, Alex leaned against the fence. Hector caught Ramon smiling.

Xylo fired the confetti cannon to a hearty ovation. He led a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for Emilio. Mothers dished ice cream and cake. The kids ate around a long table set up under a tent, and Xylo packed, the show complete.

He’d secured the cannon when Lydia stopped beside him. “Emilio’s miserable.”

Xylo squeaked, “Didn’t he enjoy the show?”

Words worse than any body slam. “Yes. But he thinks his father skipped the party because of the clown.”

“Where is he?”

Lydia tipped her head towards Emilio, sitting alone, sullen, poking cake with a plastic fork.

Xylo sashayed across the yard and sat beside the boy. “What’s wrong, Emilio?”

“My dad missed the party.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

The boy shook his head, fine strands of hair waving at the sun. “I think he’s mad at me because I wanted you at my party. He said it was okay, but then he said he had to work. He’s not even on-call. I checked his calendar.”

In his head, Hector saw Lydia mouthing the word bulletproof.

“Your act was great,” Emilio continued, “but I guess I wanted my dad here more.”

The sadness in his son’s voice was a nail through Hector’s heart. No ruse was worth it.

“Emilio, can you keep a secret?”

Emilio glanced, curious. Xylo unzipped the fanny pack slung around his waist. He withdrew the luchador mask, the face of El Lobo Gran Malo, and handed it to the boy.

Emilio turned it in his hands, studied it. Glanced at Xylo, then the mask again. Hector waited for the boy to connect the dots. Then Emilio shouted, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the neighbor’s house, “What did you do to my dad!?!”

***

One seldom witnesses the instant all hell breaks loose. Recording a tender father/son moment, Lydia caught one on video.

Emilio bolts from the chair, runs to the luchadores, screaming, waving El Lobo’s face like a battle flag.

The luchadores see the mask in Emilio’s hand. A luchador’s mask is his identity. They know El Lobo would never willingly surrender it, especially to a clown.

“What did you do, you payaso bastardo?” Alex shouts. The luchadores advance.

Hearing the budding commotion, the clowns in the driveway become a technicolor wave into the yard.

Children scatter, mobile air-raid sirens.

Pockets of chaos bloom like flowers. Luchadores launch themselves. Wigs fly. Clowns leap on wrestler backs, steer them by the eye-holes in masks. Ramon headlocks Sprinkles, crushes his bowler. Polka Dot levels Alex with the meanest left hook ever thrown by a lady clown.

Xylo stands on a chair and shouts, squeaky lilt replaced by Hector’s voice. Commanding. Resonant. Terrified. “Knock it off! Stop! All of you!” The chaos abates but doesn’t end until he adds, “Do you want the neighbors to call the cops?”

When he has their attention, Xylo rips the lime green wig from his head, pulls the matching bulb from his nose, and drops them on the ground. “It’s me! Hector! I’m fine! I’m Xylo the Clown! Everyone relax!”

For a moment, everything stops. Hector starts to explain when Alex cries, “I won’t let them convert you!” He knocks Hector from the chair with a flying tackle.

That’s when Lydia stops recording.

***

“I can’t believe you missed my speech.”

“It’s been four days,” Lydia said. “Let it go.”

“Maybe after you travel back in time and record it.”

“The exciting part was over.”

Hector sipped his beer with braced wrist. “At least all the injuries were minor. No one got arrested. We probably won’t get sued. And some good came out of it.”

“Good?” Lydia toweled a plate dry. “Suspended by the Brotherhood of Clowns and Luchadores Club. None of them are even speaking to you.”

“See? I united them against a common foe.” He took another sip. “The Brotherhood won’t pass me gigs, but they can’t stop me from performing. It’s not a union. The guys will come around. Ramon’s more hurt by me keeping a secret than anything.”

“No, but Marco can keep you out of the ring.”

“Marco’s a businessman. He’ll make me a villain for a while. El Payaso Lobo — The Clown Wolf. It’s like being in a sideshow.”

“Understatement of the year.” Lydia stacked plates in the cupboard, hung the damp dishtowel on a hook, and hugged Hector around the shoulders. “You’re a good man. But that was a lot of hassle for a birthday party. Was it really worth it?”

Emilio popped into the doorway, grin and waving hands, Kermit the Frog with a bowl haircut. “The ‘Luchadores versus Clowns’ video just reached 500,000 hits on YouTube! I think it got linked by Boing-Boing. It even has a comment from some guy in the Maldives. I don’t even know where that is!” Then he was gone again, down the hall with a whoop, his sisters joining him in the joyful chorus that filled the house end-to-end.

Hector glanced at Lydia, lips curled in a smile. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”

America the Smug

The views expressed here do not represent the opinions of The Saturday Evening Post.

Dear Reader: In an election year, one hears many disparate views. But no politician would dare challenge the most sacred tenet of our belief system, namely that American is the greatest nation on Earth. For that, you need to go back to outspoken midcentury theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, best known for having the Serenity Prayer adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous. The following is his essay published in the Post on November 16, 1963:

America the Smug

By Reinhold Niebuhr

Perhaps our gravest fault as a nation is our exalted sense of American virtue. We see the United States as something unique in the world, a nation whose concerns soar above petty national ambitions, whose generosity and goodwill are unequaled. God, we assume, is invariably on our side, thanks to a special covenant with the Almighty.

In one of his books, Sen. Barry Goldwater ^v e voice to this feeling. “We are the bearers of Western civilization, the most noble product of the heart and mind of man. . . .” he said. “Providence has imposed upon us the task of leading the free world’s fight to stay free.” The Republican presidential contender was expressing not merely his own patriotism but also a notion deeply rooted in our history and national character.

This sense of special virtue—with its dear implication that disagreement with us is tantamount to godlessness—offends our allies and affronts the weaker peoples of the world. It tends to obscure the fact that we are actually a normal country, normally seeking our own interests. And it greatly impedes our legitimate and worthwhile endeavors as the world’s most powerful nation.

The news of the day illustrates our moral pretensions and their consequences. When India, for example, asked our help in building a desperately needed steel mill, strong opposition arose in Congress. The mill, congressmen complained, was to be owned by the Indian government, and our aid. therefore, would serve to encourage socialism. The congressmen gave no weight to the Indian feeling that a measure of socialism is beneficial, given India’s problems. In effect, the congressmen were saying that no matter how desperate the need, the Indians would have to follow the American economic pattern or do without its aid. The Indians chose to do without. Tactfully they withdrew their request. And the future prosperity of the Indian economy which is important to the free world, was correspondingly impaired.

Or consider our relations with the new Europe. In the years following World War II the United States stood as the sole protector of Western Europe against the Soviet threat. The Europeans then were weak and could not defend themselves. Today, thanks in part to U.S. assistance. Western Europe is strong and vigorous. It not only is able to assume a larger share of its own defense costs but wants to make its own defense decisions. To the United States, the idea is unthinkable. We have grown so accustomed to dominance in European affairs that we cannot bear to relinquish the role. We fume at our “uncooperative” allies. We paint General de Gaulle, who embodies the new European spirit of independence, as something close to sinister. To a large degree our reaction stems simply from violated self esteem.

We were born with a sense of having a virtuous mission. Thomas Jefferson expressed it succinctly and admirably: “We exist and are quoted as standing proofs that a government, modeled to rest continually on the whole of society, is a practical government. As members of the universal society of mankind, and as standing high in our responsibility to them, it is our sacred duty not to blast the confidence that a government based in reason is better than one of force.” These sentiments, a typical expression of 18thcentury liberal idealism, claimed more democratic uniqueness for our Government than it possessed. For the nations of Western Europe—including Britain, whose government we had mistakenly defined as an absolute monarchy—were slowly developing democratic institutions and changing into constitutional monarchies. Certainly this exaggeration was excusable in Jefferson’s day. America was a weak infant, and to keep its self-esteem in a world of old and powerful empires, it had to believe that it was new, different and better than any other country ever founded. Jefferson the idealist was enough of a realist, however, to see the potential national domain in the wide open spaces of our virtually uninhabited continent. He engineered the purchase of the Louisiana territory from Napoleon and prompted the Lewis and Clark exploration of the northwest. Nor did Jefferson’s idealism in any way cloud his practical sense of power. “We must marry ourselves,” he said, “to the British fleet and nation.” Already self-interest and virtue were thoroughly entangled in our national character.

The normal expansive impulses of a young nation and the land hunger of our pioneers began to press against all the vestigial European sovereignties on this continent. We risked war with Britain for the sake of Oregon and had a war with Mexico for the sake of Texas. Significantly, we veiled this expansive impulse under the concept of “Manifest Destiny.” “It is our Manifest Destiny,” said the diplomat John Louis O’Sullivan in 1845, “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Our sense of virtue, in short, was both a spur and a veil for our sense of expanding power. Thus early in the 19th century we laid the foundation for a confusion about the relation of our power to our virtue. We have never quite overcome that confusion. It still troubles us in the days of our great power, and lies at the base of what the English scholar Denis Brogan has denned as “the illusion of American omnipotence.”

The real conflict between our sense of virtue, power and responsibilities on the one hand, and our normal concern for the national interest on the other, did not begin until the First World War. The war was our first encounter with the forces which were to lead us to the pinnacle of global responsibility. The encounter, fittingly, occurred under the last of our Jeffersonian idealists, Woodrow Wilson, who thought that America was “the most unselfish of the nations,” and was elected for a second term with the slogan “He kept us out of the war.” Idealism, however, had little to do with our entry into the war. Rather, it was in our national interest that Britain keep her influence in Europe; our peace depended on the power of the British navy. The nation was only dimly conscious of this fact, and Wilson never explicitly acknowledged it. Once embarked on the war, he defined it idealistically as a war “to make the world safe for democracy.” His most cherished object was the League of Nations.

America reacted to this first venture in world politics in almost neurotic proportions. The idealists were naturally affronted with the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles. The nationalists scorned the peace and the League because our national interests were not sufficiently protected. The period between the two world wars proved only to be a long armistice; and in the long “interventionist” debate our nation tried desperately to escape its obvious role in the world and to crawl back into the now impossible continental security. The nationalists and the idealists formed a coalition against involvement so strong that we might not have made the plunge into World War II had the Japanese not made the decision for us by attacking Pearl Harbor.

During the interventionist debate í was a member of a committee advocating an affirmative responsibility toward the war in Europe, The very name of the committee was an indication of our moral ambivalence. It was the ‘Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.’ The very name of the committee would have outraged Woodrow Wilson; but it was shrewdly designed to avoid his too consistent idealism. Many Americans were not willing to admit that the Nazis had to be defeated at whatever cost, because both the national interest and a human value were at stake.

The Second World War raised the old tension in our national soul—between our senses of virtue, power and responsibility—to a global dimension. For we emerged from the war the strongest democratic nation. The war had increased our productive capacity and had impoverished Europe. We were cured of our old nostalgia for innocence at the price of irresponsibility; the very degree of our power made our responsibilities all too clear. In 1946, American mothers were pleading to “bring the boys home by Christmas,” a sentiment that resulted in our leaving our potential foes, the Russians, in possession of much of a defeated and devastated Europe. But by 1948 we were engaged in the Marshall Plan, and our wealth and power were turned to European reconstruction. We had learned our lesson. A powerful and wealthy nation must assume responsibilities commensurate with its power and wealth.

But the old problem of virtue and power assailed us in a new way. We claimed a unique virtue for a policy which actually was an act of wise self-interest. We almost spoiled the virtue of our prudence by remarks such as that of the politician who crowed, “The Marshall Plan was the most generous act ever undertaken by any nation.” That claim prompted derision even among our allies and friends in Europe. The Marshall Plan was not generous but prudent. It saved the European continent for democracy, when all of its wealth, skills and talents were imperiled, and when their loss would have meant our isolation.

The fact is that a nation with a sense of virtuous mission finds it difficult to understand that the moral norm for nations, as distinct from individuals, is not generosity but a wise self-interest— a self-interest that lies somewhere between the parochial and the general interest. Since the Marshall Plan we have wisely sought to help the nations of Africa and Asia up the steep path to modern industrialism and consequent freedom from age old poverty. Our foreign aid program does not exceed one percent of our gross national product and is only a tenth of our total defense budget. Yet it is an unpopular part of our budget, perhaps because there is no bloc of voters to defend it. We constantly worry that we may have become “too generous,” letting the designing nations of Europe and the world take advantage of our pure hearts. However, we are dealing here with moral realities, and moral realities do not fit neatly into the usual moral categories of “unselfishness” and “generosity.” Foreign aid involves relations in which our interests are inextricably intertwined in a whole web of mutual interests.

Many circumstances, in fact, make it difficult for us to view our responsibilities soberly, without undue pretensions of unique virtue. Our living standards, for example, arc twice those of the more advanced nations of Europe and are beyond the dreams of avarice of the Asian and African continents. Further complicating the problem of keeping our national self-esteem in sober bounds is our outrage over the “ingratitude” of widespread anti-Americanism. Some of this anti-Americanism is prompted by envy. Some of it, as in the case of Gaullist France, may be prompted by aspirations to national glory. Some of it is also due to the fact that no human agent is ever as wise or as disinterested as he thinks he is. Criticisms will be directed at us because of our errors and because of our achievements.

Since we are bound to occupy the eminence of world hegemony for a long time (if the uneasy peace of a “balance of terror” does not make an end of us and our civilization in a nuclear catastrophe). We must be prepared to exercise our power with more soberness than our original sense of virtue inclines us to. We have become one of the two “super nations” in the modem world; and the only one of the two which must deal with the great and small allies in the spirit of free accommodation of competing interests. We must be prepared to be unpopular, even if our decisions in crucial issues are right, and to accept unpopularity because our decisions may be wrong. For we are not as omniscient as we seem to be in the day of our seeming omnipotence, and certainly not as virtuous as our whole tradition has persuaded us that we are.

An end to arrogance

One of our chief problems will be to avoid what has been called the “unconscious arrogance of conscious power” as we deal particularly with our great allies, many of them in Europe. Their greatness cannot be diminished by the new magnitudes of modern “super nations,” and their memories of past glories and experience of present frustrations are bound to lead to jealousies.

The moral problems of our national life are so complex that they cannot be understood by the simple categories of good and evil—of “selfishness” and “unselfishness”—which individuals recognize. It is ironic, in view of our early passion for displaying the purity of our virtue, that today the responsibilities of our role should include the mounting of a nuclear deterrent, thus involving us in the proleptic guilt of a nuclear catastrophe. The moral ambiguity of the political order, which we have desperately tried to veil or to ignore, has been raised to the nth degree in our experience of power and responsibility.

Our best chance of avoiding the moral pretension that besets us is to analyze the circumstances that have brought us to this perilous condition. Two points are especially significant. First, it is our power, not our unselfish virtue, that makes the survival of Western civilization depend upon our own survival. Second, the degree of our power is not the fruit of the virtue of our own generation—the generation that wields the power. We are strong because many “gifts of Providence” have contributed to our power. Among them are a hemisphere richly stored with natural resources; the fact that the expansion of our nation coincided with the industrial revolution, enabling us to unify a whole continental economy; and, of course, the fact that the Civil War preserved our national unity.

By steadfastly keeping these two points in mind, we can prevent such virtue as we possess from exuding the sweat of self-righteousness.

The Art of Robert Meyers – from Wild West to Romance

In the 1950s and ’60s, the name Robert Meyers was a familiar one to readers of The Saturday Evening Post. In just 10 years, Meyers published 94 pieces of artwork in the magazine. He illustrated mostly romance and mystery, but his expertise actually fell into a completely different genre.

Growing up in a strict family of accountants, Meyers became fascinated with Western America while watching cowboy films, immersing himself in a completely different culture than the one he was familiar with in New York City. His family was surprised when, instead of carrying on the family occupation, he asked to go to art school. After attending multiple art and fashion universities, he began to illustrate children’s books and Western paperbacks.

image
© SEPS

His career at the Post began in 1952, when his employer, Charles E. Cooper Studios, introduced him to the job. He went on to illustrate stories like “The Girl Next Door” by Steve McNeil, with a scene in which a bathing suit-clad girl surprises a lucky man with a kiss. Meyers uses a unique color story of ocean blues and electric yellows, and dramatic waves crashing into the couple to tell the romantic story. Many of Meyers’ illustrations from the Post involve couples in embraces or men fawning over female characters.

Meyers’ love for the Wild West also appeared in the Post alongside stories like “The Boy Left Home” by John Randolph Phillips. In the scene, a young man in business attire talks with an older farmer. With a suitcase at the young man’s feet, he prepares to ask the farmer if he can stay, having run away. Meyers uses intricate detail to paint the farm scene, down to the old-fashioned wagon and cows grazing in the background. Meyers was, perhaps, referring to his own childhood, and this illustration reflected the struggles of going against his own family’s wish for him to become an accountant.

In the 1960s, the Post decided to slowly decrease the number of illustrations in the magazine, making Meyers look for other opportunities to make a living. He decided to live out his love for Western culture and moved his family to Wyoming. There he operated a dude ranch and was an active cattle rancher. His artwork during this time focused on painting his family hard at work at the ranch and on his personal life in the West. In 1970, he was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America.

Gallery

Planning Your Leap Day

For an event that happens only once every four years (well, almost), leap day doesn’t get much attention. At best “leaplings” — those born on February 29 — might get a birthday discount at the local bar (thanks, this one falls on a Monday). But what about those of us unlucky enough to be born on one of the other 365 days of the year?

To find out how to make this leap day more than just another Monday, we turned to the archives to discover how people celebrated leap days past. And we found this bit of inspiration from humorist Parke Cummings, who laid out his grand plans for leap day in 1952:

I’ll Be Busy

by Parke Cummings

February 16, 1952

This is Leap Year, which means that in February we get an extra day gratis. Instead of wasting it by doing the usual mundane things like worrying about bills, snarling at the children and breaking pencils, I intend to take advantage of this extra twenty-four hours by accomplishing things I’ve never got around to.

First of all, I intend to find out how cricket is scored. Every once in a while I find myself baffled by a dispatch reporting that Lancashire, trailing by 471 runs, scored 311 in its last innings and thereby achieved a tie. This may be a type of arithmetic with which I’m unfamiliar, and I intend to get to the bottom of it even if it entails an overseas phone call to some British sports expert.

Next I’m going to memorize the license number of my car. Some people succeed in doing this, but I never have. If I leave it in a parking lot and the attendant asks me for the number, I always have to reply, “It’s the one with the big dent in the left rear fender.” The dent is going to be fixed tomorrow, so that won’t do any more. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to memorize this perfectly, but perhaps a jingle will expedite matters. The number is — wait till I look now — ah, yes. For at least an hour on the twenty-ninth I’m going to recite: “Let’s put this down and keep it straight: The number’s CK-428.”

Leap Year Logic

Before we dive into leap year traditions, first a word of explanation:

You may already know that our calendar is based on the solar year — the time it takes for the earth to fully orbit the sun and arrive at the same starting point. Unfortunately, this orbit takes 365.25 days, and our calendar is based on whole days. So we add a whole day every four years to adjust for the quarter day.

You may not know that our calendar makes two other adjustments, because that fraction of a day is actually not, in fact, six hours long, but 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds. This item, from an 1884 Post, explains one additional adjustment.

The year 1900 will not be a leap year, although it is divisible by four without a remainder. In order to make calendar and solar time agree as nearly as they can be got for many years to come, the Gregorian calendar drops three leap years out of every four centuries, and these omissions are upon such leap years as will not divide 400 without a remainder, although they can be divided evenly by four. The year 1600 was a leap year, but 1700 and 1800 were not, and 1900 will not be.

And, consequently, the year 2000 was a leap year. We won’t have another leap year at the start of a century until 2400. The other adjustment? To bring our calendar and solar time even closer, there’s no leap year in any year evenly divisible by 4,000.

Leap Year Role Reversal

According to a 1606 tome Courtship, Love, and Marriage quoted in 1884 leap year articles across the country, the leap day was once reserved as a time for women to propose to men. Imagine that! Furthermore, some sources claimed a man couldn’t refuse such a proposal without paying a hefty fine to the spurned lover, variously described as a large sum of cash, enough fabric for a silk dress, or 12 pairs of gloves. With that background, the following is a collection of leap year stories from the pages of the Post:

 

Civil War Personal Ad

March 12, 1864

A Chicago girl, tired of waiting for the young men who don’t “propose” — probably on account of the expense, or the preponderance of the girls since the war broke out — takes advantage of the season, and speaks out boldly in her own name in the “Wants” column of the Chicago Tribune, as follows: “This is leap year. I’ll wait no longer. So here I am, twenty-one years of age, prepossessing, medium size, healthy, educated, prudent, large sparkling eyes, long black flowing hair, and as full of fun as a chestnut is full of meat, born to make some man happy, and want a home. Does anybody want me?”

 

Nowhere to Hide, April 12, 1864

A man, in order to avoid the annoyances of leap year, wore a card on the breast of his coat, with this inscription: “I am engaged.” Despite this, a woman tackled him and married him inside of two weeks.

 

Mother Knows Best, July 2, 1892

Here is the story of a servant girl, who has not found leap year a failure. She lives in Portland, Me.

A Boston paper says the girl told her mistress that she was going to get married, and showed her some wedding clothes and a hat that she had bought. “What does the young man do?” asked the mistress. “Shure, an’ I aint seen him yit,” was the reply, “but me mother says I must git married this year, anyway.” The two had actually arranged everything before the man was even thought of.

Soon after the girl told her mistress that she met a young man and was going to make him marry her. She began to send him various little presents, boxes of candy, etc. She couldn’t read or write and got the children of the household to direct the parcels for her. So well did the girl and her mother manage that, contrary to the wishes of the young man’s family, he was courted and married and settled down in less than three months from the time he first met his bride.

 

Ladies’ Night Etiquette, March 2, 1872

The following are the leap-year ballroom regulations established by the ladies of St. Louis: “Gentlemen are expected to be as lady-like as possible, therefore, no gentleman will be allowed to enter the ball-room except on the arm of his escort or one of the managers; no gentleman can dance unless invited to do so by a lady; no gentleman can enter the supper-room unless escorted by a lady; the lady managers will see that no gentleman is neglected.”

 

St. Valentine’s Day in Leap Year — A Solemn Warning to Single Men
leap year valentine
February 12, 1876

Bachelors all, of St. Valentine’s Day beware!
This year is Leap Year: the ladies may choose!
How then you get in the fair sex’s way beware,
Or both your hearts and your freedom you’ll lose.
Princesses-waitresses,
Curly or straight tresses,
Fond hearts or traitresses,
Short ones or tall;
Elderly—youthful,
Deceitful or truthful,
Unfeeling or ruthful,
Beware of them all!
Theirs is the question this year; and for popping it,
No opportunity will they omit.
They may propose; and you’ve no chance of stopping it;
“Please ask mamma” does not answer a bit.
They’ll grant no truces,
Delays or excuses;
Resistance no use is
To Leap Year’s mad freak,
That one chance of Hymen.
For nervous and shy men,
(The girls can’t think why men
Are frightened to speak.)
As for myself; I am terrified awfully—
“No” to a woman ne’er yet have I said,
So run a great risk of behaving unlawfully
Marrying all who may ask me to wed.
In fear, dash my wig, am I
Standing of bigamy,
Not to say trigamy;
Oh, what a fix!
There is no hope escape of;
I’m in for the scrape of
My fate, in the shape of
The year seventy six.
Then bachelors all, be advised-take warning,
There’s a great deal more danger than many suppose
Who are treating my sad admonition with scorning,
And make bosom friends of their poor bosom’s foes.
Of their dreams they will wake out,
And find the mistake out.
When the fair ones they break out
On Valentine’s day.
And kneeling before us,
Declare they adore us,
And sing in a chorus-
“Be mine, love, I pray!”