Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 November 1951 — Page 11

1951

- By Ed Sovola

POKED around the mailbag depository de- « partment of the Illinois St. Station of the Post Office and dug up a lot of dirt, Gad, some of those bags are dirty. Government figures shouldn’ t surprise a man, The "raising of an eyebrow at®billions of any‘thing still is permissable, and you're not too old-fashioned, I suppose, when millions make you listen. Imagine how silly I' felt when Supt. Bert Déer¥ said he had_over 250,000 mailbags and I whistled. Doesn't a “quarter of a million mailbags geem like a lot for this neck of the woods?

oe “ we oe

MR. DEERY said his station originally was ‘going to store 16 carloads of mailbags but somehow he got stuck with five extra. Sixty thousand * } bags, more or less, don't worry him, Indianapolis, centrally located,” is the storage center for post offices in the Midwest. Washington ships in and orders bags out wherever they're

needed. w+» Five men are required to-handle empty mail bags. I met George Logue, Lyle Arnold, Arthur

Hinshaw, Charles Williams and Leonard Chandler. THEY GAVE me the business about needing a man to wash the bags. If two of the men ~hadn’t laughed, I would have swallowed the bait. Well, are bags washed? Mr. Deery said mail bags are never washed.

He pointed to bags that were over 20 years old Tattletale gray. the state send in It's up to*the mailbag

which have never been cleaned. Little offices throughout their surplus bags daily.

» fo Shop!

MAILBAG DEPOSITORY—George Logue pushes a tiny fraction of the quarter million bags in stock here.

FIC

NN!

It Happened Last Night

By Earl Wilson

NEW YORK. Nov. 5 India to become a Hindu,

“I'm on my way to the pretty blonde said. The pretty blonde was Nancy Valentine, the ex-model and. actress, now the Maharanee of Cooch-Behar. She'll soon be joining her handsome Maharajah ‘alcutta. They'll proceed to his palace—a li'l ole thing of not more than 135 rooms Nancy comes from Smithtown, L. I, and ix probably the most American Maharanee that India ever had. “We'll go through

in (

another wedding ceremony.” Nancy told me, sitting in her suite at the Elvisee. "I'll probably wind up wearing levis. I wore slacks the other time!”

« Her Maharajah, who was educated in England, is an easv-to-meet fellow who can sit down with you in Lindv's and eat herring or cheese-

cake and never make vou conscious of who he is. ‘What does it mean to become a Hindu?" I asked the Maharanee, I really don't know,” she admitted, believe thev're going to keep all very humble 20 as not nists “T doubt week affair

“bat 1 the ceremony to excite any Commu-

' she said + "thal there il be any two.

/ : cession like they have sometimes i ; - “ "ee : NANCY—who calls her Maharajah 'Bhaiva” a nickname met him while she was under contract to David O. Selznick and he was in America buying farming machinery for his estate Weil . . . time passed ... and in 1949 while she was visiting India, they were married by two traveling priests at a guest house in Cooch-Behar. “We were going to keep it a secret and did for a long time, till some columnist started saving I was chasing Bhaiva,” Nancy told me. “That made me mad, so I announced the fact

that we'd been married for two years.” I asked whether she’had anv fears of seeing her Maharajah taking up with three other wives as we've always heard Maharajahs do “1 waited a long time to find a one-woma man.” she answered “I don’t think the Hindus do that = much any more.” fhe Maharanee went on. “But, oh gosh-—an uncle of Byv's had 35 wives--or was it 1352" ! oe oe - BECOMING A HINDU will be a great adventure Nancy started out in life a Baptist

Then she became a Religious Scientist

Hollywood d Ensemble

PAY ONLY $1 DOWN!

Americana By Robert C. Ruark

NEW YORK. Nov. 5-1 have just been eating no, wearing-no, smoking—no. reading—a very new magazine named Gentry, price two bucks which purports to be all things to all people who i have everything else they need except a magazine § named Gentry which costs two bucks a throw It is. a very unusual it gd.

ou get: beautiDuran uphol- | ard; guaranteed Gmattress; spring; mount-

legs. Sanitary zine. In the shirt-and-suit gdincluded! vertisements they attach a swatch of the actual shirt-or-suit material. There is a piece on food that carries a -sachet

of herbs. They promise a leaf of fine old tobacco in upcoming tobacco advertisements, and lord only knows what we will get with the lingerie displays. There have been unusual inserts in magazines hefore,but I doubt the average housewife will hold still for a clipped-on live dame attired In a black lace corset, Causes talk in the neighhorhood. Mayhap 1 am overly precious, but a full ze. of architectural plans on how to build your own private Finnish steam bath seems to be reaching just a touch for circulation. A man with a heavy desire for a steam bath of his own ‘would scarcely wait ‘with suspended breath for a magazine to come out to tell him how. He would probably pick up a phone and call a Finnish architect, drop the dough on the line and wait for the rocks to scorch.

Englander g Mattress

MOHAMMED'S advice to his son-in-law does not stun us with timelines, either, or does a full outlay on a convertible sweatshirt or the exhortation to throw a sprig of fresh gladiolus leaves into my next salad. Hate salads anyhow, even without gladioll. ’ ? Got a piece, too, called, “Now I Lay Me Down to Eat,’ based on<the virtues of reclining gluttony. Us poor folk have trouble enough at buffet dinners, and trying to acquire a stray calorie on a couch defeats me merely hy intimation of difficulty. Thefe is a built-in bookmark with the new magazine, as well as booklet.of dutk engravings,

PAY ONLY $1 DOWN!

st” mattress is designed to give , restful slumit's guaranteed Has a sag-proof er, heavy woven apdles. In full, or twin size,

Inside Indianapolis

Post Office Bags Run Into Thousands

depository men to sort them, pack them in .bun-

dles of 20. Nineteen are stuffed into a bag.

SBN

THIS WEEK a new order went into effect regarding unserviceable bags. In the past all defective bags were sent to Washington to be repaired or destroyed. Now only bags that need repair are sent. Bags beyond repair are cut up for the eyelets, string and good canvas. We're getting economy measures in government. If you have ever wondered about patched bags (I have), all work is done in Washington. Mail handlers don’t take torn bags home and have their wives mend them. o.oo BAGS THAT are referred to as “Louis Ludlow Specials,” aren't mended. When they get torn they're taken out of service. The late Rep, Ludlow, more than 20 years ago, «icked up a fuss about putting in blue stripes on mailbags. He saw no good reason for the $10,000 extra cost on each 100,000 bags. The stripes were discontinued. Striped bags are still in service. It gives you an idea the longevity of canvas. Of course, you might attribute this to the dirt that's ground into mailbags. o- “ob

THERE ARE two main types of bags. The No. 1 bag is used for parcels. It is slightly larger than No. 2 which is used for heavy magazines and newspapers. The reason No. 2 is smaller, is that the post office doesn’t want more than 90 pounds in a bag. Too hard to handle. Mr. Deery showed the shipping book. The Spencer office requested 1300 bags. Connersville asked for 45. Forty went to Liberty, 1000 to Terre Haute. The job of depositing mailbags is endless, Every day they ship out and receive. Bags are inspected, flattened and sorted as to size. A man with hay fever would have a difficult time in the department. oe Oo o>

"’ ""

DESPITE the fact that the men work underneath suction tents, there is a good deal of dust in the air. It reminds you of a classroom after recess when 50 youngsters bounce in off a dusty playground. - Mr. Deery wished the bags could speak. He figured they would have wonderful stories to tell. He thought it would be interesting to know how many times a bag went through Indianapolis, for example, how long it stayed before it moved to another section of the country. There is no way to trace a mailbag. > * <> DURING WORLD WAR II, 1000 bags a day were shipped from here overseas. Most of them never returned. Canvas mailbags were seen on the backs of many Europeans. The shortage became so acute right after the war, Mr. Deery and his men had to use ‘grass sacks” (burlap). The bossman groaned. He doesn’t want to see those days again. He's sitting pretty today with a quarter milion mailbags. “or

The Maharanee From Long Island

“The Religious Scientists are real sparky people and believe in having fun in hfe.” she said. “You know the Beverly Drive Theater in Beverly Hills? That's where their church is—in the theater. “My mother saw it, is Hollywood, all right. go to church!” Nancy's Maharajah is no longer a political ruler—he “doesn’t have his state now.” He and other Maharajahs were pensioned by the government, but he still has the big palace. Meanwhile, he is head of a travel company in Calcutta. “One thing I naturally wanted.” “was air-conditioning for thg palace *“He said, ‘What -air condition 135 rooms?’ So we're going to air-condition our own of rooms, though.” “* while around the Broadway openings. usually wore a sari—the flowing piece of chiffon that Hindu women sometimes drape around their shoulders, sometimes around their heads. She has many of these bellished witn gold or valuable, The Maharanee is being accompanied on her return trip to Cooch-Behar by Miss Leslie Snyder, the Hollywood writér, who is preparing Nancy's life history and will also be her attendant at her Hindu wedding ceremony. “Don't you think you'll miss eating steak or beef? ” I asked the Maharanee . , . reminding her about the Hindu diet.

eo »

ahd she said, ‘Well, this You go to a movie to

Nancy said

suite

NANCY,

some especially emsilver, and thuse quite

“WELL, when I get back to the States 1 think I might sneak out and get a little hamburger now and thén,” she said. “Anyway the Hindus have such lovely fruits and desserts”

However a Hindu friend of mine told me that Hindus visiting this country often eat steaks. They don't in India because of the cow's

supposedly being sacred. but as they explain it,

The American cows--well, thev're not holy!” ~ & & TODAY'S DAFFYNITION: Heckler: a guy who ribs vou the wrong way.--Darothy Sarnoff. EO > TODAY'S BEST LAUGH: Billy Reed overheard a man snap ‘at his very dull wife, “Now

rot another void out of you!”

New Magazine Smells Good Enough te Eat

which did not seem to be tethered to the master volume. It just sat inside, a sucker for a duckengraving thief or an accident, in which it would fall onto the sidewalk and be forever lost. Also. there is a weighty bit of “What It Means to Be a Man,” and I am a mouse, myself,

% »

THIS THING is full of pasted-on pictures and insets and tear-offs and dingle-dangles, which would lead you to wonder what they had in mind. Is this a general store, a clothing establishment, an implied tobacconist’'s? Or is it a magazine to be read instead of worn, eaten or sniffed? Seems to me we are entering a fresh field of journalism so rich that no one man can he a critic. Not only must one agree or disagree with the prose, but must consider that very possibly the shirt flannel sits oddly with his cdmplexion, and that he would look a frightful frump in the suitings on Page 5. You can just hear the conversation in the smart Manhattan bars: “Joé's text is terrible, and on top of that, much marjoram to his food section.”

Go db

WE WERE NEVER even able to cope fully with friend Fleur's late lamented Flair, the magazine with the hole in its head, because there were 50 many dangling appendages and tear-off items, trick pages and come-see-me-tomorrow features. I used to read everything I could rip out, Loupon-

“wise, and throw the rest away.

In so doing, I completely missed out on a piece I had written myself, showing you the risk of getting too tricky with make-up. What happens to this thing, Gentry, is hard

.to'say, but as a compliment to the new publication

I would like to say that I never read a book that fit better, was warmer, washed better or smelt better than this latest boon to gracious living. They say in the front that they den't aim to explain themselves; Gentry will either justify itself or expire quietly. In the latter eventuality, I tread on tippy-toes, unless some wizard in the food department pins a sirloin steak to the food page. It may be that some of us will buy the book just for eating purposes, and thereby Keep it am us alive, .

he attaches too .

+ g 2

# v

Bombproof ‘Pentagon’—

‘Command Cave’ Ready In

UNDERGROUND—Navy man checks lathe set up in cave.

‘The Indianapolis

MONDAY, NOVEMBER'5, 1951

By JIM LUCAS Scripps-Howard Staff “Writer

SOMEWHERE IN JAPAN, Nov. 5—This is the story of an underground ‘Pentagon,’ ranean corridors, that some day could be the free world's

command post in the Far East.

It was built by the Japanese during World War II. Its location is secret. We are keeping it ready so it could be in operation a few minutes after a surprise attack on Japan. No one knows how many air raid caves and tunnels there are in Japan. They honeycomb the Tokyo area. Many more are on Honshu, Kyushu and Hokkaido. Hundreds have been uncovered since the end of the war but there must be many more that have not been. found Every heavy rain brings landslides which reveal additional unsuspected tunnel entrances. I spent a day inspecting one network of caves and tunnels. It has 450 entrances. Despite the fact the interlocking tunnels are brilliantly lighted. 1 had the feeling that I shouldn't wander off too far or I might get lost The tunnels average 98 feet in height and 11.7 feet in width. Some of the ceilings are 25 feet high; at othgr points one must stoop to clear the 5-foot ceilings. In some places the tunnels are 26 feet wide but at others they are less than 4 feet wide. There are highway and railway tunnels 12 to 22 feet high and 15 to 40 feet wide. These tunnels wend a- tortuous 14 miles inside a huge sandstone mountain. You could live in them indefinitely under the severest Kind of aerial attack. The Japanese proved that in the last war, = = » THE NERVE CENTER is appropriately called command cave, It encompasses 13,900

square feet. The ceilings are 25 feet high and from 35 to 46 feet wide. The Japanese

started construction of command cave in 1941—shortly before the war started—and completed the job in September 1943. Command cave actually consists of a series of tunnels on three levels connected by stairways. It's’ protected overhead by 70. feet of solid rock. The main entrance is protected by thick steel doors and a series of inside concrete firebreaks. Inside there's everything that could be needed. A ventilating system, telephone switchboards, mess halls, bunk rooms and running water. Huge kegs of fresh drinking water are refilled and tested weekly for purity. Canned food is stored throughout the 27 miles of tunneis. The main tunnels with concrete. But offices for commanders are lined with cedar, knotty pine and fiber board. s A small group of enlisted men and of In command cave to be sure everything “.is running as it should be, in case of emergency. Marine Maj. C. I. Whitlock of Little Rock, Ark. showed us around. There are three large power plants which produce enough power to light every inch of the 27 miles involved. = = = THE HEART OF Command Cave is an air defense center. In eeffct it is a war room. Under the Japanese it was manned by 250 men on a three-shift basis. It is located in a large underground room and is ap-

are lined

American fficers live

The Jittery Frontier—

Drought Would Aid Russian Line In Iran

By CLYDE FARNSWORTH

Scripps-Howard Staff Writer

ABRIZ. Iran. Nov.

9—A drought threatens a food

shortage on the Moghan steppe and that could mean a rich harvest from the Communist propaganda line in

this area. The steppe, a part of Iranian and Soviet Azerbaijan which straddles a jutting part of the

Iranian border. had an “open winter.” There wasn't much snow with the result that the

earth went dry before its time. The curtailed harvest on the steppe is now in. If the shortage is as great as feared, {t is expected to make Tabriz the refuge of hungry farm families turned beggars. Political consequences will depend on how well the Iranian government relieves the people

and what use the Russians make of their plight. = ~ x

RADIO FREE AZERBAIJAN is trying to persuade Iranian Azerbaijani that the grass is greener on the other side of the Araxes River, which marks a stretch of the Soviet frontier about 60 miles north of here. The radio propaganda hasn't been too effective so far. But the threatened drought may set up the big opportunity for the Communists if the farmers are forced to beg on streets of Tabriz to get enough to eat. At severe peaks of Azerbaijan distress, refugees have trooped as far as Tehran, more than 400 miles southeast of here, in search of food. Though begging now seenis to be on the increase in Tehran, there were no refugees on the Tehran-Tabriz road when I drove over it. Observers say there is not yet any extraordinary number of beggars in Tabriz. The effects of drought are slow to develop.

~ ~ - MY VISIT coincided with Muharram, when Irans Shia faith ful mourn the death of Hosein, . grandson, and by Shia tenets, successor to the Prophet Mohammed,

He and a band of

200 followers were slaughtered in ambush at Kerbala in 680 as part of the struggle over

"succession

Shia holy men still flog and lacerate themselves in memory of Hosein's agony and death. Under the fanatical religious revival that has coincided with

and spurred Iran's nationalist resurgence, some of the old Muharram spectacle is back again. But ‘it is not recommended for foreigners in Tabriz.

So far on my trip along Iran's and Turkey's nervous frontiers with the Soviet Union I have seen little of Iranian measures

security

I was stopped only twice on my way from Tehran to Tabriz. The first time was only because the police of Mianeh, Iran, are not accustomed to having foreigners stop in their povertystricken town for lunch. I was deep in a plate of pilau (garnished rice), when the law arrived to study my passport and other documents.

At Tabriz my passport has

"been collected again for over-

night perusal. It will be returned in the morning before I

drive on along ‘the Soviet frontier toward Turkey. = ~ » IN HE BOOK of internation Communist aggression

is no better bet than a and wooly frontier or combigation of frontiers inhabited by people of loose national affeftions or with unsatisfied nationalistic ambitions of their own,

This mountainous area through which 1 am now * traveling, from Iran toward

Turkey and often within sight of the distant peaks on the Russian side of a paralleling

with 27 miles of subter-

Times

¥ £ ©

PAGE 11

Japan

MEDICAL SUPPLIES—Hospital could handle 3000 patients.

AIR DEFENSE CENTER—Deep underground the command post would be bomb proof.

proximately 200 feet long, 60 ‘feet wide and 40 feet high. Along one wall are ranged electromically controlled maps and boards—a radar reporting board, a raid status board, an anti-aircraft defense board. etc. Below these are partitioned offices for recording clerks and junior officers. Against the opposite wall are the desks for the commanding staffs. One corner of the room is partitioned off for a telephone exchange. ~ Across from it there are radio room:.

There are sleeping quarters for high-ranking officers on the first floor. Upstairs—in a room big enough to be a dance hall ~there are bunks for enlisted men and junior officers. In addition, command cave includes a communications center, emergency power plants, air conditioning units and an underground hospital.

= = = THE HOSPITAL has a modern operating room, laboratory, blood bank, tons of supplies and space for 300 patients in its nine-tunnel ward. There also

°o

- Mountainous

is a dental laboratory and a clinic. Water and food are stored here, too.

Emergency supplies are sealed in wax waterproof jackets and stored in steel cabinets. Thousands of litter racks line the rough tunnel walls. Each holds two stretchers, making a two-tier bunk. Walking patients would be assigned space on benches until the first emergency was past. Everybody hopes we never have to use command cave. But it's good to know we have it.

out an integrated country te call their own, they overlap the borders of three nations. And in the case of the tribally organized Kurds the frontier regions of Iraq and Syria are also involved. The Kurds and the Azerbaijani are particular targets of Soviet propaganda by radio. And the Kurds, being more warlike, are supposed to have Soviet agents working among them in the Russian-Iraniarn-Turkish border region. The arming of selected Kurds by the Soviet Union is a fact to. be taken for granted. The Russians may be expected to use them to the limit as a battling fifth column to help offset the tremendous terrain disadvantage that faces any invasion of eastern Turkey. roads easily blocked by strong and determined Russian regulars might well secure that part of the country from any attack along traditional lines,

~ ® =

TO REACH MAKU I drove most of the sunlit day from Tabriz and spent the remainder of my daytime hours waiting upon Iranian military clearances of my passport whith bears an exit visa for use at a geographical point called Bazergan, a half-hour drive northwest of Maku. Here in this gorge-walled village where half the people are cliff-dwellers the Iranian police Chief pit me up for the night. With a great deal of sign language and {llustrations depending - on a battered alarm clock he explained the Bazergan frontier = would not be open until morning

FUTURE REFUGE?—A threatened food shortage on the ie and kept my passport. Moghan steppe in northern Iran would make Tabriz (above) the refuge of hungry farm families turned beggars.

frontier, qualifies remarkably well for the tactics of Communist agitation and manipulation. Here in Iran are Armenians apd Azerbaijani whose racial

linguistic and cultural cousins comprise Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan on the other side of the Araxes River. Together

. with the Kurds, an even more

separatist-minded people with-

I was shown the hospitality of the village teahouse where an idiot beggar boy tame to scrounge coppers and leftover pieces of unleavened bread while the battery radio blared an endless chant God the Merciful. A Tomorrow: Fun-loving Anan cans near wondrous Mount Ararat. 5