Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 June 1938 — Page 17
‘Vagabond
From Indiana=Ernie Pyle
Ernie Makes the Acquaintance of An Aged Squatter on the Memphis City Dump Who Needs No Aid.
Editor's Note—Ernie Pyle, after three years of traveling, is taking a vacation. Hence we are taking this opportunity to reprint some of his readers’ favorite columns, as indicated in their letters to him and to the editor.
EMPHIS, June 10.—This job of being a roving reporter teaches you one thing, and that is: He who laughs too long and loud at other people is liable to get sand in his mouth. Take this story about Frank Murphy, for instance. A few years ago, when I was a smart guy and knew everything, I could have written a mighty clever piece about Frank. But today I hardly know what to write, for at the moment of going to press I haven't figured out whether it's Frank that's crazy, or whether it's myself, or maybe both of us. Frank Murphy is an old man. Seventy-six, he says. He is tall and thin, and not very clean, and has a bushy gray beard, and inhumanly gray eyes that stare out through horn-rimmed spectacles. Frank Murphy is a squatter. He lives just behind the city dump, right on ‘the bank of the Mississippi. His home, and everything he has, and his whole livelihood, come out of the city dump. He culled old auto hoods out of the dump, and pounded them out flat, and built himself a mansion of them. It isn’t one of these wobbly Shantytown shacks, either. It's straight and solid. His doors close snugly. His windows are tight. No rain or wind can get in. His house doesn’t lean. Murphy comes pretty close to being self-sufficient. He doesn’t ask anything of anybody. He gets old tin pans and kettles out of the city dump and repairs them. He gets steer horns, and polishes them up and mounts them. He takes pieces of steel. and files them down into butcher knives. All these things he peddles to housewives. “If they're too poor to buy them, I just give them away,” he says. He has something that’s going to be a perpetualmotion machine. He swears it isn't a perpetualmotion machine. He says it's just a thing that will keep going all the time, and if you stop it, it'll start itself again and keep on going. He showed it to us. It's just the rim of an old Fora steering wheel. He keeps it hanging on a nail in the ceiling. He has the whole thing figured out, except the one little item of how to keep it going. But things have a way of coming to him in the night, and he’ll wake up with it some morning, he says. But his house-painting is what captivated me. His house is daubed all over—not solid, or striped, but just daubed, like a speckled chicken. And every color of the rainbow. I asked him what he painted it that way for. He said so strangers would think he was crazy and wouldn't come near. But it worked out just the other way. People come nosing around just to look at it.
A Painter by Night
He does his painting at night. Then the next morning he jumps up and runs out to see what it looks like. “And every time,” he says, “I think it looks pretty.” I thought it did too. “Do you want to see my house change color?” he asked. We said we sure did. So he ran back in the house, and after awhile the panel alongside the front door started sliding back and forth, and sure enough it was changing color. So there you are. There are a lot of laughs in Frank's place. But I didn’t laugh any. After all, why not paint in the dark? It looks a lot better than some daytime-painting I've seen in art galleries. And am I laughing at the old steering wheel that’s going to be a perpetual-motion machine? I am not. There are a lot of things that would surprise me more than to find that wheel going around and around by itself some of these days. And what's wrong with making your house “change color?” Ill bet you can't make your house change
color.
My Diary
By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Mr. Pyle
Interested in Canadian Proposal
To Annex Small Strip of U. S. Land.
!
The Indianapolis Times
Second Section
(Fifth of a Series)
By Thomas L. Stokes
Times Special Writer
'KEE, Ky., June 10.—~WPA headquarters here is a
one-story,
narrow, whitewashed frame structure
alongside the main highway, which is also the main street, at the edge of this little town in East Central Kentucky. A sign nailed beside the entrance reads:
“No loafing.”
This applies apparently to everybody except Casper Ratts, the Barkley campaign manager for Jackson County
of which McKee is the county seat. He spends a lot of time in the office— though he has no connection with WPA. According to
local citizens he also spends a lot of time politicking for Senator Barkley among WPA workers on projects in this area. It. was in WPA headquarters that I found him. While eating a quick lunch at “Joe's Place,” upon my arrival in McKee, I overheard a roly-poly gentleman in a group in the lunchroom say: “I'm sort of a politician around here.”
® ww =» HE group left, and I asked Joe who the “politician” was. I was informed he was Jack Frost. A few minutes later I located him at the Court House. It turned out that he wss
county director of old-age assistance work. In his lapel was a big button with the smiling face of Governor Chandler, who is seeking the seat of Senator Alben W. Barkley in the Aug. 6 primary, I told him my mission. “Do you want to see Casper Ratts?” he asked, and when I replied in the affirmative he set out as my guide. As we walked down the street he told me that he was a brother=-in-law of Mr. Ratts. ‘He also averred—panting slightly, for he set a swift pace despite his bulk —that politics was getting hot in this section. He ducked into one place after another looking for his brother-in-law and asked people along the street if they had seen him. Our search led us finally to WPA headquarters and there, sure enough, was the Barkley campaign manager, a slender gentleman, his straw hat ¢ocked back on his head, taking his ease. Casper Ratts, who hails from Indiana originally, impresses you as the typical small-town politician with a gift for talk and political maneuvering. His wife is postmistress at Clover Bottom, Ky.,, nearby, where he runs a small store. He formerly was postmaster there. For a time he was connected with the old-age assistance work in the county, for which his brother-in-law now is director. Another brother-in-law recently was made a WPA foreman. 5 5 » O sooner were introductions made than he took over the conversation. The young WPA director, recently transferred from farther South, sat on his desk and had little to say. The Barkley manager was master of ceremonies.
Studies Show Place Average Annual Figure for Indianapolis at $1198
By L. A.
ASHINGTON, June 10.—When jobs are scarce and local and
“We're not in politics here,” Mr. Ratts said of the WPA. “You can send all the investigators you want to in here and you won't find the WPA in politics. No, we're taking no part in politics.” Constantly he used the pronoun “we” in talking of WPA, of which he seemed to have a thorough knowledge. It was “we don't do this” and “we don’t do that” until finally I asked whether he was connected with WPA. He replied that he was not. He argued that they could not very well play politics since all but 30 of the 509 persons on WPA in the county are Republicans. (In other Republican areas the political activity consists of getting Republican WPA workers to reregister as Democrats.) Three hundred more persons in the county now are awaiting certification for the WPA rolls but have been held up by the state office, he said. Smiling toward his brother-in-law, Casper Ratts said that the old-age assistance setup is active politically on behalf of Governor Chandler, putting on people who will pledge themselves to vote for the Governor. » ” "
HEY'RE putting on people in this county who were disqualified by us when I was on the old-age assistance,” he said. Jack Frost rose quickly to this charge. “No we haven't put them on,” he retorted. “Theyre pigeon-
holed.” “Pigeonholed!” echoed Casper Ratts. “Well, IT bet they go on before the primary.” “Not while I'm in charge,” replied Mr. Frost. “There was a Federal investigator through here the other day. He said my county was clean. But they've got three or four investigators working in Clay County.” (The adjoining county.) Pointing to his brother-in<law’s Chandler button, the Barkley manager said: “You ought not to be wearing that. The old-age assistance is half Federal and half state.” (The Federal Government provides half the funds, while the state furnishes the other half and administers it.) “Well, I've got a right to wear half of it.” But the answer dwindled away. It didn’t seem quite satisfactory. Abashed, Jack Frost looked down at his button and felt of it. This is politics in Kentucky in this hectic political year.
Scientists Employ High Speed Camera In Making Study of Epilepsy
uncounted other sufferers who are | convulsion itself.
| |
FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1938
~
nager for Jackso
n Cou
The Relief-in-Politics Racket
Hoosier Is Barkley Campaign Ma
3
nty, Kentucky
eT
My Old Kentucky Home!
By Jane Stafford Science Service Medical Writer
AN FRANCISCO, June 10.—A |
billion dollar disease was presented and writhing and
at the meeting of the American |
| University's Bellevue Medical Col- |
lege and Carney Landis and Hans
New York City. The disease, which runs up the 10 | billion dollar bill, is epilepsy, the |
cared for in their own homes. On the screen the New York psy- | first time a chance to find out just
moving picture attack on a 10 | chiatrists showed a patient jerking | what happens during a convulsion.
shaking
in
al
seizure of convulsion induced by
Psychiatric Association here by Drs, | metrazol, one of the drugs being |S. Bernard Wortis of New York used to treat the mental disorder of
schizophrenia.
The picture was taken with a
Strauss of Columbia University, | high speed camera so that the doctors could watch the convulsion in slow motion and observe each detail
of. This
metrazol-induced co | vulsion in the schizophrenic patient
on-
falling sickness that afflicted St. | they found corresponded closely in Paul and Julius Caesar and con- | some of its phases to the major
tinues to afflict ‘mankind in untold | numbers. There are 500,000 epilep- |
seizure or fit of epilepsy. In spite of the antiquity and |
The high speed | motion camera gives them for the
Horrible as the convulsion is to the layman's eye, it is all over in about a minute, On the screen this horrible minute is drawn out to whatever length the doctors wish, so they can see which muscles contract, which relax, the order In which contractions and relaxations take place, and similar details. Since they know which nerves govern the muscular activity they aro watching, and where these
nerves start in the brain, they hope to be able to locate the part of the
tics in institutions in the United | widespread prevalence of epilepsy, brain that is affected in epilepsy, States today, each of them costing | Dr. Wortis explained, doctors know | and then, perhaps, to work out more
the state about $20,000.
There are! very little of the mechanism of the | exact methods of treatment.
Living Costs Drop as Relief Need Increases,
would have $139.16 with which to pay for its living. A much more comprehensive survey, made by the Works Progress Administration, of living costs in 59
ber for factory employment was 86. In March, 1937, the index number | was 101. In March, 1938, it was 82. Costs of living were somewhat higher in 1935, since employment and
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nd-Class Matter
Seether om aoe
PAGE 17
Ind,
Our Town
By Anton Scherrer
‘The Rosary,’ Scorned by the Man Who Wrote Its Words, Was Broucht
Here Probably by Schumann-Heink,
WON'T say for sure, but I believe it was Madame Schumann-Heink who was the first to bring “The Rosary” to Indianapolis, In a big way, at any rate, She sang it as an encore the night of May 22, 1903, on the occasion of the opening of the Claypool Hotel Assembly Ball Room. It was Madame's first appearance in Indianapolis. The song was first sung publicly in Steinert Hall, Boston, in 1898. Apparently, it got off to a slow start, the sheet music sales that year amounting to less than 2000 copies. In 1003, however, when Schumann-Heink took hold of the song, the sales jumpad to a total of mére than 160,000 copies. Since then, more than three million copies have been sold, and to judge by the way things are BO gay, the song is the same sure-fire hit it was 40 vears ago. $0 I bring up “The Rosary” Nay e Serene not because of its music, but because of its texs, Everybody seems to know that Ethelbert Nevin come posed the melody, but relatively few remember that Robert Cameron Rogers wrote the words, He might have landed high as an American poet. The reason he didn’t was because he was a cynic by nature, and scorned everything, including even his own best work, Rogers, born in Buffalo in 1862, graduated at Yale in 1883, studied at the Harvard Law School, prace ticed in his father’s office, grew sick and tired of an inherited career, and went to live in California. Here he got to know Stewart Edward White. When it came time to write “Rose Dawn,” Mr. White put Rogers’ strange make-up into cold print and called the character Gordon Carlton, “a hard rider. a tree mendous climber of mountains, a redoubtable poker player, an enthusiastic hunter and a conscientious punisher of booze,” who wrote poetry on the side.
Music Composed in One Hour
“His poems,” wrote Mr. White, “were exauisite, bug he concealed the side of him that produced them as though it were a vice. He would have resented being called a poet as he would have resented an epithet.” In 1894, Rogers wrote “The Rosary.” He lived 18 vears after that, until 1912, enduring the ironv of watching the world adore his popular song while ignoring “Lochaber No More” and “A Health at the Ford” which not only he, but his best critics regarde ed as his best poetry. The words of “The Rosary” way of a friend who clipped the poem from a magazine. In an hour's time, fo runs the story, Nevin composed the music which, for some reason, has ale ways held American audiences spellbound Seems that as soon as an American audience learns that “The Rosary” is the next thing on the program, ft starts getting tense. As the song gets underway the tenseness increases. I've been told that all singers have noticed and felt it. Indeed, it was SchumannHeink who put the feeling into words. Speaking of “The Rosary” she said: “I can see and feel on every face before me that what is in my heart is in theirs”
reached Nevin by
Jane Jordan—
Believes Boy's Desire for Power May Cause Mis Mistrust of Himself, EAR JANE JORDAN--Several years ago I lost a
girl friend who was very dear to me. It wag all my fault, but I thought I could master my fault next time. Now I have lost another girl friend. As long as we were just friends, everything was fine. I fell in love with her and she felt the same way about me. We became engaged and intended to be married in a few months, Then I began to get jealous and all over nothing. For a while I didn't say anvthing; then I began to tell her about it. Afterwards I would sit down and think about it and realize that I was wrong and apologize to her. Every time she would forgive me until this last time when she told me I couldn't see her any more. I need some advice on how to overcome this fault and I believe you can help me, M. H.
Answer--Is your lack of confidence !n the girl or in yourself? Is it that you hold yourself in such low esteem that you believe every other boy in the world is more attractive than yourself and cannot imagine why a girl would prefer you to such desirable rivals?
Wo Di
Pittsburgh Los Angeles Newark Baltimore
national relief bills mount, it may be of some comfort to taxpayers to know that, at least, the money spent will go farther than previously toward providing a decent living for those the Government supports. As the need for relief increases, living cosets go down. A study made recently by the Northwestern National Life Insurance Co. shows the average American family’s buying power is higher by 53 cents a month than it was in 1933—but it is $6 a month less than it was a year ago. If a family spent $120 a month in 1933, in April, 1938, it would maintain the same standard of living for $138.63, and--because of pay increases—
It must be that you are so troubled about your own worth that you need an uncommon amount of atten tion and affection to assure you that you have a permanent place in the heart of another, and you ask for 0 much reassurance that you become a burden to the one you love and hence lose the very thing you most wish to possess, Sometimes this deep mistrust of the self aries from an inordinale desire for power, One is 80 coOn= sumed with the wish to conquer, to subdue, to domi« nate, that it is out of all proportion to what one can hope to accomplish. Nobody is omnipotent. or en= titled to worship, and those who secretly pine for such exclusive devotion are doomed to disappointment, I suggest that vou turn your desire for power into some other channel such as work. Succeed magnifie cently at some task in which you are interested. Master something besides human beings in order to increase your self-respect and make you conscious
2
cities in March, 1935, shows that a four-person manual worker's family could be maintained for $1261 a year; and on an “emergency” level, y ~ could exist on $903. The annual ay 5 about “tie Same as 3s 0 cost of living for a four-person 4 * nw family in Indianapolis at a “main- . tenance” level was placed at HE WPA study showed that, in $1198.00’. The average of the 59 March, 1935, the annual cost of cities showed that at these two lev- | living for a four-person family at els the money would be spent as |a “maintenance” level, ranged from a high of $1414.54 in Washington,
follows: D. C, to a low of $1120.81 in Mobile, Ala. Costs In the 56 other 5 . od i4 cities studied were as follows: Bineh noe Annual Cost Salt Lake City .. Seattle “ Francisco $1389.87 New Orleans ... Spokane ‘i Winston-Salem ... Portland (Ore)
YDE PARK, Thursday.—I was particularly interested in a report in yesterday's paper, of the petition filed by a Quebec member of Parliament to annex a small strip of United States land. The State Department does not comment on the incident, but the reasons given seem fairly reasonable to anyone who has ever been in that part of the state. I suppose ceding five miles of United States territory will be a very difficult procedure. = I don’t doubt that there will be some members of this small community who will prefer to remain United States citizens, even without schools and in spite of duties. So I foresee long diplomatic arguments before any conclusion can be reached. At least no one is talking about going to war about it, which shows an improvement since 1830, when the boundaries between Maine and Canada nearly brought
production were on the up-grade. It seems likely that, generally, the condition prevalent in March, 1935,
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El Paso . Little Roek Wichita : Average, 59 Cities The average per month for the 59 cities was found to be $105 05, at the maintenance level, and 87527 at the emergency level. Food costs were highest in Albuquerque, N. M., and lowest at Winston-Salem, N. C. Cities with 500.000 population or more had costs of living above the average. Cities in the East South Central states had the lowest living costs, and cities in the Middle Atlantic states had the highest.
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FOO. iain onion 9748 $340 Clothing, clothing upkeep. and personal Are eee XR Housing ... .. Sei 333 Household operation ... 154 122 Miscellaneous . .. .. 288 145 In March, 1935, the index num-
128 168 San Minneapolis New York Chicago
With this outlet for your
us to grief. I have received a letter which interests me extremely. An agency has been opened in New York City exclusively for musical representation. There has been, they tell me, some difficulty in the placing of musical manuscripts, and this seems to promise real help for young composers as well as the better known composers and writers of songs.
Side Glances—By
lark
Jasper—By Frank
Owen
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
1-How many years’ accounting
of using your own powers. energies, perhaps you will not be so exacting where love is concerned. To be sure love is important but you shouldn't overvalue a girl to the point where you cannot tolerate her casual relations with others,
EAR JANE JORDAN-I read your answer to my problem, for which accept my sincere thanks. It
is true that I was afraid my girl would find someone else in college. What can I do to convince myself that she will come back to me to be my wife at the end of her college course, I am sure she will live up to her word and promise, but still I can’t stand to see her go. WORRIED BOY.
Answer--Perhaps you “will find some further ruge gestions in handling your problem from my answer to M. H. today. JANE JORDAN.
Put your problems In a letter to Jane Jordan, whe will answer vour questions in this column daily,
experience must one have before being entitled to take the C. P, A. examination in Indiana? 2--Does the Indiana Accountants’ Board issue an intermediate certificate to persons not having the requisite experience? 3--In singing, what is falsetto? 4-Name the traditional resting place of Noah's Ark after the flood. 5—What is the nickname for the state of Iowa? 6-What group of islands lies north of the mainland of Scotland?
» » » Answers
1=Three years. 2==No. 3-The notes above the natural compass of the voice. 4--Mt. Ararat in Armenia. 5--Hawkeye State, 6—The Orkneys.
ASK THE TIMES
Inclose a 3-cent stamp for reply when addressing any question of fact or information to The Indianapolis Times Washington Service Bureau, 1013 13th St, N. W., Washington, D. C. Legal and medical advice cannot be given nor can extended research be undertaken,
Makes Early Visit to Hospital
1 am particularly interested, because it has been our good fortune to receive many songs and musical compositions during the past few years, frequently with the plea that if we like them to pass them along for publicatign. That, of course, is not rossible, but I have often felt I would be grateful to know of some agent to whom I could recommend these people, and that is why I am so pleased at this discovery. This is & beautiful June day. My first morning activity was a visit to the hospital. I sat in Mrs. Scheider’s room for quite a while without her knowing I was there, for she was sleeping. Something roused her and she looked at me and demanded sternly why I had not awakened her. She wants to know already if I think she will be able to do a part of the mail by next week, but we are telling her firmly that the tables are reversed and we are doing her mail instead of having her do ours.
New Books Today
Public Library Presents—
ROM the exciting, scrambled history of the Amer« fcan frontier, as it advanced and at length dise appeared during the 19th Century, C. B. Glasscock has drawn the material for THEN CAME OIL (Bobbs« Merrill). The sordid and tragic story of the dispossession of the Indians is here, the legends of the “bad men” who tore up the towns with their six-shooters, the account of the wild rushes into the newly opened lands. All these, however, were but passing phenomena. It was the oil wells of Oklahoma which left a lasting imprint upon this country. They brought a flood of money into that territory, called forth reckless speculation, evoked terrific and ruthless strife. During this period men showed theme selves at their best and at their worst. Fortunes were made and lost and made again. Life was full bodied, hectic. And then this, too, passed. The raw boom towns have become civilized, progressive cities. Oil has been tamed, and upon it has grown the solid, indus-‘and--almost--sedate life of Oklahoma.
»
Bob Burns Says—
OLLYWOOD, June 10.—I don’t know what's gonna happen to this country if all the farmers go scientific. I use’ta think that Crawford County, Arkansas, was the cheapest place in the world to live, but not long ago some slick salesman came through there and sold all the farmers a subscription to a scientific farm magazine. When I asked Uncle Fud why he charged so much for his stuff now, he says. “Well, when a farmer has’ta know the botanical name of what he's raisin’, } the zoological name of the insect that eats it and the chemical name of what will kill the insect, somebody's
t to pay.” : % vay. _ (Chpyright, 1938) e
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"There's Bill entertaining the neighbors’ children while their fathers | "When we get to the station-house, teach me that left. hook, will are busy making money." 1%. . : : you?" 3 Ei Y
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