Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 November 1951 — Page 25
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In Indiana polls By Ed Sovola :
DO YOU. have anything to be thanktul for on this day? I have, and siicerely hope you do too. Thanksgiving is one of those days on which you sort of hesitate to gab about stunts and oddities and foolishnéss, You don’t want to grind an ax. There are other days in the year when that can be done, No, sir, today I would like to come into your home with my hair combed, hands and face clean and behave myself, Just chat awhile. Maybe about why I'm thankful. The sub-
Lately I've been noticing the lack of talk about the things that make us tick personally, Go anywhere you want, some-~
body is either talking shop, griping about t . axes, government, foreign policy, the pros and cons of the war in Korea. If it isn’t that, then a guy:
competes with television, radio, ph olTpeins phonograph, or
SOME BODY ou GHT to wis back the ol’ cracker barrel, I think it would do all of us a world of good to spend an afternoon thinking and talking of the good things we have, how we can correct our own faults, say complimentary. words about friends and neighbors, In this respect, I'd like to think a moment. about Nadeane Ellis, who works for Engineering Products, 2208 E., Washington St. Nadeane took ny to write how much she enjoys my “apiation of a wonderful family.” Well, I do talk about home. And it makes a fella feel warm inside when someone ‘tells him about it. I'm thankful today for reader friends like Nadeane I'm thames” | for having friends who call and make suggestions, give ideas, invite me to go places with ‘them. Without” friends you wouldn't last long on any Job. THIS IS a day : wold Jove to spend around a table which was loaded with food that I provided. It would be great to have a home, no matter how big a mortgage was on it. There's no cause for- bitterness, Just because a few years back someone upset an applecart and took a lot of wind out of my sails, threw a monkey wrench in my plans and the position I'm in now is my own doing.
It Happened Last
By Earl Wilson
NEW YORK, Nov. “What's a livery stable, Daddy?” my city slic ker 3 son Slugger asked me. Frankly, 1 was shocked. Worse, I felt my age. Yet I had to face it. This is the Parking Lot Age. Few can remember when each town had hotels for horses—and chambermaids for the’ horses, too. “But wait” I thought. “Maybe I could still find a livery stable in New York!” Yes, there was one. “The West Side Livery Stable,” at 538 W. 38th St, run by John Anastasi, which boards, beds and curries ice wagon horses, peddlers’ horses, and hackey horses. Ah, ves, it's a livery stable all right, but not like those horse garages of yesterday.
. Da of» oo
the stablehands in those days were the Often
WHY, biggest liars and drunkards in the county. they slept in the hay-mow. “Anybody works in a livery stable will never ‘mount to nothin’,” it was agreed in my neck of the woods, . But when we asked them, “Would you hitch up old Dick for me?” they would interrupt their lying and do so adequately, “on ow & ONE OF MY KINFOLK, the biggest liar in town, told his lies exclusively in a livery stable after he'd got “barred” from the pool room. He'd once been as far west as Denver, and told startling lies that he finally believed himself. However, I never thought he was as flowery
a liar as—— , who was the champion liar until he died. “Out in Californey,” the champian liked to
recount to the Livery Stable Set, “they got the carnsarndest climate ever I see . “One day I put some rubber harness on my team and hitched 'em up to a mudboat.” A mudboat was a wagon bed with runners on it for sloppy weather, ¢ © 4 “WELL, SIR,” the champ said, spitting a littla tobacco juice, “at noon it got so hot the harness started to melt. The horses kept walkin’ and the harness kept stretchin’ till the horses was half a mile away from the mudboat, but still hitched to it. “By gum.” continued the champ, “at night it got so cold the rubber harness unstretched and snapped back into place “And it pulled the mudboat right up to where the horses was!” Everybody agreed that that was quite a change in climate. It saddens me that such livery stables are no more.
Americana By Robert C. Ruark
NEW YORK, Nov. 21—Dear Uncle Eddie, and all the other uncles who run airlines for money, please make my Thanksgiving worthwhile by lending an ear to a piteous plaint, Make up your mind one way or the other: Starve us aloft, or
feed us fare that will not gag a goat, But close the process of slow poison. I travel a whole heap on the big iron birds, and with minor exceptions I have stopped eating in the air unless I carry my-own-juneh—I-have-looked-at my last helping of wrinkled peas, cold and gummy, and my last plate of mashed potatoes, glacier-chilled, and my last serving of rcongealed grease over clammy chicken, This applies equally to the lonesome pickle; the undernourished coffee, and the can-grown fruit salad.
eo @
IT IS POSSIBLE to serve a passenger a decent meal on a plane. The overseas lines are pretty good at it. So are a minority of our domestics, From experience I can say that Chicago and Southern, victualling out of New Orleans, sets up a pretty good table on the efforts of voung Jimmy and Tony Moran, who present their Papa's diamond-studded meatballs to the birds of passage. Pan-Am and TWA overseas feed you hot and frequent from time to time, but have a habit of running out of chow according to the whim of the local providers. I am plumping for the service of sandwiches instead of meals. Gimme a hunk of ham, a slab of cheese and a slce of pickle, if you got to feed me for free, and let me wash it down with a gill of milk or a slug of coffee in ‘a real cup, instead of one of those awful paper cartons or plastic atrocities. Skip the greasy soup and make it bouillon, and I will worry about dessert on terra firma.
* & OTHERWISE, charge me a fee for food and
allow me the right of complaint, There is.no _
reason for an airline to provide free nourishment to its patrons, any more than you expect a free bed in a Pullman or a lifted tab in a restaurant. Alrlines are past the point where they have to plant suckerbait to get the people to rile. If operation costs explain the awful grub, then let us knock off the gratis and start laying down a schedule of prices, The funny thing about the airlines, as the most advanced method of transportation, is that they have learned about oe niet are slowly’ than the first train or ship They have finally decided, for ‘instance,
that laa will induog an overseas pass & (berthy‘rathes’than allow
aS
ight
w
A Time to Think
—On Thanksgiving.
.
I'm thankful that in Hammond there's a home and a turkey, my mother and stepfather, who
* always remembers to drink a toast. when I get
home, brother and his family. “Uncle Ed” sounds mighty fine even when a mischievous little hand is slipping -into your pocket. We're very close. Everyone can’t say tht, A man must work, Brother, am 1 thankful in this respect. You know, I worried quite a bit when the days in college were coming to an end. What was ahead. One day in the Lincoln Hotel the answer came. I don't think I ever told you abeut that. o> < oe I CAME UP here from Bloomington to attend the Hoosier Press Conference. Seniors were allowed to attend. I was introduced to a big, genial man, an editor, in the Travertine Room. After a few minutes of conversation, the editor said he would give me a job after Indiana University threw me out with a sheepskin. Walter Leckrone, more affectionately known to me now as “the Old Man,” kept his word. For three months I got in everyone's way around the office. Then it was decided to let me take a crack at “Inside Indianapolis,” and the rest is history. Could a young comedian ask for anything better? Where else, and at what else, could he
earn money and get into so many interesting
situations and meet so many friends? Yes, and how about the trips to Bermuda, Panama, South Dakota, Nova Scotia, Florida, last summer to Europe’ and recently to New York? Wouldn't you be thankful? ANOTHER THING, this book of mine, T'd need another volume to record all the encouragement and support shown me by friends, old and new. Had a letter postmarked Los Angeles from someone I knew a long time ago. She was happy for me. She's going to talk the book up among her friends. Good, good. I've got health, don't have to go to the dentist for another five months unless something blows
up, don't ‘have corns or hangnails. Thankful? You bet. A great privilege is to be an American. The country isn't perfect but you show me .anything better. Today, I'll be eating turkey, prepared by the
I'll be lifting Pa a guy can
finest cook in the world —my Ma. a glass, too, filled by the finest have. >
This is truly a day of Thanksgiving.
Livery Stables Are Not What They Were
ONE, -the Claremont Riding Academy, 175 W. 89th St., run by Irwin Novograd, boards a lot of hack Horses, rents riding horses, even rents animals to TV.—and has female secretaries. What a sad change from those rugged old days! In some towns the watering troughs have even been removed. And the liars? Whatever happened to them? My Beautiful Wife, who just read this, commented: “Very evidently come to the big city and became Broadway columnists.”
. - ». or Ex oe
THE MIDNIGHT EARL . .. The Hush-Hush Story that Mayor Impellitterri'd resign in April, to take an insurance post, can now be spiked. Politicians persuaded him to r stay since, if he quit, Rudolph Halley'd become Mayor. Anatole Litvak's expected to marry German actress Hildegarde Neff, “who'll divorce Kurt Hirsch. The Irving Berlins' -dtr., Linda, and David O. Selznick’s son, Jeffrey, were at the Colony with Mom & Pop Berlin . . . Dagmar’ll be on “Leave It to the Girls” and make the girls look like boys Sunday ... Alex D'Arcy injured a fist evicting cocktail party crashers . On the Edge of the Ledge: Cafe socialite Peggy Bieber and Newtie Walker. actress Charlotte Day and Chris Janus... . Even Phil Silvers, the star, couldn’t-get tickets to “Top Banana” for Fred MacMurray, one of the backers, so Fred returned without seeing it . . . Brenda Hollis, the singer, is getting a Latin Quarter buildup.
Miss Hollis
o oS oH EARL'S PEARLS . Jimmy Nelson told Dorothy Sarnoff, she had a chip on her shoulder. She answered, “If I did, I'd be overdressed.” > 4S o ARE WE ASLEEP? A sensational off-the-record charge that the U. 8. isn’t developing plane engines (while Russia is!) because we won't put defense ahead of autos and TV sets, was just delivered by Fred B. Rentschler, United Aircraft chairman. The Air Force, which now makes "54 the “danger vear,” fears that apathy in C ongress will bring us our Deeded Strength perilously late,
A SMART GAL never gives a wolf her num-
ber, alleges Charlie Spivak, because she already has his . That's Earl, brother. Tip for Airlines
On Matter of Chow
his ankles to swell and his back to cramp in a semi-upright position,
ca * @
IT TOOK the boys years, literally, to install a public address system, to keep the paying guests informed of schedule time, altitude, the imminence of rough’ weather, and the other detalls a helpless passenger needs for persenal peace of mind. The comforting croon of: the pilot's voice now stills tha quavers in my chicken chest; I and the other old malds are happy when they change the pitch of the props or thin the fuel mixture. The ground operation has made marvelous strides since some of us indignants burnt their britches right after the war, As I write this deathless essay, Eastern Airlines has just called up to say they're leaving ‘a half-hour late. > o- o> THERE was a time when nobody cared to tell you at all. You just went out to the gothic men's room that is in most airports and sat, or stood, like a slaughter-destined sheep. As a customer you were either beneath contempt or unworthy of education as to what went on in the operational act. So the time has come, Uncle Eddie, and all my other uncles, to get real smart about this chow department. Charge us full price, and it is a cheap barter to avoid the awful indigestion that haunts the man who always has excess baggage. If I can pay for a couples of extra pounds of hand luggage, I can also pay to lighten the lump that automatically forms in my tummy after I have been a guest of the carrier,
Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith
Q. I have access to well-rotted sawdust. Would it be a good mulch for perennial borders? C. Masteller, 1332 W. 34th, A. Sawdust, especially if it's fine, should be used with judgment if you use it for a winter mulch, It will be good for any spot where mois-
Read Marguerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times
ture will do no harm. For example, it is a good mulch for evergreens. It will keep bulb beds and perennial borders frozen (as you want them to be) during winter, Just don’t use sawdust around such plants as chrysanthemums, delphiniums, columbines, unless you keep it well away from the crown of the plant. For in a mild rainy winter, it could collect and hold too much water. Do not use too thick a layer. If it's fine, an inch is enough. Chief objection to sawdust is its tendency to pack down. Chief value—mixed into soll in the spring it will add plant food and help to loosen hard ground. Smith, The ‘By Ind,
e Indianapolis
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1951
Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving—
Today The Times i pleased to bring you “OldFashioned Thanksgiving” by radio commentator Edwin C. Hill. Mr. Hill has, by popular request, done the greater part of this story on: various radio networks for the
A Nostalgic Story Of Old Days
past 20 years,
By EDWIN C.
HILL
"CROSS the far spaces of the earth, this Thanksgiving, our hearts reach out to our fighting men in Korea. We know what their thoughts must be—their longings
and their dreams—
We know that the prayers they breathe in the darkness of the night are that good may overcome evil; that the way of free men may prevail against the oppressors of mankind, and we know, always, those prayers are always for the folks at home, for mother and father and all the loved ones, back in town or out on the farm. ” =u o ON THIS, of all days in the year, memories of the simple blessings of home flood their gallant young hearts. Silently, but with organ notes, their thoughts attune to the melody of “Going Home.” We know, wherever they may he, that by divine Providence, they will be permitted to envision their families and their friends gathering for the Thanksgiving feast; to see their family groups meeting once more in the old home, returning thanks to the Creator of all things, asking him to shorten the time of their trial and their sacrifice, ~ = = WE KNOW that every single one Of these knights of the Golden Rule will be transported by the magic of love and memory, across the chasm of years, back to the old home, to git in spirit at the family table, to join their voices in the family prayers and to resolve, with a more solemn conviction than ever before, that evil and the designs of wicked men shall not triumph on this earth. Very many of our defenders over there will relive, in heart-flood-ing memory, this day, the same gracipus Thanksgiving that in his boyhood this speaker knew. Such moments, even for those inured to time, are indeed such a restoration of youth, as makes the heart grow young again. Nowhere, is the Thanksgiving feast so truly a joy as in our rural American homes—in the little towns and villages; more of a joy this day—with so much to be thankful for—than in the whole story of our nation. Those little towns and villages to which so many of our boys would like to be going home. = = ® MANY, LIKE THIS speaker, imprisoned in cities, bound to the machine, like to recall those dear days of gone-by years; the countryside and the little town; a farmhouse and its gracious fields; a free and careless boyhood in a little town in Indiana, a little town perched on the banks of the vellow Ohio and looking across at the sandy beach where old Kentucky begins, As real as if {t were yesterday, comes the picture of a clear, frosty morning, with a fall of snow. The whole beautiful world smiling through frost-brocaded windows. Winter sunlight gleaming on snowburdened trees. The rattle of buggy wheels over hard-frozen roads. The breath of horses rising in little puffs of steam. Church bells calling—silvery tones rolling in waves over town and country. = = = A WHITE FARMHOUSE set upon a hill, and a country road winding away into the distance and the woods. Open fires in the parlor, with its stiff, horsehair furniture, the black walnut wa don't see anymore, the slick, shiny horsehair we don't see
Mashed potatoes, Mashed turnips, Huge sweet potatoes in anymore. Comfortable, hospitable fires, snapping and crackling in parlor and dining room. Relations driving into the barnyard. Cheeks red: as apples, noses blue with: cold. Uncle Milton all muffled up in his greajcoat
and pounding his mittened hands together to limber his stiffened knuckles. Aunt Ra-
chel very prim in her black silk, with a bit of lace at throat and wrists. Aunt Amantha. Aunt Althea. Aunt Lib. Uncle Adam. Uncle Lew. Cousin Lola. Cousin Delight. Cousin Grace. Aunts and uncles and cousins almost past the counting, thronging in for Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. = = n MEN FOLKS talking crops and politics in the barnyard and, in the parlor. Worrying about Bryan and the silver question. Reckoning it was up to Mr. McKinley to save the country. Women folks upstairs with Grandma, fluttering about her arm-chair, caressing her, scolding her, fussing over her. Marveling at the ebony cross under its dome of glass, a present from the good Sisters of Charity. Children of all ages, shy to begin with, but warming into laughter and play as heavenly aromas come wafting from the kitchen. Aromas more wonderful than the perfumes of Araby. Thrilling hints of the feast to come. Small boys hovering at the kitchen door,. contemplating with criminal minds the larceny of a mince pie, or the piracy of a chocolate cake. Maiden aunts and married
aunts fluttering about, dashing :
about, lending a hand in the preparation of the feast; turning the magnificent turkey, basting it golden-brown, with prayerful touch: assembling fruits, marshaling jellies, regimenting pies and cakes. Warming the plates. Unbearable suspense in parlor and halls. The thrilling clamor of the dinner bell and the glad trooping to the dining room to wait until Grandma, in black silk and old lace, is seated on her throne at the foot of the table, and Grandpa, with his great head of white hair, installed in his big chair at the head. = = = THE LONG TABLE with its assorted chairs — chairs borrowed from every room to meet the crisis of the annual family Thanksgiving dinner. The long, long grace by Grandpa, “Almighty Father, for what we are about to receive, make us duly hankful,” while the youngsters
“wriggle and drop impatient eyes
under the stern gaze of their elders, The tremulous excitement of the carving. The long pauses to sharpen the carving knife, Everyone's polite reluctance to confess any preference. Young William in lusty appeal for a
wishbone, and firmly suppressed.
White meat and dark piled high on plates still hot to the touch. The stuffing, glorious with chestnuts and fragrant with sage. Mashed squash made with the recipe that Grandma's people brought from Guildford Courthouse, North Carolina, in seventeen hundred and ninety.
A British Housewife Says—
‘Churchill Puts A Bulldog Face On’
EDITOR'S NOTE: This dispatch on ‘the aftermath of the British election, as seen through the eyes of some of England's
“little people,”
both Tory and Laborites, is by an American news-
paperwoman who recently left the Midwest to live in London.
; By FERN RICH Times Special Writer
ONDON, Nov. 22—
“With Mr. Churchill back to put a
4
bulldog face on things, other countries might begin
to respect England "again.”
Mrs. Alan Irwin was gardening around her neat white
stucco house in the Conservative suburb of Winchmore Hill. With her, like with most Britons, the 1951 British general election was still a very emotional thing. The debate continues to rage. “In order to make ends meet,” Mrs. Irwin went on, “and to send the boys to school decently dressed and to furnish the house we just bought, pg have to go out and work part time, It's we middle class that's been neglected.” But milkman Henry Tyler, a stanch Laborite, was bitter ovel the result. - “I've still got a memory, which other people don't seem to have. I can remember 1918 and the years after. I was a lad then, but I remember the starvation and the rags on our feet and the old man out of work. It's the men my age who'll always vote Labor. Now 1 can't say what's going to happen to us.” In her electrical appliance shop, Miss Dorothy Oswald saw things differently. “I dread.to think what would have happened if Labor had won,” she said with a delicate grimace, “Business would have
ELLEN SANDFORD—"Now we'll be back to . , « no one in the middle."
Half its value eaten up by pur. chase taxes.” John Whitehead, a cheerful, red-bearded chemist—the British equivalent of druggist -had another view of business problems. “What some of us don't stop to consider.” he sald in a booming voice, “is how much higher
“prices would have been and how
much sooner Inflation would
crushed, Why, i# have come" if ‘the'Torles had «been In.”
been thoroughly losleattiestoniion the shelves, »
v
HOOSIER HILL—Edwin C. Hill, author of today's section page feature for Thanksgiving, is a native Hoosier who left to make his fortune in radio more than 25 years ago. He is a graduate of Indiana University.
their brown jackets. Creamed onions. Whole thickets of celery. Mountains of sweet
pickles and sour pickles and piccalilli, Preserved peaches and five kinds of jelly. Freshbaked white bread and Boston brown bread. Mince pie, apple ple, and pumpkin pie. Cocoanut and chocolate cake. Coffee, brewed from berries browned In a baking pan by Grandma herself. Conversation starting slowly and rising to a happy babble, Elders placidly feeding them-
,of New Orleans.
selves. Youngsters frantically stuffing themselves. (Little Mathilda disgracing herself with the gravy. Little Mabel getting a piece of turkey wing in her throat. Little Jane pounding little Mabel on the back.) Repletion and desultory talk—family gossip—neighborhood doings for a year back, Small boys with glazing eyes, eating on and on. R= = THE WITHDRAWAL to the parlor to the open fire, and to the piano that Grandpa bought for Grandma when he made his first important money flatboating flour and wheat and corn and hay down the Ohio and Mississippi to the great market Tales of the old, old days when Grandma and Grandpa were married, in eighteen hundred and forty-six and lived in a log cabin. Days when the paper money was so tricky that everyone got rid of it as fast as possible. Grandma telling of the great moment when Grandpa brought home five hundred dollars in gold coin, and how she banked it in an augur hole bored in a log of the cabin. Talk of the Civil War, when Grandpa went off to fight with the Seventh Indiana Cavalry, and Grandma was left alone to farm two hundred acres of land with young children as her only helpers. Days that tried women's souls as well as men's. Long, lazy talk by the crackling wood fire. Family talk. Pictures of country life and small town life in the Indiana of Lincoln's day and Grant's and Ben Harrison's—the by-
HERBERT SMITH—"The Labor Party was doing all right -
Landscape Albert Ballard put his Conservative views in an oral nutshell. “A drastic disease needs a drastic cure,” he said philosophically. Bus driver Herbert Smith, wearing a large, round Labor Party button on his uniform, left Jit he doubt of his political
HR
got full employment now and that's more than we had when I was a boy. I remember my dad being out of work for a long, long spell. And that's what we're going to have again under the. Conservatives.” In his cozy sitting room in Winchmore Hill, Rev, C. G. Francis Dare sat near the fire with his, edly elated He was ‘about the
always been
mes
PAGE 25
gone, friendly days when peopls could hear each other above the clatter and roar of machines, A ring of the bell and a holiday visit from Uncle Billy Holman, Watchdog of the Treasury, the Honorable William 8. Holman of the House of Representatives—the great man of our little town. Uncle Billy's talk of Congress and doings at the Capitol. The great speech made by James G. Blaine of Maine. What Grover Cleveland said and Ben Harrison thought. Old stories and old songs in the gathering twilight. “Annie Laurie,” “Auld Lang Syne” “The Last Rose of Summer,” “Home Sweet Home.” Dusk coming on gently, and the fall of the kindly dark.
5 = -
HITCHING UP THE horses to the shining buggies and surreys. The jolly farewells. The crackling of wheels in the graveled barnyard. The pleasant jingle-jangle of little harness bells. Impatient horses pawing at the frozen ground. Good-night. Good-by. Come to see us soon. A flicker of snow against the darkening sky and the gleam of low stars, Such pictures must be warm in the memory of many far and near who listen to me this Thanksgiving eve. Vivid glimpses of loved faces, Remembered cadences of loved voices. Old moments of happiness recaptured by the magic of memory. Mellowed by time. Precious, Deathless,
a Conservative family, but that's not a good enough reason for voting, is it? I honestly feel that the Conservatives are
the only people to get us out of the present economia and international mess,
“Certainly relations between England and America in the past six years have been strained and I think the Churchill group can remedy that and deepen the friendship between the two countries, This is very important, becausa wes do need America's help, don’t we?”
At the greengrocers, pretty blonde Ellen Sandford, Just turned 21, exchanged political ’ banter with her Conservative. customers,
“I didn’t get registered In time to vote,” she said, “but if I had, the Labor Party would have had my vote, Now we'll be back to having .a lower class and an upper class and no one in the middle.”
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