Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 October 1938 — Page 13
Vagabond
From Indiana = Ernie Pyle
Whatever Trouble Ernie Has Had In Telling About the Erie Canal Can Be Blamed on Heterogeneity.
(SVEGO, N. Y,, Oct. 12.—Here we are at the other end of New York, with our feet on firm ground again. And we realize we haven't done a very good job of making you see what the famous Erie Canal is actually like. Let us plead heterogeneity as an alibi. It puts the excuse on a dignified plane, and also leaves you in the dark, which is part of the plan. I'll have to look that word up myself sometime, But the Canal changes its character so constantly that you can't say it is like this, or like that. In some places it is a river, like any other river. In some places it is definitely a canal—a strip of water between two walled banks of rock or concrete. ; In some places it is straight, in { others so crooked they can hardly around the bends. In some places it is wide, in others so narrow that in meeting a ship you must almost stop, and then vou can hear the steel bottom rake the Canal bed. At one place you sail for two hours by compass across Lake Oneida, and can barely see each far shore. Often the great mechanized locks are out clear away from nowhere. At other times, they are right in town. At Pheenix, N. Y, for instance, you can step off the ship and walk 50 feet to the town's main street. Sometimes you will pass a dozen other ships in a forenoon. At other times you may go half a day without seeing a floating thing. It is a ridiculous thing, to be going across mountains and dry land on a big boat. Silly to be sitting there in the pilot-house as though vou were in midAtlantic—and then to look out the window and see in glance a farm woman milking her cows, a string of speeding autos on the highway, a New York Central express roaring along, and, on either side of you, mountains rising up in all their green and wooded stability. It doesn't make sense, but there it is. There are some places where vou look upon scenes that are like pictures. I shall always remember one sight as an oiler stood on deck with me about sunset, talking. It had turned warm and the rain had stopped It was just about milking time. From the canal bank clear to the top of the mountain ridge, a couple of miles away, stretched terraced fields of many shades of green, and patches of woods, and neat barns and houses and white fences In the center of the view, mavbe half a mile away, | a man in a wagon was driving a team of white horses slowly home from work. It was the only movement in the picture, and even that movement seemed susthere I have never known what the word pastoral” meant, but I know now, after that scene.
Only Walde Will Survive
Over toward Buffalo (farther west than we came on this trip) there is a place where the canal circles a mountain, part way up the mountainside The pilots say you can look over the side of the ship, and look right down onto farms and the tops of barns and even the roofs of factories. They say sometimes they can hardly understand it themselves. Progress is slow on the Canal. Our maximum speed was 10 miles an hour. There are places where
2 a
Mr. Pyle
Ne 1 3
k get
mM Ol
ad
the Canal limits vou to six. And other places, where, for your ship's safety, you are down to bare move- | ment. Last night we made only 18 miles in nine! hours—two miles an hour! | Time and our spirit of haste have changed the | old ways. In the mule days of the Erie Canal, it | would have taken three weeks to make this 185-mile trip. Even now, the barge “tows” made it in a little over two davs. I will return to Albany in three hours. airplanes that can do it in 45 minutes we'll find a way to be everywhere at once And that will be the end. All will collapse. And | only Waldo, the turtle, will endure. Hanging there | in the void, with his neck out—staring, staring, staring. |
My Diary
By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
She's Reminded Not to Forget Her | Audience at Her Birthday Party. |
J ASHINGTON, Tuesday.—The newspapers in- | Ww form me that this is my birthday and everyone has been kind in sending me telegrams and | remembrances of every kind. I think as one grows | older the things to be appreciated most are the remembrances of one’s friends Certainly many of them have been more than kind in their thoughts of me today. I have just returned from a very delightful party at the Women's Press Club. Because it was my birthdav thev were very kind and did not ask me to make | a speech However, I am afraid that I made several | in answering their questions A guest who came to see me just before I went | over there. told me the story of the gentleman who was a real orator and, in making his speech, looked up at the sky and completely forgot his audience When he came back to earth, he found all his audience had left except one hunched-up gentleman di- | in front of him. The speaker, somewhat mystilooked around and said: “I am glad that you | least appreciated my oratory To which the | hunched-up gentleman replied I am no audience, I am just the next speaker.” This was a good reminder to me not to forget my audience. I kept my eacle eve on them so that they would not slip out and if they were noticeably bored, I could stop talking immediately. The weather is like summer and when we rode along the Potomac this morning, both our horses and ourselves actually suffered from the heat. It is a glorious month and I envy my husband who will spend next week on the Hudson River and enjoy all the beauties of the autumn season up there where the coloring of the trees is even more glorious than it is down here.
United Labor Worth Much Sacrifice
Last vear I put off my lecture trip until November and found that was a little too near the social and | Christmas season. This year we are taking this lecture trip in October and I realize that seeing the month largely through the windows of a train is not quite as enjovable as seeing it on the Hudson River. I am looking at the headlines of a paper just now which announces that Mr. Lewis of the C. I. O. has agreed to quit as leader of his labor group if Mr. Green of the A. F. of I. will quit as leader of his group. Both of these men are so able and have » much to give that it seems a pity that differences between their groups can not be reconciled without sgerificing the services of the two leaders. It would seem that when the objectives of two groups are similar. the methods by which they are to arrive at their objectives ought to be reconcilable even if each group sacrificed something. How difficult it is for us to see bevond individuals and our own personalities to the best way of achieving our aims. One can only sav that the objective of having labor work together as a unit again is worth much sacrifice,
take a week. But we | By bus and train, | There are | Some day |
most
rectly fied
at al
1
Bob Burns Says—
OLLYWOOD, Oct. 12.—Yesterday I went into a big department store downtown and the counter | I visited was so busy I couldn't get waited on. Right | across the aisle stood a salesman doing nothin’. Deo vou think I could get him to wait on me? No sir, it | wasn't his department! I think all salesmen should | get their trainin’ in a small town store. I remember when I worked in the general store | down home, a lady called up one day and she said, “Send me a bucket of lard, tell my husband to come home. send a spool of No. 60 white cotton thread and vote the state Democratic ticket for me.” (Copyright, 1838)
*-
| often violently changed in their course, some of these
Indianapolis Times
Second Section
Building
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1938
Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis, Ind.
at Postoffice,
Tomorrow's Citizens
Day Nursery and Home for Babies Are Financed by Community Fund
SN
| first), and belter because this time | the Kitchen stove had a great block of Indiana lime-
hud begin a citizen with a baby. These babies will be Indianapolis citizens somes= time, and Indianapolis will have a personal interest in them. Were it not for certain Indianapolis conveniences to persons whose life patterns have been radically and
children might have to fight odds they don't have to fight now. The Day Nursery, operated with money from the Community Fund, takes care of the older children in the pictures above while their mothers or their fathers work to support them. Usualiv the homes are broken in some tragic way. Were it not for the Nursery, which is much
| like a kindergarten and in which the children receive en=
lightened daytime training and care, the children would be unsupervised while the parents struggling to make a home for them were at work.
might be inIn that sense
HROUGH unsupervised contacts they jured physically, morally or spiritually, the Day Nursery is preventive social work. The babies are wards of the Suemma Coleman Home where unmarried mothers find anonymity and where their anonvmous babies find names and homes This Home also is financed by the Community Fund and is the only remedy society vet has devised to make an often successful adjustment of what in a less enlighted social era was regarded as tragedy for which there was no solu=tion for either mother or child.
Everyday Movies—By Wortman
The 19th annual Community Fund drive opens tomorrow. Goal of the campaign, which closes Oct. 25, is $711,633. “Be Proud of Your Gift” is the slogan. Thomas D. Sheerin, Community Fund president, named Perry W. Lesh, Hareld B. Tharp and Harold B. West cochairmen of the drive. H. T., Pritchard is chairman of the utility division which has a quota set at $73.950. A. W. Metzger again heads the national corporations divisions with a quota of $44433. Philip Adler Jr. chairman of the budget committee, and Raymond F. Clapp, manager, are ex-officio members of the executive committee.
TEST YOUR
"It's the people | work for. The time they spend checking up on
me, they might as well be taking care of their children themselves," *
Argh Au) La
———_
KNOWLEDGE
1—On what lake is the city of Geneva, Switzerland? 2—Has the moon an atmosphere? 3—In liquid measure, many fluid drams are one gill? 4—_Name the President of Poland. 5—What is the political status of the Union of South Africa? 6—What is the official language in Liberia? 7—In what year was Yale University founded? 8—To what general family of birds do the falcons belong?
2 2 ” Answers
1—Lake of Geneva. 2—No. 3-32. 4—Ignatz Moscicki. 5—It is a self-governing Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations. 6—English. T—1701. 8—The hawk family.
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., Washing-
how in
and fire-boxes is RED?"
»
AJ
"But lady, didn't anybody ever teach you that mail-boxes is green
ton, D. C. Legal and medical advice cannot be given nor can extended research be undertaken,
»
PAGE 13
Our Town
By Anton Scherrer
Mr. Routier Was Equally Good at Rebuilding Homes, Telling Stories Or Constructing a 'Gallows-Tree.'
NE Saturday afternoon, back in the Eighties, Mother took us kids up town to help her with her shopping. It was dusk when we returned and found our house on fire. It was a ghastly sight. So horrible, indeed, that I don’t want to think about it.
Next morning, bright and early, Peter Routier came to our house, or what was left of it. I don’t know how Father got Mr. Routier to come on Sunday, but he did. Father could get anybody to do his bidding. Father and Mr. Routier spent the greater part of that morning ®walking among the ruins with the result than when Monday came, Mr. Routier showed up again—this time with a crew of carpenters who went to work restoring the old house. When they got done, it was bigger and better than before—bigger by
the addition of a bath room (our
Mr. Scherrer
stone under it. Father had a notion that our house caught on fire because of a live coal dropping out of the stove which set the floor on fire. He wasn't going to let it happen again. It was a lot of fun watching Mr. Routier boss his crew of carpenters. He was a Frenchman, as volatile as they make them, who picked up his trade in the Department de la Marne. He came to Indianapolis when he was 19 years old. I just got done figuring that were Mr, Routier living today, he would be 101 years oid. I guess he was somewhere around 50 years old when he fixed up our house. I press the point because never in my experience have I met a man who amounted to anything as a good story teller until he was 50.
About the City’s First Hanging
Mr. Routier was a seasoned story teller, you bet. One day after we kids got home from school, he entertained us with the story of the first legal hanging in Indianapolis, the one in the Court House yard on Jan. 29, 1879, when two murderers had to pay for their crimes. Mr. Routier knew more about that event than anybody around here because he was the carpenter who built the gallows. Mr. Routier, I remember, always called it a “gallows-tree” which, of" course, was right because when I was a kid, the word “gallows” (pronounced *“gallus”) also meant a pair of suspenders. There was no mistaking a gallows-tree, however. It meant but one thing and that was a scaffold for hanging of criminals. Mr. Routier was mighty particular about his English because besides being a good carpenter, he was also a member of the School Board. Mr. Routier's scaffold was unlike anything ever erected, for the reason that it had to be big and strong enough to hang three men at one time. The reason only two men were up that day was because two young lawyers—one John L. Griffiths and one Alfred Potts— were lucky enough to get a stay of execution for their client. In the very last minute, too. Mr. Routier, I remember, never forgave the lawyers because the way things worked out he never got a chance to learn whether his gallows with its 16-foot-long beam (8 by 10 inches in the other directions) was strong enough to hang three men at one time,
Jane Jordan
Mother's Methods to Discourage Marriage Having Opposite Effect.
EAR JANE JORDAN-—I am writing to you in the interest of my best girl friend. She is 17 years old and a high school senior. She cares for a boy 18, but her parents will not allow her to see him. The boy graduated last year and she has slipped out to see him whenever possible. Now her mother has told her that she must choose between the boy and her mother, Naturally she felt that her decision should be for her mother. The boy and the girl think they want each other and have planned to be married as soon as she completes this year of school. She will then be 18. Both the boy and the girl are good friends of mine and asking for advice. I think that if they were allowed to see each other for a while they would find that they really don't care for each other as much as they think. This may not be true, but if they go on like this it will end in marriage. I don’t know what to tell them, A PAL.
Answer-—If this young girl's mother wanted her to marry a certain young man, she could think of no better scheme for bringing it about than the very methods she has used to prevent the marriage. To begin with she has surrounded the boy with the glamour of the forbidden. She has made it hard for her daughter to see him. Her last and most fatal error is that she has given her daughter a chance to defy her. Any mother who tells her daughter to choose between herself and a suitor runs the risk of putting a compulsion upon her daughter to choose the suitor. If only the parents would withdraw all objections, the girl would be in a much safer position. It would give her a chance to find out whether her feeling for the boy is genuine or whether it is the prodict of her parents’ opposition, Many a parent has smashed a romance by the simple expedient of letting the young people see each other enough to get completely worn out. Well, there is nothing much you can do about it except to listen with sympathy and play for time. Don't take too much responsibility for the affair.
2 ” 8
EAR JANE JORDAN—I am 15 years old and from the time I was 12 my home life has been one of constant discord. All the girls I run around with have dates and are allowed to stay out as late as they please. I must promise to be in by 11:30 but it is hard to leave a party so early. To add to my troubles I met a 19-year-old boy who wants to take me out. My parents won't let me go since he is older and does not come from a nice district. Should I defy my parents or ruin my happiness? ABUSED.
Answer—Neither. Compromise with your parents. They may be right about this new boy. Observe their wishes and then suggest that when you go to a party that they extend the time to suit the occasion. When you aren't going to a party, then keep the hours they set. Try to work with them instead of against them and you'll come out better. JANE JORDAN.
Put vour problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily.
New Books Today
Public Library Presents—
“Y LEFT Germany because in the Germany of today traditional values underlying Western culture have been rejected and trodden under foot,” said Thomas Mann in his lecture delivered in the early spring and now published under the title THE COMING VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY (Knopf). He gives the word democracy a very broad meaning, much broader than the merely political sense of the word would suggest, and declares it to be “the form of government and of society which is inspired above every other with the feeling and consciousness of the dignity of man.” And the exiled scholar does declare his faith is democracy’s ultimate victory despite the tendencies and forces which threaten it today, despite fascism's apparent victories, its novelty and its attitude of youthfulness and opportunism. Democracy, he says, must rediscover itself and triumph; for in democracy are the eternal verities, Ls
! : 8