Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 August 1943 — Page 15

osier Vagabond

IN SICILY—(By Wireless) —Yes‘wrote ‘about going down to see some old 1s. ated for bravery. After it was over we the tent where one of them lives and sat “about old ‘times and how ‘good it was : ‘to get together again. One officer ki: had a bottle of champagne he had i - been saving for some occasion, and . . since this seemed to be at least a ' good ‘ imitation of an occasion he : got it out and we passed it around, ‘the half dozen of us drinking it ‘warm and out of the bottle. My ' palate has never been educated up to champagne and I'd just as soon - have had a good swig of Bevo, but after all an: event is an event and you can't let your old friends down. Our host was Lt. Col. Harry Gosice, ot Columbus, O. He calls himself a professional reserve officer as he has been on active duty for 10 years now. He was with us back in the first days at Oran, then got shunted off to another job and missed the fighting in Tunisia. But this summer he

he’s been making hay fast while the bombs fall. ‘Back home he has a wife and daughter of 15 who

3 “keeps writing him, the precious child, asking if he’s

‘seen me. He also has a Dalmatian dog named Colonel

somewhere in Virginia. Col. Goslee’s home flies two _service stars in the front window—one for the man and one for the dog. . :

Talked of Other Days

‘DUSK CAME on and we moved inside the tent so we could light our cigarets. Our conversation drifted back to other days—Oran of last November and bitter “eold Tebéssa in January and the sadness of our retreat trom Sbeitla and the chill sweeping winds of

Gass. ang. later. i the Spring the heatitles of Bela and of the final wonderful feeling of victory at Ferryville.

grown and nobody seemed like heroes who'd just been decorated for bravery. We talked of the miles we've covered and the moves we've made in the last nine months, of countries we've seen and how: the whole war machine, ‘though it grows dirtier and tireder month after month, also grows mature and smooth and more capable. In this long time all of us over here have met thousands of different soldiers‘and officers. Yet those of us who became friends right at the very beginning in Africa or even back in England seem to have a bond between us as though we were members of a fraternity or a little family and ‘when you get back with each other again it’s comfortable and old shoelike.

Adkins Was Favorite

ED ADKINS was a favorite and his name came up frequently in ‘our conversation. He was crazy to get back to the States and we know he’s happy there and yet ‘we laughed and prophesied that when he reads these lines in 4 Memphis paper—reads how we were still going on and on, still moving every few days, still listening now and then for. the uneven groan of the German night bombers, still fighting dust, darkness, weariness and once in a while sitting around after supper on cots of a blacked out tent talking like this—when he reads about it, and visualizes us, he’s going to be so homesick for the front that he’ll probably cry. : They tell me all the soldiers who have been through the mill and have returned to America are like that. They get an itch for the old miserable life—a disgusting, illogical yearning to be back again in the place they hated. I'm sure it’s true but I know a lot of soldiers who would like a chance to put that theory to the test.

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

x | ‘window yesterday and discovered _ ‘fineoln can’t make up its mind.

= * mighty good as he is getting “so I can’t look fried

. BOB FAULKNER of Indiana Bell looked out the ‘that the Hotel. It has two big electric signs on its roof. One says: “Hotel Lincoln.” The other, probably for variety, says: “Lincoln Hotel.” X The Hotel Washington is more ! consistent. It has two similar signs, but both say the same thing —*“Hotel Washington.” Earl McKee reports that a young man from Chicago visiting the McKees made a tour through the statehouse and returned with the ‘observation that the museum ex“hibits: looked interesting but he couldn't see them well for the jf dust on the display cases. . . . Capt. Ercell R. Stevens, who served as a deputy county clerk under Charley Ettiriger from 1938 until the middle of 1941, is home on leave. He enlisted in June, 1941, now is serving in the signal corps on the west coast.

Yum, Yum—Pork: Chops!

GOVERNOR, SCHRICKER feasted on pork chops at the e eighth’ ‘annual . ton litter hog show. at- the ds ‘yesterday ‘and commented they tasted

chicken in the face any more.” " At that, we'll bet (the governor: is acquainted with more varieties. of chicken than anyone else in the state, since he's beet “riding the fried chicken circuit” since his days as lieutenant governor, attending as many as three fried chicken dinners in one.day. . .. A Times ‘carrier, Robert Manker, about 12, was riding his Jae. recently and ran against an auto door which had" just been opened by the driver. The driver , being excited, hurried to a hospital later ‘and it

was discovered he ad “compound fracture of a fin-

ger. “The hospital ‘bill is running about $15 and

W rashington

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27.—It is depressing to witness the frightening fumbling of the. administration on foreign. policy lately and its backward-looking ob- . session with trying to prove that it has. been infallible w the pose and to see President Roosevelt, in a streak of unaccustomed political timidity, throwing into the wastebasket . skiliful and much needed men like Sumner Welles. It begins to seem as if the inititive, the courage, the imagination, . the readiness to look ahead in- . stead of backward, may come from the Republicans. From some of . them, anyway. - Certainly there is hope if there "is anything typical in the constructive thinking that is voiced : now by Clarence: Budington Keli apts national committeeman for Arizona, specific. blueprint laid before the National Ref club: at New York this week. He will offer y the Republican: party! conference at Mackinac and two weeks hence. * “Stniehow ‘1 had Bud Kelland down in my books aa ‘A rather ‘isolationist. Whether that was ‘fair or not; he- says b s he has been thinking, searching his ‘soul, ‘cleaning his mind of past prejudices, past and “of ‘the rubbish of inherited ideas.” You ve ‘to ag line of his blueprint

‘the ‘bitterly personal spirit. and narrow-rear-vision driving that we ‘are BEng out

NT space enough here:to cover the plan, [4 well read it. all to stimulate your thinka contains refreshing vitamins for Re-

x ne oe rl he admin

Robert wishes the driver of the car would contact him and help pay the hospital bill. Robert lives in apartment 5 at 1036 N. Illinois. .

Pre-War Luxuries

THE ENVY of her friends is a far north side woman just. back from visiting her husband in a Texas army camp. For one thing, she brought back a double handful—20 or 30" packages--of chewing gum of assorted brands. And then she brought batk a whole carton—24 boxes or so—of Brillo scouring pads.

We don’t dare give her name. or she’d be mobbed by

other housewives who haven't seen a steel wool scouring pad in more than a year. . . . The Lions club has collection boxes in various strategic spots raising nioney to send cigareis overseas to the service men—similar to The Times’ campaign. The cashier

"at the union station restaurant, who keeps an eye

on the box there has noticed that more than half the coins in the box are placed there by gh i and sailors.

Have You.a Minox Camera? 7

IF ANY BOYS come to your home Mand ask for a quarter, or some other sum of money, for “the Boy Scouts,” don’t give it to them, and ask the police to investigate. That's the advice of Fred Schatz, district Boy Scout executive. He said ‘police received reports of boys “bumming” money, purportedly for the scouts, in two sections of College ave. W

near 12th st. and again at 32d. Boy Scouts are. nob} pie

permitted to solicit money, Mr. Schatz said. ‘They may solicit old newspapers, or something like that, but never money. . . . Lester Theobold, controller of Wasson’s, is trying to help Uncle Sam acquire three Minox cameras which were-sold by the store about three years ago, The cameras were only about. four inches long and about three-fourths of ‘an inch square. They'd be ideal for spies. Uncle Sam is offering $100 each for them, and if you know of anyone who has one, ask him to get in touch with: Mr, ‘Theobold, or call Mr. Theobold yourself.

By Raymond Clapper

shaped around. the tollowite main points: 1. A trusteeship consisting of Russia, Great Britain, the United States and China to territories of our enemies and other nations bankrupted by the war, to preserve order and assist each nation in -establishing a form of government of its own choice. With this would go a fact-finding international commission, with the’ final peace settlement delayed until terns could be deliberately arranged after stable conditions had been restored. 2. Great Britain, China, Russia and America to combine for. offensive or defensive joint action against any nation threatening to breach the peace. Such-a combination would be so powerful that no -nation would dare challenge its jointly stated will 3. A permanent defensive! alliance between. the United States and Great Britain. They should act as one in case of attack upon either. This alliance should be permanent ang openly declared, asa policy of insurance for both nations. ‘4. Complete solidarity -of the westem hemisphere against any threat to any American nation. 5. Underlying all this a strong American’ navy and air force plus a standing army, ready for war, with heavy offshore defenses in the islands of both ‘oceans. The Pacific must be an American lake, and in the Atlantic we must Have defenses at Dakar and Casablanca, in Iceland, Greenland and Bermuda, We have them now and they must be kept.

Should Anybody Gag? :

IF REPUBLICANS can advance a program that, will take some such positive direction as this, they will have served the best interests of the country immeasurably, Our failure to follow through ona con“structive foreign policy after the last war has, as part of the cause, led to our men having now to fight in ‘Africa and everywhere around the world. But: why should anybody gag at such ideas? They are not really new. Mr. Kelland has only outlined what we are actually doing now. and have been doing: “since the war began. In reality his proposition is te take the arrangeBW war.

By Eleanor Roosevelt :

- By Ernie Pyle

‘And we talked of how tired we had all gradually

FOR THE life of me |

can’t remember when I first saw the transfer car. Of

one thing I'm absolutely

sure however: It was doing business on Oct. 1, 1887. 1 happen to remember the date because that was the day Grover Cleveland brought his bride to Indianapolis. - Gosh, but she was pretty.

It took Indianapolis all of three weeks to get everything ready for the president’s visit. Most of the time was spent in wrangling over

the transfer car. The Democrats

argued that the great big parade scheduled for the occasion should have an unobstructed path in which to move and the only way to do it was to clear Washington st. of everything, including the transfer car. Their thesis carried a corollary, I remember—something to the effect that not to move the transfer car would cast an everlasting blot on our escutcheon, to say nothing of discrediting a highly esteemed office known at the time as “the

executive branch of the govern-..

ment,” an obsolete phrase today.

The Republicans said little or

nothing. They just sat back and laughed. Fifty years ago a loud ‘and lusty guffaw tinged with the poison of sarcasm was the deadliest weapon of the Republican party.

Downright Cruel

WELL, WHEN October 1 relied around, the transfer car stayed just where it always was; with the result that the presidential

parade that day wasn’t the suc- -

cess it might have been. For one thing, it lacked dignity. I will never forget—not to my dying day —how it shocked us boys to see the president of the United States have to get out of the way of a stubborn stationary streetcar. Moreover, it was downright cruel the way that parade humiliated Mrs. Cleveland. Gosh, but she was pretty. : We felt sorry for Jack Willis, too. Mr. Willis was the man picked to drive the six big horses hitched to Mr. Cleveland's carriage. Starting at-Noble st. that morning Mr. Willis .had all of Washington st.

to himself until he reached the

Rdishhosnogd of "Illinois st, at hich paing_be “found his path transfer car. Of course, the way Mr. Willis wheeled his six-horse team to get around a streetcar was a: grand and wonderful sight and, considered as a maneuver, it was all right. Considered in every other way, it ‘was. pathetic—as pathetic as anything I ever saw in Indianapolis. As a mafter of fact, the six proud horses, borrowed from C. F. Schmidt's brewery for the occasion, were never the same after their experience. One livery-stable keeper with. whom I talked afterwards said the brewery horses of Indianapolis—all of them, mind you — developed an inferiority complex following Mr. Cleveland’ Ss visit. » os .

A Tom L. Johnson Idea

THE TRANSFER car was one of Tom L. Johnson's many inventions. He was a Kentucky boy (Georgetown) who, at the age of 15, went to Louisville to take a job in the rolling mills there. Just about the same time (1869) the two du Pont brothers—Alfred and ‘Biedermann—bought’ ‘a streetcar system in Louisville. They were the grandsons of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours who established a powder mill on the Brandywine some time around 1800. Later the mill was capitalized in the name of his son, Eleuthere Iranee, as the E. I du Pont, de Nemours Powder Co. Roger Budrow tells me the concern is still doing /business. “And how!” said Mr. Budrow. The du Ponts lured Tom away from the rolling mills and.set him

| began inventing _ things all which had something to do with the operation of Tule-powered streetcars. His first invention was a farebox. Up to that time fare boxes

were made for holding money

only. - When . paper - ‘money . was withdrawn from circulation; Tom invented a box for coins. ‘It_held the coins. on little glass

days thet are worked on ‘an avérags'in one of our) Tt

great coal mining states, and the total salary paid ah) lion oo wring oso ain be, Tos

An authentic photograph of the transfer car In the last days impress the youngsters and (2) to confound those old-timers who still insist

the mules.

Tom’s streetcar deal set him back $30,000 which is to say that he had only $20,000 cash, the profits of his first invention, to meet the $50,000 demanded by Mr. English. Tom counted on the du

Pont brothers to lend him the rest.

and, sure enough, they did; whereupon Tom brought his family—a wife and a year-old son— to Indianapolis. Established in his Hoosier ‘home, a house on Christian ave. (now 11th st.), Tom sent for his father, an ex-Con-federate soldier. .To the surprise of everybody Tom made his father the president of the Indianapolis streetcar system. Col. Albert W. Johnson had two qualifications to fit him for the office. At one time he had been a superintendent of the du Pont streetcar line and later he served the city of Louisville as its chief of police. The two jobs gave him an insight into the behavior of .mules and men... a

More Inventions

ONE DAY when a friend asked him, “If you are president of the

road, what is Tom?” he replied,

“Oh, Tom’s nothing. He's just the board of directors.” It fooled

many, but not everybody. - Some,

slicker than the rest, had a hunch

that this arrangement gave Tom’

just that ‘much more time to invent gadgets for the good .of the company. Tom’s Indianapolis in-

ventions included a new-fangled

kind of steel rail, an automatic fare-collector and, finally, his masterpiece—the transfer car. Compared with the fare box, his first invention, the automatic farecollector revealed a marked. devel-

collector as the cause of i, They kicked about Tom’s reluctance to extend the lines and, finally, they hit upon the sorest spot of all— the unbearable inconvenience of standing in. all kinds of weather

while waiting to transfer from

One car fo another.

‘Enter, a Busy Parrot

in the transfer car until the car you wanted came -along and, in that case too, it was possible to enter the car going your way without getting wet.

The sale of umbrellas reached

an all-time low when we had the transfer car. For simplicity, directness and dryness it made the proposed waiting room on the Circle look sick. The Kickers; by the way, never got the franchise they asked for. The exits and entrances of the: transfer ‘car. were controlled by four doors, two on each side. The doors, I remember, were worked by overhead levers which in turn were ted by officials dressed in fancy uniforms who announced

the names of the cars as they

passed by. Joseph Cochran, I remember was one of the announcers. - He died recently-—age 83. The announcers had loud and ~

raspy voices. They had to have to ; ‘ent the thick atmosphere inside . the, transfer car. It resembl . fog except that if had a s "For intensity, -the smell was nd unlike that of the tunnel under ‘the union depot. _ transfer car had a smell of -its OWN. :

Otherwise the so »

SOMETIMES THE announcer’s

.icalls got. all mixed up because of

the parrot in front of Harry Newgarden’s. millinery establishment in the Occidental hotel, a geo-

graphical ‘ location that made it.

possible for the parrot to pick up all the scandal peddled in the transfer car including the announcer’s . calls. I don't know whether it was deliberate on: the part of the parrot or whether he got confused, but every so often the parrot’s call didn’t agree with

that of the announcer’s; with the result that, more offen than not,

we kids intent on going to the

baseball park at the cormer of

Tennessee and Seventh sts. (now Capitol ave. and 16th.) found ourselves on a Kentucky ave. car bound for Greenlawn cemetery. The ‘transfer car was in opera-

reasonable . it, t0 stand in the streets of ThGianapolis, That's why when I a kid, even the peanut vendors iad $0 keep moving or be ax-

reste :

The drastic law didn’t’ faze Tom

“Johnson a minute. He hitched a mule to one end of the stationary ” ‘streetcar and 16 it ‘stand there °

until it was time to be relieved by

' another mule, thus fulfilling not only the letter. but the spirit of :

the law. After which the only thing left for P. B. P. to.do was to

Jump into the river.

Tale of ‘Mule Tails :

CONTRARY TO- general belief, the streetcar mules used in In-

MaAndpolls 8: the Wins Were of ne

- conférred

of its existence. The historic document is submitted Ad two reasons: that the transfer car went into the discard. with the passing of

The thing that misled people was

the fact that each animal had a temperament of its own. Take it from me; the mules all had the same attenuated shapes and, certainly, the same exaggerated waving ears and little . whiskbroom tails. : I once read something written by the late George Cottman concerning their tails. Mr. Cottman

bad a theory that the tails served "the same ‘purpose as the crank on an automobile not only because of the rotary motion set up .

when it was time to go, but also

because of the rumbling groans

preparatory to starting. When Mr. Ford worked on: his Model 'T he

cribbed - the cranking apparatus.

straight from Tom Johnson's Indiandgpolis mules, said Mr. “Cottman. After, spending 10 or more years

+ Indianapolis, Tom Johnson Leatd of A. Sick dosed ike

Cleveland. One of these trips the.

newshoy ‘on the train (called ‘a

“butcher” at the time for what:

reason God only knows) tried to sell Tom a copy of Henry George's “Social Problems.” ‘Tom said he

in wasn’t interested in syphilis or

gonorrhea. The train conductor,

hearing the conversation, urged .

Tom to buy, saying he would refund the half-dollar if the book didn’t prove mighty interesting reading.-

” 8 =»

Defender of Underdog:

A READING of “Social Problems” and the subsequent purchase of “Progress and Poverty,” also by Henry George, turned Tom Johnson inside out; at any rate, into something else than the capi-

talist everybody thought he was.

And certainly there was justifi-

cation for classifying Tom as a

capitalist = for ‘it.’ was common knowledge at the time that Tom L. Johnson had cleaned up $780,~

. 000 by selling the Indianapolis

streetcar system. . Not to keep you waiting any longer, this is what had happened:

‘The reading of a book which he “didn’t want to read had changed

of taxation known the world over iy "as Singletax. Later ‘(and ‘still . . under the tutelage of Mr. George) . Tom became an unrelenting foe of

had hoped. Just the same he nas a lot to show for his The “public service commissions” sitting in almost every statehouse today are largely the result of fight against the Vested Interests, another pet (and capitalized)

; phrase of hs.

Never Forgot Streetoars, . WHICH DOESN'T mean . that

asunder trom the rapidity of the revolutions.” The newspapers ‘with

“their usual flair for

called ‘Tom's’ last Inventien

out when the panic of 1907 everybody's plans. Sores we might be riding on skates today instead of ‘wheels about fo jay Jastend; st Wheels ait |

franchises, monopolies and ; private they s

“ownership of utilities.’ “Privilege,”

spelled with: a: capital, a ever

ing the competition :of - others:

Notwithstanding the crippled 1

language, ‘the man’ in the .

lege he defined as “the advantage ' hol ‘on one by: law of deny- . lo 358

knew exactly. what he -meanty+ La

A Startling Paradox

- which

Sri ne