Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 June 1939 — Page 9

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1939

Hoosier Vagabond

DANA, Ind, June 10.—Nature is pulsing this spring, and there is a thriving of life in the country around our home. The grass and the trees have never seemed so beautiful, so fresh and so green. The

spirea bushes are out in a wild white, and if you weren't hot with spring warmth, you'd swear the bushes were covered with snow. All the animal and bird lifz is growing, too. Half a dozen wild rabbits play in our front yard. In all my early years in this neighborhood I never saw a fox. But they say the country is thick with them now. They go right up to the edge of Dana, and set the dogs wild. Never were quail so abundant. And, as I walk through the country, it seems to me the grass and the bushes are alive with birds. Birds I've never seen before. Birds I don’t know the names of. Nature is afoot again in our farmed and paved and tractored country. I don’t know what it is. The farmers don’t know what it is. There is a new birth of something. The groundhogs are thick. All of our neighbors are bothered with them. At our farm there are three big dens of them on the hillside up beyond the barn. Mother said, “Ernest, why don’t you go borrow Jack Bales’ gun and see if you can’t kill some of those groundhogs.” = 2 =

He Borrows a Gun

So I drove over to Bales’ house and nobody was home. But I went in anyway, as neighbors out here do, and got Jack's little .22 rifle, just a single-shot gun. I took it home and loaded it and walked up toward the barn with it under my arm. Groundhogs are nasty things, and I do not like them. IT went sneaking around behind the barn on tiptoe, like an Indian. I peeked around the corner of the barn—and there it was, sitting out there in the middle of the barnlot. I was between the groundhog and its hole.

Our Town

The last Model T Ford was built in 1927, and it begins to look as if the car is fading from what scholars like to call the American Scene. At that,

vou still see a number of them on the streets of Indianapolis. Curiously enough—or maybe. not at all— most of the old cars are used by the Postoffice people to pick up mail from the boxes scattered over town. For some reason, though, the Model T cars still in use don't look the way they used to. To be sure. they still have the elements of the original desigh— that of a mechanized buggy— but the old-time accessories are missing, and you have no idea the difference it makes in their appearance. Back in the old days when the Model T was going good, the only accessory that went with the purchase of a car was the crank. You youngsters won't believe it. but the old Ford car was delivered to your honie as naked as a baby. Like a baby. too, it kept you humping to provide it with the essentials necessary for its welfare. Sometimes, indeed, it took the savings of a lifetime to get the car looking like its adver-

tisements. 2 u 2

Just a Beginning

One of the first things that set you back, I remember. was the purchase of a Ruby Safety Reflector for the back of the car. It cost a couple of dollars, but vou just had to have it to make people believe that you had the nerve to go in for night driving. And ho sooner was the Ruby Safety Reflector paid for than the owner of a Model T felt an irrepressible urge to own a set of Moto Wings (39 cents), a slick little ornament placed on the radiator which, like a Rotarian’s button, had the moral effect of lifting the owner into a society apart and distinct from the hoi polloi That was just the beginning, however. After that, you had to buy a tool box which was fastened to the running board. It always contained the jack, I re-

Washington

WASHINGTON. June 10—This excursion into royal pageantry lasts but a moment and then the repair men of democracy will have to turn back from this dreamland of Gilbert and Sullivan played deadpan, and face again the reality of trying to provide our people with work, food and shelter out of the riches in which we abound. Indeed. even as Their Majesties were settling themselves in their White House quarters, the Congress went dolefully back to its job, the House to consider extension of social security and the Senate to vote on a slum clearance bill. This King and Queen are here only as gentle, sentimental relics preserved from the vanished age of monarchs which disappeared when people found that kings were unable to provide them with tolerable freedom and conditions of life. Will democracy live to tell the tale unless it is able jo provide these conditions? With courage and intelligence it car do the job. It has found the way to provide the freedom It has vet to find the satisfactory conditions of life ® . »

They Ave Poor Salesmen

New Dealers have been poor salesmen. They burrow in economic literature and dress their speeches in statistics and technical jargon that none but themelves can understand. Dealing with an intensely human problem, they cannot in their discussion of it, bring it to life as real flesh and blood. Mr. Roosevelt almost alone among them has the gift to do that As if they secretly recognized their failure, New Dealers are reading and talking up the new best sell-

Aviation

WASHINGTON, June 10—In this day of aviation problems and pressure bubbling all around, my old boss—the late Admiral William A. Moffett, whom 1

fdolized—would be in his element, First chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, he was father of that outfit. I lived close to Admiral Moffett for about six years, and I know how solutions came with simple but brilliant Moffett decisions, and aviation achss today for such as that. Never before had I met a man like him, but the present Lord Beaverbrook of England is the living counterpart of the Admiral Moffett I knew though differing greatly in personal appearance I met Lord Beaverbrook in Miami two vears ago. I shall never forget the Beaverbrook mind. Keen as a razor edge—restless, always probing, always acquiring more information than he gave but instantly alert to check the least deviation from a line of thought. Thoughts are ammunition and shouldnt be fired All ovessthe landscape. His chuckle is algays there,

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By Ernie Pyle

I took two steps out from the barn, and the groundhog saw me. It stood motionless for one second, puzzled. Then it ran swiftly, at right angles, | toward the old barn. I shot across the fence. It was a good 40 yards, and I had no idea of making a hit. But as the gun cracked the groundhog rolled. It gave me a thrill, I can’t help but admit. It rolled once, and landed on its feet again, running. . . . But this time it ran straight toward me. Instinct, I suppose. Instinct and hurt and a numbing fright drove it toward its den, man in the way or ho man.) I had held an extra cartridge in my fingers, and it took me only a second to reload. I had the sight dead on it when it was within 10 feet of me, and was pressing on the trigger. And the groundhog staggered. $8 4 §

Seized by Remorse

I never fired the second shot. The groundhog fell once to the right. It pulled itself up and fell once to the left. It kicked twice. It wasn't a yard from my feet when it twitched out its last breath. I stood there looking, fascinated and horrified, as it died. My father came, and said, “Well, that’s good. You'll have to bury it now.” So I got the spade and dug a deep hole in the bottom of the old gravel pit, and tied a string around the dead groundhog’s leg, and dragged it into the hole and covered it up. The groundhog was chubby, and there would soon have been young ones. Last night just before bedtime I went outdoors. Our country is very quiet, and very dark, in the nighttime. I had a feeling of something up toward the barn. It sounds foolish. . . . But there was a life less, and I had taken it. One pulse in that virile flowering of nature around our country this spring had stopped beating. Sure, a groundhog is no good, and ought to be killed. But there was a home in the hillside without a tenant. Maybe a groundhog enjoys living, too. . . . I stood there in the dark for a long time thinking about it, gut there under the maple trees, and I just felt like e devil,

By Anton Scherrer

member, an indispensable tool without which it wasn’t possible to make a trip. At any rate, not in winter. The oil had a way of thickening in zero weather, and

the only thing to do was to jack up the rear wheels. For some reason which I yet have to learn, it made the “throw” easier. Alongside the tool box was another box which also ran into money. It contained a set of emergency cans for gas, oil and water. To tell them apart, the cans were painted in different colors—red for gas, green for oil and gray for water. Some esthetic souls, I remember. even went to the expense of painting the tool and emergency boxes different colors.

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That Closed Car Effect

Other incidentals of considerable expense were a compound to stop leaks, a steering column brace to keep the column from vibrating, a clamp-on dash

light, and a contraption to keep the fan belt from slipping off the pulley (9 cents). To say nothing of the Jiffy Patching Set equipped with what looked like a nutmeg grater to roughen the tire tubes before the goo was spread. Another outlay was the matter of changing the car from an open one to a closed car. The least the Hearsey people would do it for was 811.95. And soon as you had a transformed car, like as not the distaff side of the house would demand a Donna Lee Autobile Disseminator. As near as I recall, jt was a porous vase with the curious property of charging the car with the perfume of lavender. When the car was a year old, you had to dig still deeper into your pocketbook and buy a set of antirattlers (98 cents), hood silencers, shock absorbers, and a rear-view mirror. By that time, too, you were using vour second set of tires ($12 apiece). Shucks, I thought I'd have time to touch upon the sun visor and duster you had to have to drive a Model T. Fully equipped with its driver and everything, the old-time Ford was really something to look at. Certainly more than the skeletonized, sketchy outfits the Postoffice peopie now use to pick up their mail.

By Raymond Clapper

ing novel by John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath,” finding that it gets across the message which they have been unable to carry to the right people. This is the poighant odyssey of the new pioneers, driven off their farms by dust storms, foreclosure and large scale tractor farming. Unlike the first pioneers, these modern pioneers arrive at the rainbow’s end to find, not virgin wilderness waiting to vield up its riches to those willing to dig them out. No. They find the country already built up, everything taken, deputy sheriffs with guns to keep them out, browbeat them, contractors to work them at pitiful pay for a few weeks during fruit picking time, after which they are driven out of the country. g £ 4

An Appeal to the Fortunate

But it is not a story for New Dealers, who know it already, but for those successful peopie who own things and have good jobs and good businesses, who sit around sn country clith verandas over mint juleps and damn that man Roosevelt—those people who, says author Steinbeck, “strike at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity, at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes . . causes which lie deep . . hunger in the stomach, multiplied a million times . . . hun ger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times.” Novelist Steinbeck goes on to address these move fortunate people: “If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve vou. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive.” This message will not interest British royalty because power already has been taken out of the royal hands. But it might interest economic royalty so that it may profit by the examples that have gone before in history.

By Maj. Al Williams

but shy as a brook trout. It might be coaxed, but slides into the shadows at the faintest flicker of pre. tense. Beaverbrook owns the fastest and soundest mental engine in the British Empire. He owns and operates

the paper of greatest circulation in the world, the London Daily Express, All his executives are sharp, keen lads, extraordinarily and vitally young. There's no question who you are or where you came from. Ine stead, he wants to know what are you and what can you do? When most human mental engines are cranking up, Beaverbrook’s is away like a flash, and diving on the most important target in sight. It seemed to me that Beaverbrook’'s mind could run lightly, when the pressure was light, but when the load increased, the power output was startling.

Beaverbrook hag ho real contemporary competitor. He could coast for five years and catch the parade with a single spurt, I studied these two men. To meet their like is a great opportunity, of far greater importance than college training. Admiral Moffett, U. S. N, and Lord Beaverbrook of England gave me the first real insight into what fast, finely tuned mental engines mean in the busi

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113th Photographic Section Photos.

1. How would you like to lug around one of these aerial cameras

to take snapshots? handful.

Staff Sergt. James F. Fisher finds it quite a

2. Here's the Army's most complete photographic darkroom on

wheels. Guard as a field laboratory.

Just received a week ago, it will be used by the National

3. No “candid” camera is this giant which Sergt. Fisher uses for copying work. It handles a negative 20 by 24 inches.

By Lowell B. Nussbaum

NDIANAPOLIS' hundreds of camera bugs who dream of Heaven as a smelly place with plenty of dark rooms, and all the equipment they wish they could buy, need

dream no longer.

All they have to do to see their “dream Heaven” in reality is to go out to Stout Field, the National Guard airport, and visit the 113th Photographic Section building. There, in one of the best photographic laboratories in the Middle West, they will find such things as: Two spic and span, well-equipped and ventilated

dark rooms.

A camera, as big as a trunk, that uses 20 by 24-inch

negatives.

Roll film cameras that take whole townships more

than a mile away in one snap, and operate something like movie cameras except that each shot is on a 5 by T-inch negative. The photo section’s mission in

the military picture is to train National Guardsmen to become the Army's “eyes” in time of war. When a general gets ready to call his staff around him and plan the next day's drive against the enemy, he can’t always hop in a plane and take a spin over the enemy's territory to see what it's like. That's where the observation squadron pilots and their photo section cameramen take over. ¥ 4 ©

HUGE aerial camera is mounted, lens downward, in the foot of a fast Army plane, and the ship sets off for enemy territory. th front sits the pilot, who not only flies the ship but operates fixed machine guns in the leading edges of the wings. Deep down in the center of the cockpit sits the observer and his camera. At the rear is a machine gunner, charged with protecting the rear from enemy ships. The ship flies a couple of miles or more above the ground. Fighting planes accompany it to ward off attack by enemy ships. Then the observer starts his camera operating. Every few seconds it shaps a picture of the terrain beneath it. Each pic= ture overlaps the preceding one. When the entire area has been covered, the ship flies back to its base, the film is rushed to the dark room and developed in a few minutes, then sharp contact pictures of each exposure are printed. These prints are trimmed care fully and mounted, section by section, on large sheets of heavy cardboard to form what is Khowhn us a mosaic map. The map gives the general staft officers a better picture of the enemy territory than they could

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

{—Name the body of water that separates Sicily from Italy. 9 Does an American woman lose her citizenship now if ghe marries an alien? 3. Name the Foreign Minister of Denmark. 4—Who sighed the death ware rant of Mary, Queen of Scots? 5-—In which state is Mammoth Cave? 6-—-What is an episcopacy? %—Which major league club res cently released Tony Lage geri? ® 8 »

Answers

{Strait of Messina, 2--No. 3-—Dr. Paul Munch, 4-Queen Elizabeth. 5—Kentucky. 6-—-Government of a church by bishops. 7-—New York Giants,

4 - « 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, 1018 13th 8t, N. W,, Washington, D. ©. Legal and medical

advice cannot be given nor can extended taken.

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be, under« » bi

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get by flying over it and viewing it first hand. g # #

HERE'S no limit to the size of these maps. They often in clude entire counties. Roads, woods, buildings and other physi=cal details of the landscape stand out clearly.

Sections of the map can be enlarged and examined under a microscope, revealing paths and other details of invaluable aid to attacking troops, especially at night. Through use of a stereopticon on overlapping sections, the general staff can get a third-dimen= sional effect, showing elevations. Besides aerial mapping, photog= taphy aids the Army and National Guard fliers in machine gun practice. Prudence prevents them from flying around the countryside, firing machine guns indiscrim= initely, so for practice the ma= chine guns are removed from their fixed mounts. Camera guns are mounted in their place. Then the pilot takes off and while flying 225 miles an hour, aims his plane at a small bull'seye target oh the west edge of the airport, “firing” 16 millimeter movie film instead of cartridges. When the film is developed and tun through a movie projector, the pilot can tell whether real bullets would have hit the bull’s« eye. # 8 @ HE equipment in the photo section's building makes the amateur cameraman’s bathroom of kitchen sink dark room pale into insignificance. Its half dozen rooms contain photographic equipment costing more than $10,000. Some of the cameras cost as much as $1800 or $2000 each. It has not one, but two, coms pletely equipped dark rooms, one for making contact prints — the other for enlargements. In the former are two contact printers. One is for printing from negatives 8 by 10 inches, ot

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smaller: the other for making prints from negatives as large as two feet square. In the other room is an enlarger which can take an 8 by 10-inch negative and “blow it up” to a pic ture 40 by 50 inches, or reduce it

to a print the size of a postage stamp. The other rooms are devoted to different phases of photography. One is the chemical storage and mixing room. Another is a fireproof, ventilated vault for storing exposed and unexposed film, and photographic paper. A third is the camera storage room, At the rear is a larger room used both as a classroom and studio. At the end of the room are chairs and a blackboard where the students learn about such things as photographic chemistry, the functions and characteristics of different types of lenses and other technical details. At the other end are lights and backgrounds for taking practice shots. In one corner is a huge copying camera using 20 by 24inch negatives. The walls of the camera storage room are lined with various types of cameras, spare parts, inter= changeable lenses and other auxs iliary equipment. yg 89 ONE of them could qualify as “candid” cameras—the section doesn't bother with small negatives because too much detail is lost in the enlarging process. The aerial cameras can be set to take a single shot just like an ordinary miniature or box camera, or they can be used like a movie camera. Used for mak= ing the mosaic maps and recons= hoissance strips, these aerial cameras operate almost autos maiiecally. All the pilot and ob= server have to do is to keep the plane and the camera level. A little gadget with a big name

Side Glances—By Galbraith

INA,

the Intervalometer—does the work. This device, operated by an electric motor, can be set to take pictures of the landscape beneath at predetermined inter vals ranging from 6 to 75 sec onds.

The time between shots de pends on the altitude and speed at which the plane is flying. Once set, the Intervalometer winds the film, cocks the shutter, flashes a light signal warning the pilot to get his ship level, and then, three seconds later, snaps the trigger. The gadget winds the film roll again and repeats the process. The pride and joy of the section is a portable photographic lab= oratory just received from the War Department a week ago. Housed in a large all-metal trailer, the unit is completely equipped for developing films and making prints and maps while the Army is on the march. It is divided into two rooms, one for developing, the other for printing. Electric current is provided by two separate portablepower plants in the trailer, In the wall are speaking tubes, for conversations with those out= side while films are being developed. Portable tables and a light tight tent are included for making mosaics in the field. The 113th Photographic Section is composed of 20 enlisted men-— the students—under First Lieut. Donald D. Stowell, commander, and First Lieut. Sidney A. Stout, assistant commander, vy wu » HE students are given three years of intensive photographie training, They attend 48 class sessions a year—on Monday nights—and a 16-day field training period each summer with the 38th division at Ft, Knox, The number in the section is limited to 20, and there always

is a long waiting list. Applicants must be high school graduates, between the ages of 18 and 35. Those who already are amateur photographers are given prefer= ence, Part of the instruction is given by Staff Sergt. James F. Fisher, who returned two months ago from Denver where he attended the U. S. Army Air Corps teche nical school at Lowry Field, tak= ing a 16-week course in pho tographic instruction, Stout Field serves as the base not only for the 113th Observa= tion Squadron and the 113th Photographic Section, but also for the 113th Medical Department detachment. The three comprise the 38th Division Aviation,

” » » ACH is a separate unit, but for technical and administrative purposes they are under the cone trol of Maj. Oliver H. Stout, come

manding officer of the observation squadron. Members of these three groups are eligible to apply for admission to Randolph Field, the Army's crack aviation training center at San Antonio. Those accepted are given a one= year course, divided into three four-month periods. After the first two periods of general flying instruction, the cadets may choose the branch they wish for the final period. These include pur suit, attack, bombardment and observation training. The latter is the only one of the four where the students get photographie training. The section, in connection with its training, occasionally performs mapping work for various govern= mental agencies. An example of its work is & mosaic map of the City of Indian= apaolis on display in the Adjutant General's office in the Staue House.

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“Wonder what Hopkin wants to borrow? He's. mowing on our

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_ side of the property line" ___ 3

“Mother, when, oh when, will | be big.enough-to have-a son?"

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Everyday Movies—By Wortman