Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 July 1937 — Page 17
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Vagabond
From Indiana—Ernie Pyle
Sightseer Gets Glimpse of Glacier | And Runs Wild With Enthusiasm as | Writer Stands in Awe of Spectacle.
UNEAU, Alaska, July 1. — I've seen glaciers before now. In fact, I've actually | been on top of one. But I can’t seem to leave glaciers alone. Like snakes, they have | a horrible attraction for me, and if 1 had | a glacier around the house I'd probably go | pet it every morning. So it was only natural that here in Juneau, being only 18 miles from the famous Mendenhall Glacier,
I should go out for a look at it. Mendenhall is famous for two reasons—it is a “dead” glacier, | which means it is growing smaller instead of bigger, and it is, I believe, the second or third biggest glacier in the world that you can drive right up to in an automobile. Clarence Wise, the manager of our hotel, drove us out in his sedan. He did same partly because he is a nice fellow and partly because he came up from Seattle and bought this hotel only four months ago, and is trying to | build up his business. Conse- ! quently he gives his guests considerable extra attention. With us went Carlyn Dewey | of Arlington, Va. a young man who works for the Government in Washington. He is up here for the ! summer paying the bills for a bunch of WPA artists who are painting Alaska, it being well known that artists don't know anything about money or figures. He turned out to be the perfect companion for a trip to Mendenhall. Mr. Dewey, before this trip, had never been west | of St. Louis. So maybe you think he hasn't been seeing sights! He sort of goes into a faint when he | thinks about the beauties of the "Inside Passage.” And every brook and weed and patch of snow in | Alaska is something God made especially to surprise | and delight Mr. Dewey. We came in sight of Mendenhall about three miles away. We rounded a bend and there it was, far up the valley, a vast fan-shaped expanse of dull whiteness. That first glimpse was startiing, and it gave you a sense of the awful power of the thing.
lce Three Miles Across
A glacier, for those of you who don't know, is the | accumulation of centuries of ice and snow in a valley | between two mountains. It's hard to judge distance on these things, but I'd say offhand that the front of Mendenhall is some three miles across, and it goes back (slanting upward and growing narrower, like a cone) for eight or 10 miles. Its front face must be at least 100 feet high. Well, we parked the car at the end of the road, about half a mile from the glacier front, and then walked over a trail built by the Forest Service. Along the trail are posts. One shows where the glacier front was in 1916. Its face now is about a quarter of a mile farther back. | It was a raw day to begin with, and as we neared the glacier we got colder and colder. Mr. Dewey was becoming very excited as we drew nearer, but all my enthusiasm was being spent trying to keep from congealing inside my sheepskin coat.
Dewey Didn't Stop
Finally, about an eighth of a mile from the glacier face, the trail stopped. Mr. Wise and I stopped too. But Mr, Dewey didn't. Without a word he jumped over the bank and went rocketing - downhill amidst boulders and ravines and gravel over his shoetops. He jumped from one level spot to another like a mountain goat; he went down and down and down: and he never stopped or looked back until he was right down there at the bottom, actually feeling the | glacier. Mr. Wise and I thought he had gone wild on us. He stayed down there about 15 minutes, putting | his hands in the cold water of the streams that flow | from the glacier; throwing rocks at the icy cliff; standing and just looking upward. I have never seen anybody so carried away by a consciousness of the majesty of nature. You couldn't help being moved by | his emotion. |
Mr. Pyle
Mrs.Roosevelt's Day
By Eleanor Roosevelt
Publicity About Her Son's Wedding | Doesn't Strike First Lady as Personal.
ONTCHANIN, Del, Wednesday. — The first time I woke this morning I iooked out of the window and was greeted by the usual early morning Washington mist. For a little while I wondered whether we were going to have uncertain weatner for the wedding. I remembered how anxiously we watched the skies at Hyde Park when various country weddings took place, and I felt sure that Mr. and Mrs. du Pont were watching it just as anxiously today, so I was glad when, with the rising sun, the day seemed clear and settled. The few old friends who spent last night with | us in order to go over from Washington with us today on the train, were up and breakfasted with | me on the porch at 8 o'ciock. We all left the White | House at 8:50, Standard Time. The details surrounding a trip of this kind are very complicated. Cars have to take us to the station, and then they have to meet us tomorrow morning in Poughkeepsie. Other cars have to meet us in Wilmington and they have to be sent on ahead. The same thing holds good of Secret Service protection. My brother drove down to the station in the car | with my husband and myself. Now Mrs. Scheider and I are in my compartment and the trip seems to be going very quickly. We reach Wilmington in ample time for my husband and myself to be with the rest of our family at Mr. and Mrs. du Pont’s for lunch. I have a curiously detached feeling about all the photographs in the newspapers and all the stories | about this wedding. It somehow seems to me as though it could not really be our own children. or even ourselves. Perhaps the effect of schooling vourself for years to look upon both criticism and praise in an objective manner, does this peculiar thing to you. You feel that all publicity is not about you or yours as individuals, but about some people who have very little to do with you except that as public figures they are out in the public eye to be written about. I wonder if all the people in public iife have this sense of cual personality. I always have a sense that occasions of any kind are not times during which you live, they are just times which you live through. Later they may leave you something of significance, or they may melt in that vast limbo of official occasions which belong to the personality which is not really yourself, but an official representative doing an official job.
Walter O'Keefe —
WO days ago in the sacred halls of Congress James P. McGranery, Democratic Representative from Pennsylvania, was injured when a firecracker exploded in his hand. They say even this didn't wake up the members. Pacifists are now screaming that Congress go in for disarmament by throwing away their firecrackers and cap pistols. Well, anyway, he did less damage shooting off his firecrackers that he would have done if he'd been shooting off his mouth. It looks as if the kids are getting ‘mischievous in their desire to get even with the President for keeping them in all summer. They want to play like other boys. The whole incident forecasts the political campaign of the future. The placards will probably say “Vote for Magrane, the Senate's marble champion. He can fly a kite and oh boy, is he terrific at hi-li.” - Personally I think Congressman McGranery was just trying to show how young he is so that President Roosevelt won't make him resign.
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The Indianapolis Times
Second Section
THURSDAY, JULY 1, 1937
Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,
at Postoffice,
PAGE 17
Ind.
| Was
ent to Alcatraz
(Third of a Series)
By A. W. (Bigfoot) Davis
(As Told to Douglas Hicks)
LL. CAPONE stuck out his hand and introduced himself to me when I had been on The Rock 10 days. That started a friendship which will last until one
of us dies—a long time, I hope.
at that.
But it may not be long
Al—he called me Big Dave, and [ called him Al— is in constant danger on The Rock. As Al gets “shorter”—he is due out in December, 1938—the thirst for his death among other inmates will
grow worse and worse.
Just about a year ago they tried to get him and didn’t miss it far. Jimmy Lucas, a Texas boy doing 30 years for bank robbery, was
elected.
Lucas went down into the basement where Al did the
janitor work, the grapevine said, for a monthly
haircut.
In the barber's chair he reached over,
grabbed a pair of scissors, ran into the next room where Al was leaning over sorting laundry. Jimmy stabbed Al in the back several times, the grapevine said. Al turned and hit Jimmy on
the head with a banjo. The guards were there by then.
out.
It knocked him about half
“I knew before you got hurt that there was a
‘tib on’ to murder you,”
I told him. “I heard it
when I got in, but I didn't hear who was to do it and, anyway, I couldn't get any word to you.” He said he appreciated it anyway. We met the day I put in a request to see the
warden about something. chine Gun Kelly and Al had each done the same thing, and the three of us met outside the warden’s
A. W. Davis office.
Machine Gun went “I hope you won't turn out to be my
talked until he came out.
It happened that Ma-
in first, and Al and I
enemy like about 90 per cent of the others in here have turned out
to be,” he told me. n n ”
And I found out it was true,
The Rock swarms with enemies of
Capone, Why? I don’t think there is a single reason for it that would make sense to men and women out walking where they want to and breathing free air.
The bitter way those guys hate Al's nerve shows the kind of men they are. the pressure The Rock puts on a man, the twisted way he gets to feel with years up to life stretching ahead. I tell you that the men on The Rock don’t want to see other men leave there. “I can't leave, why should he?” is the way they think. Hard to believe, truth. When anybody, just anybody, gets short—I felt it myself later— you can almost feel and touch the jealousy and bitter envy when they look at you. That day in December, 1938, that Al has ringed on the calendar 1s not too far away now. Add to that these things which stick in the men’s craws: Al has a fortune to return to, a home, a wife, a 19-year-old son, a mother. He's better off than they are, and how they hate it. Al's known all over the world. The men on The Rock, some of them, think if they could kill him thet would become famous. And a few nutty ones are probably so publicity crazy that they would risk a life stretch to get their names in headlines again.
but Gospel
n n n ‘LL say this for the warden, he does the best he can. Nobody who is an enemy to Al is put on the job near him. When Jimmy Lucas made his try, Jimmy disappeared for 90 days. When he showed up he claimed to have spent 30 days in the dark hole and 60 days in solitary. But he liked to play tough, and we never knew if that was right or not. Al, the man people used to think of as going around in the middle of a bunch of men with violin cases under their arms, has learned to play real violins. A smart guy, he learns quick. He couldn't play a note when he went in, he told me. Al liked to talk best about the time when he was a boy, struggling to help support a big bunch of brothers and sisters, the hard knocks he got and how he whipped them. Al said he was through violating the law. He's proud of his ability to organize, and told me he was
going to look for a place and a
Side Glances
» » ”
legitimate business when he gets out. I met Harvey Bailey, too. Nobody introduced me to him, but we got fairly well acquainted and talked a good deal. He worked in the kitchen and steam table most of the time, but just before I left he was transferred to the laundry. Bailey is nearly 50. His hair is almost white, he weighs around 200 pounds. He was pretty cheerful and pepped up. He denies he had any hand in the Urschel kidnaping, although he was caught on the Texas farm where Urschel was held, with some of the ransom money. He says he didn't know it was ransom money, He thinks the Government is convinced of this and will let him go.
UST like everybody outside, the <¥ men on The Rock live on hope. They call it the Island of Lost Hope, but that isn’t true.
The only fight I got into at Alcatraz was over Bailey. A big Negro who was going crazy, only we didn't know it then. walked up to Bailey in the yard during one of the six hours of recreation per week we were allowed. The Negro jumped Bailey for trying to poison him at the steam table. Bailey, afraid it would hurt his record to get into a fight, let the colored boy threaten to beat and stomp him to death. A Texas boy named Walter and I talked about this and a week later decided the Negro ought to apologize to Bailey. He said he would, and I was turning away when I saw him swing on Walter and knock him out. I got to the Negro in time for one lick which had him groggy. But the guards were right on top of this play too. Walter and I weren't punished. The colored boy had been making too much trouble talk. He was put in solitary. He proved he was crazy by cutting his wrists and nearly bleeding to death. He was adjudged insane and was transferred. Machine Gun introduced me to George Bates, a tall, slim, stooped blond, quiet, doing life for the Urschel snatch. Machine Gun told me George had more nerve than he did. Bates seldom if ever talks about his past. From the look on his face you would think he is wondering what it is all about. I got acquainted in a casual way with Harmon Waley, doing 40 vears in the Weyerhauser kid snatch. About 35, weighs about 195 a big-chested, blond, red-faced guy who thought he did something smart when he knocked
to get into
| By Clark
© 1937 BY NEA SERVICE, INC. T.M. REC. U. 8 PAT. OFF,
"Oh, mixing drinks comes easy for me. | used to watch my dad, in our kitchen,"
J
Three scenes of rarely photographed Alcatraz. Upper right, an alert guard on duty. because he spends many hours a week at target practice. Rock” from a boat in the bay,
circular iron stairs.
on the hill.
Capone down one day and got by with it. Capone could handle two like him. I was disgusted to hear Waley say one day about his wife, who is in prison: “I'm glad she got 20 vears. At least I'll know where she is for a while.” » n n HE grapevine, by the way, said William Mahan was sent to McNeil Island in the Weyerhauser case and went nuts. Alvin Karpis came in a while after I was there. He worked in the laundry close to me. A long-necked, slim, stoopedshouldered guy, scars over his ears where he said his face was lifted, boisterous, loud-mouthed. He bragged about dodging the G-Men as long as he did. Karpis isn't a bad fellow, just doesn’t know what it is all about. He needs a high chair, not an electric chair. I met John Paul Chase, with “Babyface” Nelson when the two G-Men were killed. Chase is quiet, says “yes” or “no” when you speak to him, goes around like a man in a fog. I knew Doc Barker, son of Ma Barker, a big-shouldered, squatty
Prisoners’ Jealousy Is Declared Motive for Attack on Al Capone's Life
Upper left, a cellhouse showing the He's an expert with that rifle Below, a view of “The showing the unloading wharf and the main building
RRR RRR ” 4
Three of the men Davis met in Alcatraz—dangerous Doc Baker, left, hated Al Capone, center, and boastful Alvin Karpis,
Vick clipped Sam for 36 grand. Both of them told me about it. But here they were, laughing and joking like the best of friends. Sometimes I wondered if Sam would smile like that if they were out and he had Vick in a dark alley. Thirty-five money.
guy who had a rep of being dangerous with his dukes. I met Volney Davis, nervous and hot-headed, doing life for conspiracy in the snatch of Bremer. “I don’t want to talk in this place about anything but getting out—Ilegally,” he told me once.
grand is folding
un 2 »
HE funniest pair of pals I saw there was Vick Miller, the international con man who hopes he will be deported, and Sam Seaman of San Francisco.
NEXT — “Bigfoot” learns how impossible it is to escape from Alcatraz. ; (Copyright, 1937, NEA Service, Inc.)
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|
| | By Scienee Service ASHINGTON, July deafening roar of | machines may be silenced by a “fire-
| cracker”
1.—The riveting
| plosive inside of it goes off. | new rivet is described in a patent | (No. 2,080,220) just granted here to
of Germany.
the framework of dirigibles where small rivets
and aluminum are used.
are needed to “upset” or rivet the rivet, it is stated. The preferred explosive is lead azide. A carefully measured charge of it is tamped into a hole hored into the shank or rod part of the rivet. The loading is done right on the job, before the rivet is inserted to join gigrers or plates. After inserting the rivet a heating device that looks like an electric soldering iron is placed against the head. In a second or two the explosive goes off. = n ”
erts a wedge-like grip. Instead of using heat to explode the rivets, high frequency ultra
inventors. The explosive charge placed in the rivet is carefully proportioned to the size of the rivet and to the metal out of which it is made, so that it will not blow the rivet apart. Additional caution is taken to prevent bursting of this “firecracker” rivet by leaving uncovered the opening in which the charge is inserted
>
Bark of ‘Firecracker’ Rivets Replaces Roar of Power-Driven Machines
into the rivet, to permit ready es- [applications for the explosion rivet (cape of the gases generated by the [in many countries—Germany, Great
| explosion.
| | |
rivet which literally rivets | | itself when a minute charge of ex- | The |
{wo inventors, Karl and Otto Butter |
This type of rivet, they say, is par- | ticularly useful in joining together airplanes and | and | rivets of softer metals like copper |
Only minute charges of explosives
Britain. France, Holland, Italy, AusThe inventors have filed patent !tria, Poland and Sweden.
TT explosion expands the shank | into a barrel shape which ex- |
sound waves of 200,000 cycles per second will also do the trick, say the |
SPEAKING OF SAFETY
dy WOULD You GO > [7 TO SLEEP 9 ON A CORNICE’
SUN BATH ON THE WING OF AN NRPLANE 7
~ OR. SMOKE A CIGAR IN A POWDERMAGAZ INE 2
No ~=TRYING To REPAIR A CAR O
—
THE HIGHWAY 1S JUST AS DANGEROUS!
Natlonal Safety Council.
Qur Town
By Anton Scherrer
Boiler-Tender's Temperatures Won Out Over Composer's Temperament In Tomlinson Hall's Historic Run-In. GUESS it was about 35 years ago that Pietro Mascagni, composer of “Cavalleria Rusticana,” came to Indianapolis and had his run-in with Mr. Sourbeer. 1 believe his
name was Walter Sourbeer, but the way my | memory goes back on me every once in a
while, I wouldn't be sure of even that today. Any= way, it was the Mr. Sourbeer who used to fire the boilers in Tomlinson Hall.
At that time, Tomlinson’s Hall was the place usually chosen for the big attractions in the musical line. For one thing, the place was large enough to show a big “gate,” and I guess this more than anything influenced the impresarios to pick the place. Besides, Tomlinson Hall had the most magnificent staircase and foyer any-
| where this side of the Paris Opera, | and it gave Indianapolis society
a chance to show off. Tomlinson Hall wasn't anything to speak of in the summer months, but it made up for it in the winter. And that's how Mr. Sourbeer gets into today’s piece, because being what he was at the time, it was his business to see that his customers were kept as comfortable as possible. Mr, Sourbeer’s customers drove him mad with their kicks. There was the time, for instance, when tha Grau Opera Co. appeared in Tomlinson Hall. Mr, Sourbeer’s radiators achieved a temperature of 63% degrees that night which he figured was just about right for the hot show the Grau people had promised,
Mr. Scherrer
Mayor Steps In
It turned out that it wasn’t anywhere near right, because when the next day came, Mr. Sourbeer had so many Kicks about the chilly hall that he was just about ready to throw up the job. Indeed, the people were so enraged about the matter that they carried their kicks to Charlie Bookwalter, who was our Mayor at the time. Mr. Bookwalter and Mr. Sourbeer went into a huddle with the result that Mr. Sourbeer promised never to repeat the offense. What's more, he invited Mr. Bookwalter to attend the next attraction and see for himself. The next attraction happened to be Mr. Mascagni and his orchestra and chorus. Mr. Sourbeer went to work the day before Mr. Mascagni arrived, and started to fire his boilers, with the result that when it came time to start the concert, he had the old hall up to 75 degrees.
Artist Lets Out Roar
When Mr. Mascagni arrived, he let out an awful roar, called for the engineer, and ordered him to shut off the radiators. Apparently, Mr. Mascagni was very much in earnest, because the way the story goes, Mr. Sourbeer did exactly what he was told to do. After
that, Mr. Sourbeer banked the fires, and went home to bed, leaving Mr. Mascagni and his audience to stew in their own juice. Well, Mr, Mascagni started his concert and before anybody knew it, the radiators started cracking and sputtering all over the place. Pretty soon, they were popping, and people couldn't believe their ears, because with the radiators doing their part, too, Mr, Mascagni's famous Intermezzo that night sounded like the “Patriotic Medley,” by Patrick Gilmore's band. I don't know whether it was Richard Lieber or Adolph Schmuck or somebody else who covered the concert ip next day's paper, but whoever it was, he didn't say a word about Mr. Sourbeer. The account, I remember, was as dignified as possible, and started off by saying that it was too bad that nobody outside
of the first row could hear anything. Well, that was the reason.
New Books Today Public Library Presents— Martin Van Buren's United States, a hundred
I" years ago, it was being predicted that the big land bubble out in Illinois and Michigan would soon burst. Nevertheless, settlers and speculators continued to g0 there. Others went even farther, to build a new state west of the Mississippi—Ioway.
From Markumville, in western Ohio, a town pos= sessing neither the cultural graces of Cincinnati nor the sturdy virtues of a frontier town, Jesse Ellison and his family decide they, too, wiil g0 to Ioway and leave belind the problems of tavern-keeping in Markume ville. In BUCKSKIN BREECHES by Phil Stong (Farrar) their story and that of their friends and neigh bors is told. It is a lively tale full of action and con=flict, further motivated by the love stories of several of the leading characters. The author's canvas is broad and sweeping. One cannot read this novel without feeling that he has come to know intimately the social customs and the political issues of 1837-38—an America of conflicting civilizations and ideologies.
” " ”
A THRILLING tale of flying and training for aviae tion is told by Beirne Lay in I WANTED WINGS (Harper), his personal account of his flying experiences, Inspired by the motion picture “Wings” while still an undergraduate at Yale, Lay decides to become a Flying Cadet at Randolph Field, Texas. After S€Ve eral unsuccessful attempts to pass the rigid entrance examination, he is finally admitted to the flying school. His narrative carries the reader along with him from adventure to adventure as he learns fcimative flying, night flying, and blind landing. The “wings” he struggles so hard to earn are awarded at last, and he is a lieutenant on regular Army duty. He gives a vivid account of the brave efforts of the Army pilots who, after the canceling of the commercial contracts, assumed the grim and thankless task of flying the mail planes against incredible odds. It is a tense, swiftly moving, and yet accurate nare rative, an exceptionally good story tor air-minded peo=ple. In the foreword the author says that it is not a book for fliers to whom these experiences would be commonplace, but for those who have not flown—and regret it. Ld n ” c= in a great while a novel is an experience, It lifts you into another world, it introduces you to people you hunger to know and it dwarfs your own problems by the courage with which others face life. Such is the stuff of Erich Maria Remarque’s THREE COMRADES (Little).
It is 1928. Koster, Robert and Lenz, running a garage on the outskirts of a large German city, just manage to survive. They had each served in the war and during the succeeding perilous years had drifted from one job to another until the little business drew them together. The story of their loyalty to each other, their ingenuity in getting cars to re= pair, of Karl the Super race car, of their ironic gaiety in the face of a disappearing world is written with wit and gusto. The incredibly tender relation ship of Robert and Pat is unforgetable.
The book is a miracle of understatement. There is no direct description of pestwar Germany, yet it is constantly revealed in the poverty and futility of people's lives. There are no harrowing war stories —they are quietly present in the living death of those who survived,