When dad played his fiddle, the world became a bright and morning star. To him violin was an instrument of faith, hope and charity. Some of his neighbors deep in the heart of rural Texas at the turn of the century had been brought up to believe the fiddle was the devil’s music box.

But dad could tuck his old fiddle to his shoulder, wave his bow almost magically and then bring it down lovingly across the strings, and the agonies of plowing with diabolical mules, the catastrophe of burning drought, the mutilation of buffeting winds and pounding hailstones, the memories of all the ills that flesh is heir to—the harms and hurts of dirt farming—would disappear. It was as if dad in his old blue-billy overalls, but with his hair neatly combed and his hands as clean as homemade soap and well water could make them, had sat down square-dab on Pandora’s box and put the devil to shame.

Dad furnished music for school plays, picnics, Christmas programs and nearly every get-together at the schoolhouse. At home his fiddle never gathered dust. When the chores were done or when he needed to express his joy in life or play away the blues, down came the fiddle. And what dad could do for himself he could do for others. He applied the Golden Rule to music.

In the early years of the century, the boll weevil began devastating the cotton farm in the south. Like everyone else in his stretch of Texas, Charles Thaddeus Nordyke relied on cotton to keep the family farm solvent.

Everything on Nubbin Ridge—and on a majority of the small farms in Texas—was built around cotton as the money crop. A man could mortgage his first bale by the time the seeds that would produce it had sprouted and buy essential supplies at the store on fall credit. The weevil was changing this.

For years the bug had been creeping northward from Central America, devastating cotton in the Old South and in southern Texas. By the time it hit Nubbin Ridge the Government was estimating that the insect was causing an annual loss of $200,000,000 to cotton farmers in the South.

When the day came that Charley Nordyke found weevils in his cotton, he seemed to lose all hope.

Dad wandered around the yard as if lost. After a while he walked into the house and tuned his fiddle. He started playing sad pieces in tones that tore at the heart—Darling Nelly Gray, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, Little Old Cabin in the Lane, When You and I Were Young, Maggie.

Gradually the music quickened. Listen to the Mockingbird sounded a bit cheerful. Then came Little Brown Jug with considerable zip, and the same for Boom-ta-ra. Dad finally ended with a rousing rendition of Turkey in the Straw. When he came out of the house he was whistling the tune…

At least a thousand times, [my mother] said, “Your papa would play his fiddle if the world was about to blow up.”

And once dad came about as close to that as could ever be possible. In May of 1910 the folks at Turkey Creek, and all over the nation, were in a space-age state of turmoil over Halley’s comet. It had been predicted for seventy-five years, and it had appeared on schedule. There were all sorts of frightening stories about the comet, the main one being that the world would pass through its tail, said to be millions of miles long, or else the wavering, fiery plume would switch, like the tail of a milk cow at a fly, and swat the world, sending it winding and everybody with it.

Between the threats of comet and weevils, the farmers were running low on optimism. One night, they gathered at the Nordyke farm to discuss what to do.

When the some thirty neighbors had found seats on the front porch and in the yard, Will Bowen suggested, “Charley, how about getting down your fiddle and bow and giving us a little music?”

“Aw, I don’t think anybody’d want to hear me saw the gourd tonight,” dad replied.

“Come on, Mr. Nordyke,” one of the younger women urged, “why don’t you play for us.”

Dad had a knack for getting people in the mood for his music. Knowing of the scattered prejudice against the fiddle, he eased into a song titled Gloryland. It was a church song with church tones, but it was fairly fast with some good runs. He shifted from Gloryland to The Bonnie Blue Flag, a Confederate war song, which created a big stir — foot stamping, hand clapping and a few Rebel yells.

Dad was ready for his next move — an old familiar heart song, Nelly Gray. He started the tune a bit mournfully and gradually brightened it. Then he shifted to trilling The Mockingbird and went from that to My Old Kentucky Home. Almost before anyone realized what was happening to the music, dad was “eating up” Turkey in the Straw, and every foot was lapping and every body was swaying.

Will Bowen, apparently having forgotten Halley’s comet, shouted, “How about giving us Sally Goodin?” Dad played the old breakdown with vigor. Several men jumped up and jigged around.

The next tune was a novelty number called The Wild Indian, a fast one which raced up to a break — just long enough for a sustained yell, something like “Hooooo-ho!” Dad gave the yells. Pretty soon nearly everyone was joining in. Children gathered around and gazed wide-eyed at the performance.

All our neighbors went home whistling or humming. Very few remembered to look toward the northwest to see whether the comet and its wicked tail were still around…

One evening Will Bowen called dad on the telephone and said, “Charley, I’m downhearted and blue. I was out in the cotton patch today. Got a few little squares showing up. Every time a square forms, there are four boll weevils waiting there to pucncture it with their snouts. Just wondered if you could play a tune or two for me?”

“’I sure could, Will,” Dad said. “Could you come over?”

“No. I mean play on the phone box.”

“The phone box?”

“Sure,” Mr. Bowen said. “I can hear you talk. Why couldn’t I hear the fiddle?”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” dad said, “but I can try anything at least once.”

Dad hurried to the mirror and combed his hair. He took the fiddle to the telephone and thumped the strings. Putting the receiver to his ear, he said, “Hear anything. Will?”

“Sure can,” Mr. Bowen said. “Just as plain as day. Now try a tune.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“Could you try Sally Goodin and play it just like you did the other night?” Dad handed the receiver to me. He stepped up to the mouthpiece on the wall box and cut loose on Sally Goodin. I could bear Mr. Bowen whistling and yelling.

By the time the tune was finished there were half a dozen neighbors on the line, and they talked about how wonderful the music sounded over the telephone. They made numerous requests; I relayed them to dad and he played the numbers.

The central girl at Cottonwood had a call for our line. She asked the caller if he’d like to hear music, and he was willing. Then she cranked a long ring on each of the party lines. That brought down nearly every receiver. With all the lines hooked up with our line, dad was playing for people as far as ten miles away. I don’t know whether this was the nation’s first broadcast of entertainment, but it was certainly one of the pioneers. Moreover, with all the lines linked, we had a network. And it lengthened.

Our party line broadcasts became regular features of community life. On rough-weather days of winter when farm folks were forced to remain in the house, someone would ring us and ask dad to play, and usually it developed into a network affair. At times, though, dad played over the telephone for an individual—someone who was ill or an old person who was shut in. Our phone kept ringing with requests for music until radio came in.

Read “My Dad’s Best Crop Was Music,” [PDF download].

A Fiddler Keeps Hope Alive in 1920s Texas The Saturday Evening Post

We can count the money spent and the number of Americans wounded and dead, but the effect on society is harder to calculate. Business declines. Resources grow scarce. Opportunity shrinks. The money for non-essential industries dries up. And people just learn to get by with less. They lower their expectations. Sometimes, they never raise them again.

Americans endured such things in 1944, knowing how little they sacrificed compared to the GIs in combat. So it is rare to find an article that talks openly about the cost of living in wartime. The author of “Ouch! That White Collar Pinches” [PDF download] gives a glimpse into family life in wartime, as it was lived, not recalled through clouds of nostalgia. Owenita Sanderlin accepts that wartime austerity is inevitable. But she is dismayed that her husband’s education and profession are so poorly rewarded.

In our garage, next to a 1935 model without any rubber, is a row of wooden chairs.

We have tried glue and nails and everything else, but nothing will hold them together any more. George sits, and they split. Not that George is so hefty. He may be more than six feet tall, but he weighs only a hundred and fifty pounds. It’s just that the chairs didn’t cost very much, in the first place, and they have served their term. So now we sit around our maple table on an odd assortment of seats — George on a solid piano stool; Frea, our five-year-old princess, and I on the wobbly, last two of the chairs; Mary, fat, funny and three, on a tall kitchen stool; and David, the baby, in the remains of the high chair.

We eat the minimum essentials with just enough silverware to go around, washing the spoons between dinner and dessert — when there is any dessert. Of course, if we have company — which I have been avoiding lately — I get out my wedding-present silver: six spoons, four knives and four forks, six salad forks and a sugar spoon. We have been borrowing the chairs, ever since the time a college president folded up in one of those little maple numbers of ours. I suppose when the last two chairs are gone, we shall eat buffet style.

Surely, you are thinking, it isn’t so bad as all that. You can still buy chairs. Well, maybe you can. We can’t, because we haven’t any money.

Senator Thomas of Utah, a member of the Senate committee which recently investigated the status of white-collar workers… says there are 20,000,000 of us, living on salaries that were low before the cost of living rose 25 per cent or more. He says we are “mighty good Americans” and just as essential as factory workers. We keep the schools open, for one thing. Well, it is comforting to know that somebody appreciates us.

This makes George feel that he is of some consequence—a good teacher, with all the training a man can get, plus experience. His salary is $2000 . . .

The average income in America that year was only slightly higher: $2,400. But, as you’ll see, that $400 would make a big difference in Mrs. Sanderlin’s 1944 budget.

The Sanderlins, one of the thousands of white-collar families squeezed by rising prices. Their budget will not permit such "luxuries" as dining-room chairs.

We live in a small university town in Northern Maine—a town where living is cheap. Milk is only thirteen and a half cents a quart, but, on the other hand, the long winter burns up a great deal of fuel. Then, too, we have three children, but some people have even more. Although we get along, the thing that stumps me is this: How about the people who don’t live in a town like ours?

To get down to details, suppose that your budget, like ours, allowed your family less than $2.50 per person per week for food ($600 per year). Or twenty dollars a year per person for clothes.

Is your rent less than forty dollars? We are buying our house, and the payments are only $38.47 a month, including taxes and insurance. We spend $128 a year for water, electricity and a party phone.

Do you carry much insurance? We can afford only one policy on my husband’s life, which would pay me and the three children $1000. [Health] insurance premiums, in our budget, come to forty-one dollars a year. Perhaps you don’t have large fuel bills. Ours was $135 last winter, for the furnace and hot water in the morning.

How much do you contribute to the Red Cross, the War Chest, your church? And do you like to say no? We can give only thirty-two dollars a year. If we had more money, that is where most of it would go, because we know how many millions of people are far worse off than we are.

Did you ever put up with a toothache because you couldn’t afford the dentist? Or wonder what you would do if your baby were really sick enough so that you had to call the doctor? I have. All I can manage under the item Medical Care is twelve dollars a year for each of us, and it will hardly be enough, even if we are as healthy as usual. Last year, it all went for a baby.

Another difficulty of ours is that my father was a doctor, and so it would never occur to me not to pay a doctor’s bill. Ask any doctor [which patients] are the surest pay. Not the rich, not the poor, but men in white collars.

You may very well have to pay more taxes than we do. Only $3.80 a month is withheld from our check, some which will be returned, and we are glad to pay some Federal taxes; we wouldn’t feel very American if we didn’t. Then we have an extra eleven dollars in local taxes.

Do you spend much in going places-either by bus, train or automobile? We have no items at all in our budget for Transportation. We put our car away and sold the tires. George walks to college, and you should see David’s chubby face entirely surrounded by groceries piled in the baby carriage. We wheel over to the village once a week and stock up.

I suppose you contribute 10 per cent in War Bonds? We feel like heels because we can’t. We have no money to save. We have no savings because the salary was always low, and the first few years of marriage are the hardest. Furniture, babies—you know. But I do put down seventy-five dollars a year for bonds. And we keep them.

How much money do you blow in annually for birthday presents, wedding gifts, cards, Christmas, little toys for the children? We never have been able to give anyone a decent present, although we have received many beautiful things ourselves. We are limited to sixty dollars a year for gifts.

How often do you go to the movies or stop at the drugstore for a soda? Are you taking any kind of vacation this year? These things appear in our budget under the heading of Recreation, and I allow one dollar a month. This has to include the fifty cents it costs for a girl to take care of the children. Cigarettes? Luckily, we don’t smoke.

Do you ever pause beside a newsstand? I’d rather have a magazine than a new hat, but I never buy one. We take one magazine to keep us posted, and listen to the news on the radio or read the paper in the college library. And of course we can borrow from our good neighbors. But if we ever do get rich, George is going to buy – soft music, please – a book.

These miscellaneous items — which must include medicine, postage, stationery, lollipops and such- like — are supposed to come to no more than $6.30 a month in our budget.

Now, if you will add up all the expenses listed above, you should get $1956.84. Deducting this from George’s salary leaves $43.16 to cover the unforeseen. You’re right. It never does.

But we are not in debt— yet. We haven’t lost our home—yet. Right now, George is out in the garden assassinating potato bugs, which helps explain how we live on our small food allowance. And he is looking up at the sky to straighten out the crick in his back, certain the sky over our small white house is bluer than anywhere in the world. He thinks he has pretty nice children too. I agree. Of course, it was rather unreasonable of us to have so many. And, obviously, we can’t have any more.

But we feel that we are getting along fine. We compare ourselves with the privates in the foxholes and the pilots in the sky and the many war workers who are not lining their pockets with gold. Even compared with the war profiteers, we are lucky. The biggest item in our budget costs nothing at all. It’s happiness.

But I wonder about the rest of the 20,000,000 white-collar workers — most of them without gardens — with higher city rents, with transportation expenses, with more insurance, larger families, lower salaries, poorer health and old debts. And what do they do for fun, when they can’t play tennis for free and plant flowers and vegetables in their own back yards? It must be dreadful to stay in a sweltering city all summer long, without a spare cent for weekend vacations, year after year of this war. How they must worry about the future. And I can guess which question worries them most, because it’s my worst nightmare, too: What if prices go up even higher?

Read “Ouch! That White Collar Pinches”, by Owenita Sanderlin, July 22, 1944 [PDF download]

Family Life in Wartime The Saturday Evening Post

A large part of his success came from his willingness to reinvent his game and himself. For instance, he overcame country-club prejudice against immigrants by redesigning his name, changing it to the less-Italian-sounding Gene Sarazen. (For a while, he even tried passing himself off as a Scottish MacSarazen.)

Another innovation came in the late ’20s, with his invention of the sand wedge—a club found in any respectable golf bag today.

For years I had been afflicted with that dread malady of the links which, for lack of a better term, I call “trap phobia.” It’s a virulent plague that strikes at the hearts of men and turns them to stone… Nearly every championship is decided in and out of traps, with the result that you either master your niblick before a title event or you might as well start back home and save the caddie fees.

A “niblick,” for the great majority of us who don’t know, was a club with a slightly angled face resembling a modern nine iron.

Personally, I wasn’t able to save anything—neither fees nor strokes nor reputation. I lived through some pretty desperate years that way, and then, suddenly, the answer came at a time and place when I wasn’t thinking about golf at all.

The scene is Roosevelt Field, Long Island, the year 1928; I was idly watching the planes land and take off, without the faintest thought of golf… I had noticed that as the pilot started to take off he lowered the rudder to get the plane in flying position. And within a few moments I was murmuring absently to myself: “How about a rudder on the back of my niblick?”

The result was a special niblick with the rear edge one-quarter of an inch lower than the front edge of the blade… it is designed with a rudder like an airplane, and its effect was amazing. I don’t fear the traps now.

Sarazen also designed a four wood that enabled him to make one of the most famous shots in golf history. It was during the 1935 Masters tournament, and he was approaching the fifteenth hole three strokes behind the leader, Craig Wood, who had completed play. Sarazen still thought he had a chance to catch up over the next three holes. In fact, he completely passed Wood with his next shot.

I found myself with a downhill lie, one of the toughest of fairway shots, but I still had a hunch up my sleeve or, rather, in the bag, to cover the situation. That was my club especially designed to offset the effects of this awkward shot. Selecting this club, I stood slightly ahead of the ball and toed the club head in at address. Then, as I came down into the shot, I drew the face of the club slightly across the ball in order to get it high enough to carry the water.

The ball sailed over 230 yards, clearing the water hazard, onto the green, and into the cup.

It was called the greatest shot ever made in a pinch; also some other things not quite so complimentary, there doubtless being an element of luck in holing a 230-yard shot from the fairway… What was I thinking of? Somebody asked me that after the round, and the answer was simple enough. “I was thinking of getting 230 yards,” said I grimly. “And I got it exactly to the last inch. Lucky? Oh, yes; quite lucky. But it was a good shot, hit exactly the way I wanted to hit it.”

More impressive than his mastering of the game, though, was Sarazen’s mastering of himself.

Straight as an arrow. Watching the ball fly down the fairway for a birdie.

At that time my temper was inflammable and quite beyond control. A bad shot was something to drive me into a tantrum, with the result that my reputation for club-throwing somewhat exceeded my prestige as a golfer. I recall, for instance, that I used a member’s putter during one round of the course in which I missed all putts from three to thirty feet.

The first thing I did was to head for the pro’s shop. The next was to put the putter in a vise and saw it into sections. This sounds crazy as I tell it now, but it actually happened. The third thing was to leave the sawed-off sections in the member’s locker. I later paid him for the club, but I hardly think he appreciated the spirit of the thing. It didn’t seem to occur to me at the time that he might have cherished the club.

Anyhow, I was so boisterous around a golf course that everybody got a laugh when I was paired with Bobby Jones for the first two rounds of the national open championship at the Columbia Country Club, Washington, D. C., in 1921. They thought we would wind up in each other’s beards, Bobby being quite a man for temperamental outbursts in those days. The result was that we made a private bet, whereby each was to forfeit five dollars to the other every time he threw a club, and the funny thing was that not a dollar changed hands for the two days. I don’t know what this did for Jones, but it convinced me of one thing: If it was going to cost me money, I wasn’t the man to lose my temper.

That was the beginning. The finish of Sarazen-the-fanatic came through my wife, Mary, and Walter Hagen, an arch-opponent. My wife shamed me into a degree of decent behavior on a golf course by telling me how the gallery murmured inaudibly and then walked away in tacit disapproval after one of my periodic outbursts. “Every time you get riled and show it,” she said quietly, “you lose some friends. I know you’re only mad at yourself. They don’t. They think you’re a bad sport.”

I’m not insensible to the importance of the men and women who pay for the show and thus make my living possible. It occurred to me, in fact, that I had as much privilege to step out of my part and rant at destiny as would an actor onstage in suddenly abandoning his character and haranguing the audience.

Hagen did the rest—by precept. I have played many a round with him and don’t mind conceding several points, including the fact that there is no great devotion between us. But in one respect I have to move well back and let him stand alone. As a golfer who can take the good with the bad, he’s a positive standout. I’ve seen him get the worst breaks a man ever had and never for a moment betray the fact that he had noticed anything out of the ordinary. To one of Hagen’s sublime self-faith, the alibi is simply not to be thought of.

This may be regarded as a surprising tribute, coming as it does from a man who openly stated before the 1933 championship at Chicago that Hagen belonged in an armchair and who, in turn, had to accept the ignominy of a rather grim jest by Hagen before the end of the tournament.

He waited, in fact, for the final round and the certainty that I was to get nowhere on those abominations known as the creeping-bent greens. Then he called a clubhouse attendant, gave him five dollars and an armchair and told him to take the latter out to me on the fifteenth tee.

Read “I Play Hunches,” by Gene Sarazen, August 31, 1935 [PDF].

The Old Masters: Gene Sarazen Reinvents His Clubs and Self The Saturday Evening Post

I’ve always been curious about how Americans really feel about royalty, and, like Alice in Wonderland, I got “curiouser and curiouser” when King Saud of Saudi Arabia came to the United States recently and got a classic concrete-and-steel cold shoulder from New York’s sky line and New York’s mayor. Was New York speaking for America?

I was in a convertible, coasting along Hollywood Boulevard. Beside me in the driver’s seat was Frank Hanrahan, an old Georgetown chum and an ex-FBI agent. Frank looks stern. Frank looks distinguished. Frank has never been known to play a practical joke since coming to Los Angeles. This is important, as you’ll soon see.

Bright-eyed and unaware, we were on our way to an afternoon gathering of Frank’s friends in the Hollywood hills, when “Great screaming Teddy bears!” (or something like that) exclaimed Frank. “With those sunglasses on, you look just like an Arab sheik!” This was not surprising, as both my parents are Lebanese, but right then I knew my moment had come.

“Do I look like an Arab prince, maybe?” I prodded Frank.

“Whaddya mean? Whaddya mean?”

“Do you think I could pass for an Arab prince with your friends?”

Frank gently braked the bathtub and pulled up to the curb. He squinted at me in the glaring California sunshine. “Say something in ‘prince,’” he said finally.

“Ycsss—sank—you—very—mush,” I hissed haltingly.

Frank’s unblinking stare brushed over my face with light, inscrutable finger tips. “We’re in,” he said, and roared into gear.

Frank drove to a house where his friends — none of whom had ever before seen the author — were watching a football game. Frank entered first and prepared his friends.

“Look folks, I’m in a little bit of a spot. I met a Saudi Arabian prince—”

“A prince?”

“King  Saud’s son. I met him at a party some Egyptian friends of mine threw in Beverly Hills the other night. He wants to see how Americans really live and he asked me to show him around town. I’ve got him out in the car and—”

“Right now?”

“Now. So look. I’m gonna bring him in. Now don’t panic! He’s a regular guy and he doesn’t want any fuss made over him. Just remember to address him as ‘your highness.’ But one thing — be casual!”

Blatty entered the room like a slumming prince.

I hastily spotted the most imposing chair in the room, marched over to it like Yul Brynner imitating Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and sat down, curling my fingers around the arm rest as though the chair were a throne, and, so help me, I felt majestic, even though I was wearing desert boots, Bermuda shorts and a loud, peppermint-striped shirt.

“Do you like football, your highness?” asked Denny Owen, a rugged college footballer.

“Foutball?”

“Ah—don’t they play football in your country?”

“I—sink—no.”

“Well…” and he good-heartedly launched into an explanation of the game. This seemed to ease the tension considerably, and someone else asked me if I would like a beer. I gave him the royal “oui” and Denny and Frank went into the kitchen.

I overheard their conversation:

Denny: “Cripes. I can’t hardly stand it! A prince! Here! And watchin’ the Rams on TV!”

Frank: “Take it easy, will ya, Denny? He’ll hear you.”

Denny: “What’s the deal on the candy stripe shirt, huh, Frank?”

Frank: “Oh, he’s just trying lo be one of the boys. Here, give him his beer.”

Denny: “A can, Frank—a can? We gotta give it to ‘im in a glass!”

Frank: “Nah, he’s a regular guy, I tell ya.”

Denny: “Well. O.K.”

And at this point I turned on my thro— er– chair, and saw rugged Denny carefully wiping and rubbing the top of the beer can with the tail of his clean white shirt.

Meanwhile, the Rams won the game, the TV was turned off and everyone became convivial. I learned later that some of the people in the room rather sided with the Israelis in the Arab-Israel dispute, but they were warm and friendly, and never gave a sign of their feelings. They were even suggesting nightclubs that they thought I should visit, places like the world-famous Mocambo.

Blatty was the toast of Hollywood that week. He appeared on talk shows and variety shows. He was invited to private dinners with movie stars. He succeeded beyond his most cynical dreams. The charade climaxed when Blatty got a chance to match his imposture against one of the country’s best fake princes.

One night a noted Hollywood publicist invited me along to an evening at ‘Prince’ Mike Romanoff’s. And thus it was that in the cool of the evening, ‘prince’ met ‘prince,’ ingenious imposter met up-and-coming challenger.

Entering Romanoff’s restaurant, accompanied by a studio publicity agent, Blatty seated himself with noble aplomb at a table. Within minutes, ‘Prince’ Romanoff hovered into view.

“Well, hello there,” he smiled genially, coming up to us.

“Hi, Mike. . . . Uh— your highness. Prince Kheer, may I present his highness, ‘Prince’ Romanoff?”

“How are you?” I murmured.

“A pleasure,” said Romanoff.

“His highness,” said the publicist, “is from Saudi Arabia. You know. King Saud’s son.”

“Oh. Of course, of course.” For one memorable, tremendous moment, Romanoff’s gaze locked with mine. It was toe-to-toe and there was silence in the arena.

The moment passed.

“Uh—by the way, your highness,” said the publicist, “there’s something I think you ought to know. I mean, I think I ought to tell you.”

“Iss what?”

“Well. “Prince’ Romanoff— he isn’t really a prince.”

Our shrimp cocktail had arrived.

“Iss what?” I demanded.

“They say he’s not a prince. Everyone knows it. But we like him so much we go along with the gag. No harm done.”

I put down my shrimp fork. “But iss not prince! ”

“Yes, but—”

“Sorry. I am insult.” And rising majestically, I strode out of the dining room, out of Romanoff’s and out of my life as a prince, because, brother, I believe in quitting while you’re ahead!

With that snub, that out-royaling Hollywood’s most famous ‘royal,’ Blatty returned to life as a commoner.

An Author Tries the Royal Scam for Fun The Saturday Evening Post