M. Richard Applegate 1912-1979, son of Frank Lindsay Applegate.


    Dick Applegate, well-known former high school football star, and later prominent athlete at Santa Clara, California, is on the loose again--he is negotiating a hitchhiking, roughing trip around the world, with one or two college companions. He will work his way from San Francisco to the Suez Canal and way stations, hoping to return via the Pacific. Dick, who has written travel letters before for the Mail Tribune when he got to London and Paris, in the same fashion will send weekly letters to this paper, which will be a regular feature of the Sunday issue. The article below from San Francisco is the first of the series.
To the Editor:
    If I had a theme song, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to decide which it would be--"Honey take a look at me, it's the last you're going to get you see," or "Dear, it seems years since we parted." Both have that ineffable tang of a bittersweet parting, but the former has the cynical touch that appeals to me.
    For the benefit of the some one hundred and one or two percent of the readers of this paper who don't know just what the dickens this is all about, I'll explain. It all started when I was in New York last summer. I wrote to two kids at Santa Clara, and offered to accompany them to Europe on an extended tour. The cast of this interesting drama at first included about ten people. Gradually they got cold feet, better sense, parental objection, lack of funds, and even in one case, believe it or not, a job.
    I monkeyed around Medford some months, hoping against hope that I'd be able to get a job myself and pay some of my bills, and not leave town broke. The odds were against me.
    At regular intervals of about every 20 minutes, I'd get a letter from Don Rafael, the one faithful follower of this righteous cause, wondering when the dickens I was going to get started. So finally, on one sunny morning in mid-May, I left with Walter Bowne, and a friend of his, Don Boudiette, who had been fishing in the mud of the upper Rogue--unsuccessfully, I might mention--for steelhead.
    We drove down the Redwood [Highway], amid the worst storm since the deluge. It took us two days, which was plenty. When we got to the city, I immediately went to a hotel--the Oxford, by the way, at the foot of Mason, and where I got a surprisingly nice room for surprisingly little money.
    After locating Don, and finding that the last hanger-on for the trip besides us had finally succumbed to a job, we started to map our itinerary. We leave San Francisco Wednesday, going to Los Angeles. From Los Angeles we cut cross-country to the central Middle West, and then up to Chicago, where we'll have a good time and let you-all enjoy it by proxy. The world's fair, you know.
    From Chicago we're going to Noo Yoke.
    Leaving New York--which isn't nearly as simple as it sounds--since we have either to out-argue ten thousand other guys who want to go workaway, or pay our way steerage on some old tramp steamer--we are going to go to some port in France or Germany. You ought to see our passport photos! They're a scream. Have Jack Boyl do a slittsy [sic] face for you some time, and you'll get the idea. Of course, we haven't had them taken yet, but you know how passport photos are. And besides, I told Jack Boyl I'd get him--along with the rest of the drop-seats--in this column some way, and he does the swellest slittsy face. There you are, you mug, and all the rest of you look out. You might get something like that, too.
    To get on with this explanation, we leave the boat on the Europe side, buy bicycles (maybe) and tour up through Europe, going north along the upper reaches of the Danube River, trade our bicycles for a boat, and go down the river in it, seeing the scenery, learning languages, writing reports for the Tribune, fighting mosquitoes, seeing Vienna and Budapest, and down to the Mediterranean, etc., etc., etc. Then on to the Suez Canal, catch a boat for the Orient or the South Seas and so on around the world.
    Gosh, that sounds simple. Why don't you-all try it? Freight trains run both ways. ONLY--don't catch that one going south out of Medford in the evening about eleven. It goes up to Ashland and stops there till six in the morning, or some such ungodly hour. I investigated.
    The second evening here in San Francisco, Don and I had dinner with the Bownes, and met some very interesting people, writers mostly, among whom were several with a yen to go to Tahiti, in the South Seas. We almost went, in a home-rigged 28-foot lifeboat. That would have been real adventure, but events plotted against us, and we leave for Europe tomorrow.
    I had a peculiar experience last night. While listening to Ted Fio Rito playing from the St. Francis Hotel here, via the radio, he read a request number that was asked by the Misses Harriet and Frances Sparrow of Medford, Oregon. While my acquaintance with those young ladies might be said to be nil, I most certainly know who they are, and it seemed almost as though I were listening to KMED in the home town.
    Everything is under control now. I've already been down to Santa Clara to get my other shirt, which I left there some time ago, and interviewed Joe Naumes, who is as fat and chubby-looking as ever, and who still thinks that hideous blue beer jacket he wears is fit to be worn in public. (That crack is for his not backing me up when I announced, in front of several enthusiastic listeners, that I was writing for a syndicate. He pointed out, to this group of interested and enthusiastic listeners, that the syndicate covers only the outlying settlements of Central Point, Gold Hill, etc., the enthusiastic listeners thereby getting the chance to show that they were also enthusiastic horse-laughers. Am I sore!)
    The next report, which I'm sure will be breathlessly awaited by the readers of the Tribune, will be forthcoming next Sunday. Right now, I have to go back to Oakland and entertain Don's sister and mother, which is about the most interesting thing I've found to do yet, and which is liable to cause one of these 'round the world in eighty day things.
    If anyone in Medford has any relatives or friends in the East or Europe who enjoy feeding stray young vagabonds, I hope they'll let us know!
    Going, Going--Gone!
Medford Mail Tribune, May 21, 1933, page 6




    This is the second installment in a series of letters to be written by Dick Applegate, Medford boy, on a freelance tour of the world.
To the Editor:
    When a man starts for Los Angeles, and subsequently arrives at Los Angeles, that's not news; but when two guys start out for Los Angeles and end up in Salt Lake City, that is, or should be, news. If it isn't, you'll have to make the most of it, 'cause that's what you're going to get.
    Don and I left Oakland Monday morning, after issuing forwarding addresses at L.A., but hadn't left town even before we got a ride clear through to this bigamists' paradise. Of course, as mentioned some time ago, freight trains run both ways.
    Fate seemed particularly tenacious about keeping us in Oakland. First, I didn't seem to get down there soon enough;: when I had gotten there Don sprained his ankle in a very foolish endeavor to best your Medford correspondent in a "rasslin' " match, and that held us up for a week. From then on it was a series of silly occurrences added together.
    The day we left Oakland, the Oakland Tribune (no affiliation with Medford Tribune, I think) heard about our trip and asked us to come down and give them a story [above] and pose for a photograph. Being very reticent about publicity, as most Medford people know me to be, we demurred for two- or three-tenths of a second, and then, looking far down the vista of the year, and knowing how our grandchildren would appreciate such a concrete example of the pioneering spirit of their forebears, as exemplified by that old yellowed clipping, we reluctantly succumbed to the urge of this commercialistic world, and went down.
    The feature editor who talked with us came originally from the Lake District of England--whatever more than usually out-of-the-way part of England that may be--and was rather interested in the whole thing. He cheered us on with cheery and consoling tales of impending wars in Europe, the easily excited curiosity and ire of all continental police officials, exciting tales of mystic deaths, sudden disappearances, and acute suffering on the part of stray Americans loose away from home.
    After these words of help and consolation, he took us to the "studio" and made us look at the birdie. The birdie, judging from the looks on our faces in the completed pictures, must have been something like a cross between a dodo bird and a mud hen, although I have no remembrance of such. The lack of memory, no doubt, is directly traceable to that trait in me that makes me so panicky in front of a camera, in which all evidences of rigor mortis are apparent. Don, on the other hand, thought the bird looked like a canary, although a bit larger.
    The story, which was supposed to appear Monday or Tuesday, has not yet been inspected by us, due, as you'll understand, to our sudden departure. A clipping has been forwarded to Los Angeles to us, but you'll no doubt agree that is over-far to go for a picture or story about us. (Although I make no doubt that by far the greater number of our publics would consider such a trip a mere bagatelle--Hey, Fred Colvig: If you know so much, why don't you write a book telling people what the dickens a bagatelle is? I would, only I don't know, and I'm too lazy to look it up).
    While in New York last summer I used to buy the Oregonian at a little news stand on Times Square. That I used to BUY it I merely state as a fact. But the point is: If the Oregonian then, why not the Oakland Tribune? You see, our arrival will have been announced ahead of time, and the mayor will have had sufficient time to polish off the back seat of that Packard that the newsreels indicate he uses in showing visiting celebrities around the town. That was another consideration that forced us, against our will, I again assure you, to pose for the newspapers. Hem. Hem.
    Most people have seen taxis waiting at trains for victims, of course, but we've seen that story reversed so far that it is really funny. When getting into Oroville, Cal., one noon on the top of a long freight train liberally infested with "unemployed," a kid about twenty-three climbed up on top with a megaphone and, in stentorian bellows, announced that beans were being served at his restaurant across the tracks for a nickel a plate. Not only beans (at a nickel a plate), he assured us, but also three fried eggs for a dime or a pint of milk (ice cold, which cost him 4 cents. On each milk transaction he banked a penny) for another nickel.
    With that splendid sense of a good story which you all know I possess, I followed the crowd. By merely flashing my press card at his nose, and grabbing him securely by the lapels in that appealing way that I have, I got him to settle down for a minute and tell me his story.
    Due to great foresight on my part (or am I playing Dick Applegate up too greatly even for those who know my sterling qualities?) I had a notebook handy, and found out this much. The proprietor, not to say assistant cook, welcoming committee, train announcer, janitor, dish washer and sole owner, had left Louisiana with his bride of a few months in quest of job. Had been working, blissfully unconscious of the depression, right along till then. When he, and his wife, who seemed even younger than he did, got to Oroville, still without a job, they had in their possession exactly 85 cents, six tin plates, two big spoons and six small spoons. Maybe even a knife or two.
    With a vision hard to understand, he foresaw the possibilities of a nickel restaurant for those unfortunate or foolish enough to be riding freight trains. (There were two hundred on ours.) They built a small shack at no expense, blew the whole fortune on beans, hung out their shingle and went to work. Now, 35 days later, they have two rooms, a bed, a stove, a refrigerator, a radio, a lot of customers, one lame chicken rescued from an ignoble death under a train, and, to top it all off, ice water and on Sundays iced lemonade free. Absolutely free. We almost decided to stay over till Sunday to see if it really could be as good as he claimed it was.
    That would not have been too expensive, either, to hear him tell it. His claim is that his information bureau is so efficient and accurate (he announces all outgoing trains with destinations and way points, first fifteen minutes before departure, and again ten minutes later) that if anyone misses a choo-choo through any error on his announcings, he will feed them for a week at his own expense.
    An average trainload of men will completely devastate his entire supply of beans (eight gallons), a half case of eggs, a case and a half of milk, and three dozen loaves of bread. Consequently he has increased his 85 cents, so that now he does an average business of $10 to $12 a day, and the business is still growing. This would make a swell success story for American Magazine, wouldn't it? And if you see it there and my name not at the head of it, you'll know that my stuff is being paraphrased!
    Now that I've got that guy out of the way, I can tell by the look in Don's eye that he thinks we ought to go out and get some dinner out of the way. And do the same for the Mormon temple, and other points of interest. I think the editor of the Salt Lake City Tribune also thinks so. I'm using his typewriter. Just breezed in, gave him a garbled story of how disappointed the people of Medford, Oakland and Salt Lake City would be if it didn't get written and us on our way, and I argued so well on your behalf that he even gave me a lot of paper. Maybe, although I doubt it, he'll also want a picture of us.
    Next time you hear from us it will probably be from Kansas City or St. Louis. Maybe even Chicago. So long to all those people prostrated by my absence.
    P.S.--When Mrs. Margaret Rafael sees this, be assured that Don is still fat and happy and well under control by
Medford Mail Tribune, May 28, 1933, page 5


    Ed. Note:--This is the third of a series of letters by Dick Applegate, Medford boy, on a freelance tour of the world.
To the Editor:
    This installment should have been sent from Kansas City. Indeed, while in Kansas City I even went so far as to go to the offices of the Star, where they gave me a typewriter and paper, but I was so exhausted and sleepy that I couldn't, for the life of me, see any reason for not writing it from Chicago instead, it being only Monday then. So here it comes from Chicago.
    Leaving Salt Lake City we went to Pueblo, Colo., where it was beastly cold, and then headed across the flat prairie country towards Kansas City. This flat-as-a-flannel-cake county was in striking contrast to the towering mountain ranges we had just gone through. Through the Royal Gorge, Soldier's Summit, the Tennessee Pass (elevation 10,400 feet) and the Wasatch chain of the Rocky group, we had seemed almost cooped up, the walls of the mountains rose so abruptly about is. The huge 16-drivered locomotives had all they could do to haul a medium-length train at a snail's pace. Here on the prairie, however, all was different.
    We could see, Don for the first time in his life, in all directions without so much as seeing a tree or a hill. The smooth, green fields were like the open sea, and the comparatively small locomotives raced along with our long train as though it were mere play.
    We got into Kansas City early in the morning and went immediately into town to get breakfast. We had the cheapest and best breakfast we've ever had. Then to the Y.M.C.A., where we chartered a room and went in swimming. The swimming pool, which was on the roof, had a sign on one end saying "Deep." It was a darned lie. I tried a jackknife, hitting the bottom with my hands before my feet were under water. Ouch! I took a big hunk of skin off [my] hand on the flagstone bottom, and the blood made quite a famous display. I was quite proud of my wound. Fortunately for my biographers, no serious complications set in, and the bandage was removed here in Chicago a couple of days later.
    After skimping along on our meager supply of pieces-of-eight (dollars to you) all the way across the continent, we ran amok in Kansas City and went to a talkie. It was awful, so we decided to take the taste away with a sandwich and a glass of beer, which was advertised at 15 cents, and for which they charged us, over our loud protests, 20 cents. After that, there seemed little to do but go to bed, so to bed we went, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
    The next morning, bright and early, we went down to the railroad yards to get "our train." A cop was chasing everyone off, as it started out, and he played hide and seek for two miles around oil cars with Don, and never did catch him. I got in a boxcar while he was chasing Don, and the first time the train stopped we got together.
    We crossed the Mississippi for the first time on this trip at Davenport, Iowa. It was very high, and very muddy, which seems to be a prerogative of that particular stream. From there on into Chicago nothing of any interest happened.
    When we got here our clothes, which we had sent from the coast to meet us here, had not yet arrived, and we didn't have the nerve to come downtown in our hitchhiking outfits, and the same applied to getting into the fair grounds on a Mail Tribune press pass. When the clean hankies did arrive, though, we did both those things.
    A few days before leaving, we told Joe Naumes goodbye at Santa Clara, assuring him that we'd not see him for some years but, upon our arrival, he and Jake Von Tobel, another big shot from the University, were here waiting for us. Maybe not for us, but they were waiting, at any rate. Joe hadn't seen the fair yet and Jake had only seen it once, and they'd been here for almost a week.
    When we finally got to the fair grounds, we didn't know whether to try to get in on press cards or not. But mustering the old gall, we flashed them in front of the ticket taker and started on through. He stopped us, but only temporarily, to show us where the press entrance was, and there we had no trouble.
    The first thing to hold our attention was the Fine Arts building. In this one collection of famous paintings are gathered some of the best works of American and foreign artists. Whistler's "Mother" is there. I saw it once before in the Louvre in Paris. There are Rodin originals and innumerable other masterpieces, which, with our limited knowledge of art, could not be wholly appreciated.
    Then through the Field Museum and the aquarium as a matter of course. All three of these buildings are located off the fair grounds proper. As we went into the real exposition grounds, we looked down a quarter of a mile of the Avenue of Flags. On the left is the Administration building, of yellow and blue. At first this combination of color seems to strike a weird note, but when you get used to it, it is rather attractive. The Administration building is not open to the public except on business.
    Being unable to think up any business which could possibly gain us admittance we passed on, into the Sears Roebuck buildings. This is where our first real intimation of a century of progress came. In the lobby is a carved onyx fountain. A very nice-looking fountain, to be sure, but nothing outstanding about it, at first sight, except that it had no visible means of turning on or off. But immediately one put his head down to drink the water was turned on. After drinking, as your head came out of the line of the electric eye that controlled it, the water snapped off. The "Electric Eye," they called it. They had something of the same nature in the Copco window last winter, where a light went on or off as you interrupted the rays of light outside the window with your hand.
    The next building is the Hall of Science. Mr. Hussong and Miss Walden from the high school would have a real picnic here. And I know that Mr. Cope would never get out. There are acres and acres of new developments in physics, chemistry and the allied sciences. In one place is a glass transparent man, eight feet high, and costing $10,000, with all the organs lit internally by tiny electric lamps. This exhibit was loaned by the Mayo clinic.
    In the same buildings are huge dioramas, showing the progress of medicine, dentistry, nursing, mathematics, and a thousand other things of the same nature.
    The general exhibits group contains so many diversified displays that it would take a thousand pages to cover them all. In this building is the original Gutenberg press. A man in attendance tells you its story, and printings made on the press from original Gutenberg type may be purchased. Here, also, is the Gutenberg Bible, the first book ever to be printed from movable type. Next the old press is a huge multiple roller press, such as now used in the modern newspaper. The Mail Tribune, I think, owns one of only a few such presses in Oregon.
    This same general exhibit group has a miniature diamond mine, 15 tons of diamond-bearing dirt having been transplanted bodily from the Kimberly mines in South Africa. And we also saw the great Nassak diamond, valued at a half million dollars.
    Have you ever been in a shirt factory? There is one here, the whole process of shirt manufacture going on before your eyes. There is a machine in that group which sews 24 buttonholes a minute.
    While dashing about the fair we became obsessed with the desire to smoke, and bought a package of official Century of Progress cigarettes. In payment, Don gave the fellow a silver dollar, thereby nearly wrecking the smooth progress of the whole show. The guy gaped at it a while, finally picked it up and looked at it with a blank look, dropped it on the marble counter, shouted for help, and then asked us what it was.
    The kid in the hamburger stand next door rushed over when he heard about it, and shook our hands, and said he was from the coast, too--from Portland--and that that was the first silver dollar he'd seen in Chicago. The guy in the stand had never seen one, but a passerby, attracted by the throng, volunteered the information that he'd seen several on a trip west. He'd probably been to Kansas City. They finally decided that it had a real commercial value, and was genuine coin of the realm, and decided to accept it. Phooey.
    The sky-ride, which was built to supersede the giant Ferris wheels of former world fairs, looks like a washout to us. There are two steel towers about 1500 feet apart, and 600 feet high. The ride consists of rocket cars running on cables about 250 feet above the ground. Why they are called rocket cars I can't imagine, since they are run by electricity. For this thrilling experience you are taxed 50 cents. If you want that experience, you'd better bring 50 cents too, because press cards won't work. Press day was held one time when we were there, but we missed it, because we were down in the automobile section, watching them put Chevrolets together. It would have been free, too.
    Of interest to Medford people would be the display of "homes of the future." There are homes made of glass, lit with neon. There are homes made of brick, with brick floors and ceilings. There is one house made of glass, which has an airplane hangar in the cellar and a small landing field on the roof. In the garage is a Silver Arrow car, fully streamlined, which is made by Pierce Arrow, and sells for $10,000. There was a picture of this same car in the Oregonian some time ago.
    The Travel and Transport building has a roof supported entirely by steel cables, and adjusts itself to temperature changes. Inside the building are housed all the exhibits having to do with the last century of progress in transportation. On one railroad track is an old Pullman, the first ever built, in which the body of Lincoln was carried to its last resting place. Next it a huge new all-aluminum one of streamlined design, capable of high speed.
    The speedboat of Gar Wood, the Miss America 9, is shown alongside an old locomotive capable of eight miles an hour, if pushed. And on the other side of the building is a new Boeing transport, the SAME ONE that John Patton and Charley Reum and I saw at the airport in Medford about six weeks ago. It has same model numbers that the model of Al Gilhausen's in the Copco window carried.
    Outside the main building are the railroad exhibits. One is an entire train, the "Royal Scot," the crack train between London and Edinburgh. We were walking through this train when it started to rain outside, so we picked out a comfortable lounge car and made ourselves at home till the storm blew over. Radio music could be had in the lounge of the American train on the next track, but that was crowded by people who had the same idea we had.
    Pabst Blue Ribbon Casino offers a swell place to dance, with Ben Bernie, Tom Gerun, Buddy Rogers and Guy Lombardo furnishing the music. But the music was wasted on us, since we had no girl friends to dance with. Chicago has the darnedest collection of funny-looking women we have ever seen. We've been looking for just one good-looking one since we got here, and have yet to see that one. Of course, we're probably just spoiled by the beautiful women around Medford, and Don's sister Margaret in Oakland! Even the "Miss America," who is on display at the fair, doesn't look so hot to us.
    At the electric group there is a huge long distance telephone plant, where we could call San Francisco for nothing by merely letting 75 people with earphones listen in. We may yet.
    Another feature in this same building is a place where they scramble sound waves to make so ordinary conversation sound like someone eating soup. There is also a television display, which is rather interesting.
    At the Hall of States, where the federal building of three towers dominates a ring of state buildings, Oregon has no display. California has, however, and it is the most beautiful of the group. The entrance is through a giant redwood, like those near Crescent City, and the whole group of rooms is lined with redwood. Two waterfalls cool the rooms, and soft chairs are offered in which to rest.
    Washington has a nice exhibit, too. One of the nicest. But poor old Oregon is out in the rain. I wonder what's the matter. I even offered to take a room and be the Oregon exhibit, thereby copping first place for the old home state, but California got wind of it and boycotted it. I'll bet they were afraid I'd let the cat out of the bag about where Crater Lake really is located! I'm a sort of traveling information bureau about Oregon, anyway.
    In one of the buildings is the aluminum ball in which Piccard went up into the stratosphere, and a diving bell of steel, in which William Beebe went a half mile into the sea. I've been reading all this stuff in the Tribune for years, but hardly ever expected to see any of it in the flesh.
    In a last week's copy of the Chicago Tribune, which is an exhibit showing every copy for many years back, I saw where the Ferry twins of Medford were both chosen as salutatorian of their class. The world is a small place.
    Since coming to Chicago we haven't seen a single gangster, and it rather has disappointed us, although one individual offered to get us a brand-new Plymouth sedan, with the motor and body numbers obliterated, for $25.
    To us the General Motors building seems the most striking. You've no doubt all seen pictures of it by this time, so I won't try to describe it, but the orange neon tubes which light it at night make it lovely. Inside the building is a complete assembly plant for Chevrolets. One may pick out a bolt from the box for bolts, and order a car to go with it, and then watch the whole process of construction.
    There is a $15,000 Cadillac V-16 sedan, built especially for this exhibit, which is supposed to be the forerunner of motor car design. All streamlined and everything. But it's so big that I think I won't buy it.
    When you get to the fair you can, for the mere pittance of a dollar an hour, be hauled about in a rickshaw, by college students in coolie pants. College students have also been chosen to act as guides and cashiers, about 3000 of them being employed at the present time.
    But until you do get there, don't take this as an accurate picture of the works, because, as I said before, it can't be painted in anything short of a book. The grounds are about two and a half miles long, and a half mile wide, with a lagoon in the center upon which gondolas float. Everything from pink lemonade stands to Belgian villages and exact reproductions of the Latin quarter of Paris, on an Enchanted Island, in which huge giants greet the kids, and they can be left alone to play in houses made of marbles, or on slides and teeters and coasters and boats and ride on ponies or anything else they might like to do.
    Last night we saw a marionette show put on by Tony Sarge, while a 65-mile-an-hour gale was howling outside. Windy City is right. A storm like that would pull every tree out of the Rogue River Valley, I'll bet.
    Now that we've seen the world's fair and taken all the pictures we can afford to, we leave shortly to give Don his first glimpse of New York. That is, if we can find some way to get our awful-looking bedroll out of town without the police grabbing us for impersonating an African camel caravan. That darned bedroll will be our Achilles heel yet, I know. When we got to town, we didn't want to carry it through the business section, so we stopped about 18 miles out and tried to send it by express. The express office was closed, however, so we decided to leave it at the local police station and send for it later. The police station was closed until further notice. Then we went to the post office, where they told us that the rubberized poncho covering it was not to be termed as a wrapper, and that we would have to wrap it in paper, but that they were closing in two and a half minutes. Poor innocent souls. They didn't have a chance of closing with us on their trail.
    Don dashed out and grabbed some wrapping paper right out from under the nose of a grocery clerk, while I went in the pack for a piece of rope. By the time Don got back with the paper I was ready, and we stuck one end of the package through the package window, roping the other end in the meantime. The clerk started to wrest the end he had away from us before we could get it wrapped, tell us it was not wrapped properly, close the window and go home. We were not to be thus easily forestalled, however, and at the end of the tussle we at least had paper wrapped around it. It looked like the ---------- but it got by. Now the problem is to get it back out. Why we didn't have sense enough to send it 18 miles on the other side of town and then pick it up on our way out, we don't know.
    That about concludes today's installment, I think, and to anyone who has had perseverance to wade through this far, so long, and love from
Medford Mail Tribune, June 11, 1933, page 10


To the Editor:
    Just after sending in the last report, from Chicago, Don and I discovered that by going to the publicity bureau of the Century of Progress and showing our press cards, it would be possible to get a press pass to all exhibits and concessions. Five or ten minutes after hearing this we were at the publicity headquarters with our credentials, and the gentleman who took care of us did so in a big way. Besides giving us the press passes, he gave us a guide to show us around, furnished information and publicity material, and gave us cigarettes.
    Those cards worked wonders. The first thing we did was ride on a roller coaster to see if they would really work, and after ascertaining that they really would, we started in real earnest to "do" the fair. We went on board the S-49, sister ship to the S-51, the submarine which was sunk by the City of Rome, a few years ago in a collision. We went on a real "show boat." We enjoyed the Ripley "Believe it or Not" concession, too.
    When you get to the fair, see that one. It costs ordinarily forty cents, and it is one of the three or four concessions that we thought was worth what they asked. About forty of Ripley's living curiosities are there, and thousands of inanimate odds and ends. The manager, when he heard about our trip, was very interested. He said he knew Lee Bishop of KMED fame. I asked him his name, he started to give me his card but was called to the telephone and didn't come back. I went back the next day, but he wasn't in. Sorry, Lee!
    Our real triumph was going up in the airplane, and the observation balloon. We tried the balloon first, but the ticket grabber wouldn't let us in. So we went to the manager and owner, and he said "sure," so up we went. The thing went up over a thousand feet, with just Don, the pilot, and me as passengers in the box from which the "observing" is done. It afforded a swell view of the whole exposition grounds. That would have cost us a dollar-ten apiece. Whew!
    Bolstered by our success along those lines, we tried the plane ride. The advertising manager allowed us to go up. A twenty-mile ride along the lake front, and over the fair grounds. The plane was a Sikorsky amphibian, which taxied from a ramp into the water, out about a quarter of a mile, turned, and then came back and took off right over the fair. I said that the plane "was" a Sikorsky amphibian, and that is correct. It crashed yesterday, killing eight passengers and two pilots in an attempt to land in a heavy storm. One pontoon was torn clear off as the ship came down on the water. The pilot then took off again and tried to make the regular airport, but the wind stripped a wing from the plane at a height of six hundred feet, and it crashed in a field and burned.
    One of the victims was Edward Schaller, 22, of Storm Lake, Iowa. My mother, who used to live there, may know his folks. We had a storm like the one that wrecked the plane while we were in Chicago. I believe that I mentioned it before. One minute bright and sunny~-the next it was raining, and a sixty-five-mile-an-hour wind. Lucky that we have no such storms on the coast.
    After leaving the plane, we saw the "Pageant of Transportation," which also seemed worth the admission. From saddle horses and covered wagons up to the airplane and giant locomotive. That show runs for an hour at a time.
    The sky-ride, as I mentioned last week, is not yet open, but the towers are, and our passes allowed us to spend quite a bit of time at the top, where the breeze is refreshing, to say the least.
    At last growing tired of the fair, we voted to continue our trip around the world. You won't blame us for being tired, when you know that we walked in the hottest June weather ever recorded in Chicago, three miles to the ground, at least six miles, and generally eight or ten about the grounds, and then the three miles back home. We could have ridden home on the bus for a dime, but that was a dime off our very small slice of capital, so we walked.
    Before leaving Medford, Herb Grey, of the Tribune, gave me a letter to Mr. Joseph B. Hurd, of the Matson Navigation Company in Chicago. Mr. Hurd graduated from Medford High before going to Stanford. He said that he used to be a sub on the football team which starred Jess Gentry. Hello, Jess, both for Mr. Hurd and myself. Mrs. Hurd still lives in Medford, and her son is planning a visit to her this summer. When I see Herb Grey again I am to give him his friend Joe's best regards.
    It was hard, after our comfortable stay in Chicago, to take to freight trains again, but it had to be done, so we rode on a street car to the New York Central yards, and after waiting some hours, got a train supposedly leaving for Cleveland and Buffalo. After a thirty-mile ride, the train stopped. There were about thirty men in the same car we were in. A railroad policeman, commonly referred to as a "bull," looked in with a flashlight, and yelled and waved his gun, and generally conveyed the impression that he wanted us to leave. In fact, now that I recall, I believe he said so in very flowery, or sulfury, speech.
    The crowd stampeded out of the car, over the embankment, and smack into a nice juicy swamp. I was one of the last out, and could hear the others wallowing around in it. I demurred, suggesting to the bull that since it was a swamp, and damp, it might not be healthy. He thereby suggesting that it would be none too healthy right where I was, if I didn't "get right out in it." I got "right out in it."
    In the meantime, Don had disappeared. I couldn't find him anywhere. I waded around looking for him for some time, and finally came to the conclusion that the bull had eaten him. That theory would seem much more plausible to you if you had seen the bull. So I started hollering for him, just in hope that he wouldn't have yet been digested. After a few mighty bellows on my part, he finally answered, and by golly it did sound like he was deep down inside something, although it immediately turned out that that something was the coal bunker right in front of the box car he had just been run out of.
    He had been run out of the first car, and while the bull had been yelling at me, he had climbed up in the bunker and hidden. But by hiding from the minion of the law, he had also hidden from me, and in letting me know where he was, he also let the bull know. There was a great commotion, and finally out came Don into the swamp, too. Oh, well, the train was the wrong one, and was going to St. Louis, not Cleveland, anyway.
    When we got to Buffalo, we decided to see Niagara Falls. That was at three in the afternoon. By the time we'd cleaned up, it was four. It seeming more prudent to hitchhike the twenty-five miles to the falls, we had to find a place to leave our bedroll. While wandering about town in this pursuit we passed a police station. We entered, told our story, and asked if we could leave it there.
    The head man hemmed and hawed, and then mumbled that it was "this way"--he would like to accommodate us, and it would really be no trouble, but that nothing was safe around there--it would probably be swiped before we got back! We're still laughing about that!
    It was around dark when we got to Niagara, so we went out to Niagara Falls University, a small Catholic school, and they put us up for the night. We had a good swim, which helped a lot, and this morning, Monday, June 12th, we went down to see the falls.
    Coming out above the American Falls, we could look down into the seething white foam below, and there was a tiny steamboat lashing about. "The Maid of the Mist" was painted on the bow, and we immediately decided that that boat was our oyster. Going to the superintendent of the state reservation, Mr. Francis Seyfried, we showed our literature about Don Rafael and Dick Applegate, and told our story. He was very pleasant and told us that he used to know a Dick Applegate that got kicked out of West Point. Aha! He gave us a note. Here's what it said: "To Whom It May Concern: Please accord Donald A. Rafael and Dick Applegate the courtesies of the reservation with admission to concessions during this date. Superintendent ------------." Pretty nice.
    The water below the falls was reached by an elevator, and then we waited a few minutes for the boat to come in. Once aboard we were given rubber slickers and silly-looking rubber hats to don. There's a good chance for a pun wrapped up in that last sentence, but I'll let it go. The rubber uniforms looked like black Ku Klux Klan uniforms. About ten cash customers and Don and I made the trip. The Maid of the Mist plows her way up through the whirlpools and rapids, pitching violently, amid a shower of heavy spray.
    Right to the foot of the American Falls, where we could hardly see the tons of water coming down on us, for the fog and mist. Like the guy who couldn't see the forest for all the trees. Excuse me. Then we headed right out into the middle of the river, and towards the Canadian, or Horseshoe Falls. The boat wouldn't have a chance in the cauldron below that mighty cataract, but it went so close that it was being tossed about like a cork before it finally did turn and flash down the river. We docked on the Canadian side for a few minutes to pick up passengers, and then re-crossed the rapids, going sideways most of the way to do it. When we left the boat, an immigration officer stopped us and asked of what country we were citizens.
    After that thrilling ride, we waited a while at the top of the elevator to get our breath, and then went across the bridge to Goat Island, in the middle of the river at the very edge of the falls. Here was the trip through the Cave of the Winds. Expense being nothing in our young lives--(Excuse me again, but by the way, I had my twenty-first birthday the other day--the second in my life without a birthday cake.) As I started to say, expense being nothing in our young lives, we had to go on that trip, too. At this place we had to change all our clothing, and put on rubber suits. The slicker jackets, yellow this time instead of black, were hooded, and the shoes were made of hemp to prevent slipping. Down in another elevator, and out on the face of the cliff between the two falls. A narrow wooden bridge led down onto the rocks that have worn loose and fallen in past ages. The tiny bridge is rebuilt every year, and the ice carries it away the next winter. The bridge leads over the rocks and through the spray right past the foot of Bridal Veil Falls, and then into the storm. That part of the catwalk is called the Hurricane Deck, and deserves the name. The wind whips and drives great torrents of cold water upon you, and you are soon soaked through. A sign looming through the spray warns you to "beware of pickpockets." Then up a flight of water-swept stairs to the Cave of the Winds. Water thundering down on both sides, and being blown in all directions about you. It was a real thrill. Then back through more gusts of water to the elevator, and back to the dressing rooms. After dressing, you sign the register that has been kept since 1885. When you come out into the open air again you feel as though you had just been in a nice cool swimming pool.
    As soon as we emerged, it being late afternoon, we looked up the biggest newspaper in town, the Gazette, and they let us use the typewriter on which this is being written. The town, by the way, has over seventy-five thousand inhabitants. Ever hear of it?
    We had such good luck chiseling our way around that we're now bold enough to try the railroad to New York as passengers. If we have any luck you'll hear, in a short time, from the City of New York, that the railroads too, fell for the line of
Medford Mail Tribune, June 18, 1933, page 7


To the Editor:
    This is being written from the editorial rooms of the New York American, where I am being treated with the usual courtesy. We have an appointment with the theater editor soon as I finish this, and maybe we'll get a few passes to a good show.
    New York looks about the same, except for the new Radio City, which seems to be about finished. It is about seventy floors, not as high as the Chrysler or Empire State Buildings, but much wider. The rest of the skyline remains unchanged.
    We had a rather tough time getting here from Niagara Falls. At Buffalo we talked to a "bull," and he told us to go ahead and get on the train, neglecting to mention, however, that we'd get pulled off at Syracuse. Getting pulled off at Syracuse was a blessing, however, since the car we were in had ice in it. You know those refrigerator cars that they ship Medford pears in? In each end is a little compartment with a trap door onto the roof, where ice is put. When we got on the train, made up mostly of refrigerators, we thought that several were empty, because they weren't dripping water.
    So we got on top of one of these, and rode till it got dark and sort of cold. Soon as were were chilled through, we decided to go down into the car where it was warm. What a laugh! The ice bunker was empty all right, but the main part of the car was full of lettuce, and the lettuce was bedded down with ice. Whew, it was cold.
    We got off in Syracuse to try and get warm, and were wandering about when we spotted a cop. Walking up to him, we reached in our pockets for our credentials and prepared to tell him our story. When we reached for our back pockets, he reached for his gun, and shoved it right in our faces. Thought we were trying to hold him up! We got him calmed down long enough to talk to, and were just explaining the situation to him when another guy came barging up. This new guy didn't understand our relations with that cop, I guess, 'cause he dashed right into the fray, and asked the bull when the next train going east was due.
    That about floored the cop, but he made a quick recovery, and roared out, "What do you care, you're not going that way." The guy assured him that there he was mistaken, and that he was going east. Opinions clashed and the cop invited him, along with Don and me, to the police station. At least it was warm in the police station. When we arrived, the cop started in on this guy again, spending about ten minutes telling him what he thought of him in particular, and all guys on freight trains in general, and then asked him, "Now, which way are you going."
    The kid didn't answer till he'd been asked two of three times, and then said, "Well, I thought I was going east, but you seem to know more about it than I do." We gave the kid credit for having a lot of nerve, but hardly much tact. When we left the cop was roaring threats at him about putting him somewhere where he wouldn't have a chance to get smart with his betters.
    They made us leave Syracuse on the highway, and we got to Little Falls that afternoon. But further we could not get. So down to the freight train again. We got out of there about dark, and into Albany at midnight, and then, after a two- or three-hour wait in a switch shack, where we exchanged lies with the switchman, we got on another refrigerator car. This car didn't have any ice in it, but it did have triangular steel bars on the bottom that were hardly inducive to sleep.
    We were so sleepy by that time, though, that we went to sleep anyway, and woke up at Ossining, where Sing Sing prison is located. We stayed out of sight until well down towards Yonkers before again emerging! The train stopped just underneath the George Washington bridge across the Hudson, so we got off there and "cleaned up" at a boat house on the river. You'd understand the quotes better if you'd ever had to wash and shave with cold water and no soap! Then we hid that awful pack that I mentioned having so much trouble with in Chicago, and grabbed a subway into town. We got a cheap room near the Pennsylvania and New Yorker hotels so we would have stationery to write home on, and then set out to see the town.
    The Chrysler building was our first victim. We asked for the manager of the building, and presto! there he was, Mr. McCann. We told our story, and he took us in like the prodigal son, and while he didn't exactly slay the fatted calf, he did show us through the building, down to the boiler rooms, through some of the offices, up to the observation towers, and all. He seemed very interested in our trip, and gave us his card and notes to several prominent people in shipping and newspaper work to see if they couldn't see us. When we left, he invited us back and told the girl at the observation tower to give us the free use of the place.
    Then we went over to the Empire State Building. Here we were not so fortunate, in that we didn't get to see the manager, and the girl at the tower ticket booth didn't want to let us up because the press passes weren't New York ones. We got up, just the same, and stayed an extra ten minutes after the scene had begun to bore us, just to get even.
    Don had to get a check cashed, and we had to go down on Wall Street to verify the signature, so we saw that part of town the second day. Then down to the waterfront, to show him the Statue of Liberty. After leaving this office today, we're going down there and try to get out to the island where it is located, on our press cards.
    We got to New York too late to see the West Point graduations, so didn't get to see John Connor and Ben Harrell graduate. I sent a letter there to see if they were going to be around for a few days, anyway, and if they are, I'll see them before we leave.
    Before leaving San Francisco, Walter Bowne told me that Ruthie Bowne, who lives here in New York, would be on the coast in a few weeks, so there seems little if any use to look her up. I doubt if she remembers me, anyway.
    But I am going to try to get out to Annapolis to see George Winne, and Lowell Dew, in case Lowell has not left to command the Pacific fleet.
    The big angle now that we're trying to work is to get on a boat. Harry Acton, who writes a daily article in this paper, has his office directly in front of where I'm sitting, and we're trying to get in to see him. He writes a column about boats and people who travel on them, so maybe he can tell us some angle to work. Getting out of New York seems to be about the toughest part of getting around the world, but I'll bet that we do. Brisbane is always saying that what man can imagine, man can do, and we've been imagining this trip for some time.
    A couple of days ago we went down to see the ghetto district. I've been telling Don about it for ages, and now we've actually seen it, and it is just as dirty as I thought it was, although when you get as far away as Medford it's hard to imagine.
    The ghetto is the pushcart district, and is located way down on lower Manhattan, on the East Side, mainly on a street called Orchard Street. It can be smelled for blocks before it can be seen, and the smell should be warning enough. The streets are packed with dirty, sweltering people. Fishwives hawk their wares from door fronts, and dirty, gaunt children vie with dirty, gaunt cats for a place to play or fight in the filth of the street. But it is colorful. Every costume in the world. And every commodity in the world.
    If your little heart should delight in a pickle, pickles may be had. Your delight will no doubt be somewhat modified when the storekeeper plunges his vile-looking hand deep into the barrel, in order to get a fresher, more up-nosey sort of pickle to go with the fresher and more up-nosey clothes that you are wearing, and which are the outward sign that you are an outsider.
    And cherries. The ghetto takes pride in its cherries. The stands are conscientiously dusted after every whirlwind of dirt down that dirtiest of all dirty streets, and in order not to transfer any alien germs to the fruit, the same dirty duster is used to "clean" the cherries.
    The pumpkin seeds, for human food, which so surprised me before, are again in evidence, along with a few peach seeds, the delicacy of all delicacies in the seed line. Here is a place where a cup of them has been spilled in the gutter, and the proprietor it is now who fights with the children for their possession.
    The garbage in the streets does not remain long a mystery. There is a swish from an upstairs tenement window and a package of garbage crashes to the street, regardless of whether someone may be below or not. The minute it hits, several human  derelicts, calling themselves "ragpickers," will pounce upon it, hoping to find something inside to reward them for their search.
    You stop to listen to an argument between two of the peddlers. Immediately your arm is grabbed by a third, and you are shown a complete line of underclothes before you can get your arm loose. By that time, your eye will have fallen upon one of the grape dealers' wagons. What's this? Grapes that move? It's a sinking sensation to find that flies in the gloom can look so much like the grapes upon which they are clustered.
    Do you need a corset? We were offered several. The fact that we didn't have the least use for them, and that they were slightly out of shape through having been worn, didn't seem to disqualify us as potential customers. Not in the least. Our clothes, indicating that we might have a few cents more than the ordinary run, overcame any such fine points of delicacy on the salesmen's part.
    After a few blocks of this gantlet, when we had weathered the food and clothing department, and were gradually becoming used to the smell as we also gradually drew away from the dried fish department into the used light globe and twine departments, Chinatown, with its clean, fresh smell of rat soup and its kindred horrors held no longer a dread for us, and we decided to improve our position by paying it a visit.
    It was just "tourist" time, and we arrived at that critical moment when the Chinese inhabitants were rushing to change from their plus-fours and linen coats to the mandarin cloaks the tourist demands. The situation was really funny. A young Chinaman, just home from Columbia University or New York University, would rush into a shop in his school clothes, and emerge a few minutes later in a black box hat and flowing robes to wait on customers.
    One minute there would be a rush and bustle, and shouts in English to "Hurry it up, Bill," and the next all would be quiet, the sound of Chinese talk, the air of Chinese mystery, with slow movements and tiny steps, as a huge sightseeing bus would come slowly up the narrow, twisting street. A guide would be shouting the places of interest, and at every stop people would rush into a shop to "get-tee a cigalet-tee" from the Chinese boy who a few moments before had been singing American songs, with an American accent, on the corner.
    Soon as the bus had disappeared, the American atmosphere would again be in vogue. But the "tourists" had been satisfied, and the Chinese wares, made in Hoboken, would have been sold.
    After viewing Chinatown from this angle, we walked back to our room and went to bed, mumbling ancient Confucian axioms to ourselves.
    Today we looked up some more steamship lines, but as Don hasn't his birth certificate as yet, it was all half-hearted, 'cause we can't get our passports anyway. Soon as we get them we leave and start the best part of cur journey.
    All of the kids in Medford promised to write to me while I was gone. Bob Spalding, Nooks Naumes, Jack Boyl, John Reddy (I see that old hoax of Reddy's about having guests from Notre Dame and Vanderbilt and Southern California and all the rest, to get his name in the paper, hasn't been spiked yet!) and the Colvigs, not to mention a dozen others. Bob is the only one who has kept his promise. Hooray for Bob, and a couple of Phooeys for those other guys. Sometime they'll be off on a trip, and I won't write to them, and won't they be sorry.
    The time draws near for our appointment with that theater editor, and that is something I don't want to miss, so I'll finish this tomorrow.
    This last part of this article is being written from the editorial rooms of the tabloid paper, the New York Daily News, which has a circulation of over two million daily! People claim that they hate, and won't read, a tabloid scandal sheet like this paper claims to be, but that's a big circulation! And the offices are the nicest we've been in, and this is the first typewriter that really works well.
    Yesterday, at the American offices, we saw our editor, Mr. Connie Miles, and he called up the press agent, Mr. Washburn, of the musical comedy hit, "Music in the Air," and got us two passes. The seats were aisle ones, in the orchestra, and would ordinarily have cost us three dollars and thirty cents apiece. The play was swell.
    Featured in it was Al Shean, of the old team of Gallagher and Shean, and this marks his return to Broadway after a long absence. He was great. The music was good, and the dialogue was better. When you come to New York, you must certainly see it. Now it remains for us to see the rest of the theater editors in town and see the rest of the legitimate shows. It seems easy enough.
    Tonight we've been invited to a talking picture at the Radio City Roxy, the largest talking picture, or any other kind, for that matter, theater in the world. This newspaper game is a racket.
    One big shot after another in these editorial rooms has assured us that it is possible that we might get an interview with O. O. McIntyre, so today we wrote to him to find out what our chances were. If we get that, I'll have a real story next time, and until then, you'll have to be content with this one from
Medford Mail Tribune, June 23, 1933, page 6


To the Editor:
    It grows increasingly doubtful as to whether Don and Dick should go on and continue their trip around the world, or just settle down here in New York and become drama critics for the best newspapers in town. About all we've done during the last week is go to swell shows, and after having seen them, we report our reactions to the drama editors of the various papers about town, who have made it possible for us to attend.
    Lest week I mentioned having attended "Music in the Air." The next night we were invited by my old friend here, Walter Faley, to the Radio City Music Hall. It was a picture, Elissa Landi and Warner Baxter in "I Loved You Wednesday." It has no doubt been in Medford by now, so I need not mention how good it was, but the stage show with it was great. The Maid of the Mist, which I mentioned from Niagara Falls, was the central theme, and the whole thing was almost unbelievable in its beauty.
    When I was here last year, the Roxy Theater was the largest in the world. Then they built the new Roxy, even larger. And now the Music Hall, under Roxy's direction, too, which is larger than either. And I said that New York hadn't changed!
    The night after seeing the movie, we went to "Tattle Tales," starring Frank Fay and Barbara Stanwyck. Boy, it was great. Fay had his own name on the program 21 times, and his wife in only six places, which didn't sit so well until you'd seen the show. It was one laugh from start to finish, and Fay was the whole show. Barbara Stanwyck took a wonderful ovation on her re-portrayal of the pulpit scene from "The Miracle Woman." In fact we enjoyed the whole thing immensely. We were the guests of Burns Mantle, dramatic critic of the Daily News, on that occasion.
    The next few days we didn't see any shows, but on Friday we went into the Herald Tribune editorial rooms, and saw Mr. Newman, the theater editor. Gee, he was swell to us. Better, even, than the others, although that in itself is almost unbelievable. He got us two seats for "One Sunday Afternoon," a stage play which has been a decided hit. And it should be. It was entirely different than either of the other two stage shows. The first was a good musical comedy, the second was a swell farce, and this was a delightful comedy.
    When we went back to thank Mr. Newman for his kindness, he gave us two more tickets, this time to a first-night show, "The Church-mouse." Again, they were orchestra seats. We hardly know how to thank him. And New York is supposed to be "the" hard-boiled town of the continent. In all, we've seen $26.40 worth of stage shows, so far.
    On our way home each night, from the theater district, which is located in the well-known "roaring forties," we pass in front of the Hotel New Yorker. And every night we see a fight. The taxicabs, of which New York is reputed to have 40,000, line up for four or five blocks to snare their victims as they come from the hotel. As you can readily see, it would be impossible to line up across the intersecting streets, so that leaves four or five gaps in the line. As the leading taxi moves away from the front of the line, loaded, the others all move up one place. And every time this happens, someone cruising by in another cab tries to edge his own way into these intersection gaps, rather than wait his turn.
    Immediately this happens, the driver behind goes into a tantrum, leaps from his own cab, tears up to the one in front, and dishes out a lot of abusive language to the chiseler in front. Now, all this naturally does not argue for close harmony among the brethren, and all of them, say, Parmelee cab drivers will align themselves with the Parmelee cab, and all the five-boro drivers will join the festivities on the other side, and among the 20 or 30 thus involved, they generally manage to make the party go. The police, I think, are getting a bit tired of this game, for they have to stop it when it gets too boisterous each time. So far, it has been quite a job every night we've gone by.
    About a block from this spot is the restaurant in which we generally eat. There is one particular guy behind the counter who doesn't sit well on Don's disposition. They have a regular fight every time we go in there. We'd go somewhere else, but this one is the cheapest in the neighborhood. Things went along in this vein for a week or so, and then we framed the guy. Soon as he started to get smart, we were to pull our little act.
    We hadn't long to wait. Two minutes after we'd lined up, he started in. So first we dropped a quarter on the floor, to show him that it was NOT clean, and then we dropped it over the counter into the beef stew. (This was a cafeteria.) He chivvied it about with a fork for some minutes, and by that time several customers had become interested in the chase, and cheered him on encouragingly. When he had finally retrieved the coin, he had some notion of passing out the stew anyway, but he little recked the ghoulish cunning of his opponents. We hadn't dropped that quarter in the stew in front of 22 people for nothing! They put up an awful howl, and the guy had to dump it out, and his boss put up another, meanwhile we were clamoring, among our apparently abject apologies, for our change. Never try to cross us, you-all.
    Speaking of places to eat, we generally breakfast at a place down the street from our "apartment" in a dump run by a Jew. The waiters are Italian, and the cook is Japanese. Our landlord is a Greek, the chambermaid is Polish and speaks Russian, and we send our laundry to a Chinaman. We were invited out to the Bronx Saturday to eat an Italian dinner--with sherry wine--and the other guests were Jewish. Cosmopolitan, that's what we're becoming.
    Last week we went down to the sub-treasury building on Wall Street to get our passports. I had my birth certificate sent by the state bureau of vital statistics of Oregon, and Don had a baptismal certificate from some town in California. We both handed in our credentials, and the individual behind the desk, anxious to uphold the passport department's reputation for red tape, pored over it till he finally found a date missing. The thing had the seal of the state on it, when I was born, and where, who the attending physician was, the color of my hair and eyes, and even confirmed the fact that I was legitimate. Was that enough for this gimlet-eyed minion of the passport office? NO! He said that it lacked the important feature of when the record was entered on the state books. Said that was the important thing to the big shots in Washington.
    After he had disposed of me in this manner, he felt better, and turned to Don. Taking the baptismal certificate, which had no seal on it at all, and looking at me out of the corner of his eye, he said, "Yes, this will do very nicely." I guess he didn't know we were together, the sap. Luckily, I had several other documents in our room, proving that I had been born, so we stymied him the next day. Phooey on those guys!
    A couple of days later we went out to the Statue of Liberty on our press cards, and while standing gaping out one of the portholes in the old lady's head, we saw a couple of Saint Mary's belt buckles on a pair of anemic-looking individuals, so we bulged out our Santa Clara belt buckles so that they could see them, but darn little rise that got out of them. Don opened negotiations by telling them that we were from Santa Clara, that we were big shot newspaper correspondents from the coast (this for the benefit of a rather good-looking girl on the edge of the audience, who paid no attention to it), and that we knew several guys at St. Mary's. These two sickly-looking samples of American studenthood murmured, "Oh, is that so?" in a disinterested voice, as they moved off. Then, as though they had suddenly remembered their manners, added "Sorry we beat you again in football this year." G-r-r-r-r! They wouldn't have felt so supercilious about that, I think, if they'd remembered that even Oregon did that! How are you, Prink?
    Coming home from church Sunday, a guy who has a cordial shop just beneath our room handed us a little booklet, with gin, 60¢ on the front, and rye, 60¢ on the back, in big letters, and inside was a list of all sorts of liquors, imported and domestic, ranging from 40¢ a pint to $2.50 a pint. Here's the whole menu:
    This guy was passing them out to everyone, and a sign about the 60¢ gin was in the front window, and still no one paid a great deal of attention to it. I don't know whether they just haven't heard about the Noble Experiment, or think that it has been repealed.
    One would think that, as long as we are trying to get to Europe on a boat, this would be quite a column on shipping news, but to tell the truth, we've hardly even seen the water yet. We went out to Coney Island, to see if it were still as foul as it looked last time, and after ascertaining that it most certainly was, we took a look at the Atlantic Ocean, Don for the first time, and went on home.
    Instead of trying the boats direct, we've been going to the offices, and trying to talk the president into letting us go, but that doesn't work, so now we're trying the boats direct, and that doesn't work either. But it will. It'll take more than this measly little Atlantic Ocean to stop us.
    Mr. Newman of the Herald Tribune told us to exhaust all our leads, and if we didn't find anything that way, to come back in and he'd go to the shipping editor with us, and maybe we'd be able to find something that way. I said before that he was a swell guy.
    Remember my saying that I was going to try and interview McIntyre? Got a card from him today. "Thanks for your cordial letter (I laid it on pretty thick!) and gracious thought. I am off on a motor trip tomorrow, but will be back in New York in three weeks and will be glad to see you then. Cordially, O. O. McIntyre."
    So that's that. We won't be here three weeks from now probably, but if we are, I'll get that interview after all. At least I've got a card from him. In his own handwriting, too. At least it's handwriting. I suppose it's his.
    We're trying to get an interview with Al Smith, now. I suppose he'll be taking a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, and will be unable to see us. Oh, well, they'll all be trying to see US in a few more years, after we discover a new continent, or something. Maybe we already have. Columbus didn't know he'd discovered one either. I hope, in the historical statues they'll have of me in the future, they won't show the hole in my pants leg that I burned trying to press the foul things myself.
    There are two kids who live out in the Bronx that Don and I met in Chicago, who have their picture in the Bronx Home News today for being so intrepid as to get as far west as Chicago on a hitchhiking trip. They think they WERE west, in fact. Now they're contemplating getting coonskin caps and squirrel rifles, and become guides in the Bronx Zoo.
    It's funny the way people here think they've been west when they cross the Hudson River. Like the guy that was prattling to me about the West, and I asked him if he'd ever been in the West. He snorted, looked at me as though expecting me to become violent at any minute, and said: "Been west? Why I was BORN in Cincinnati!"
    I see by the Medford Mail Tribune (the Pacific Coast's leading daily) that my old friend and teacher, Miss Walden, now Mrs. Haight. Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Haight.
    One thing that flatters me beyond description is having my stuff quoted in the Jacksonville Miner! Thank you, kind Sir Leonard. And about me not knowing about how busy party lines are on the Applegate. I guess that you don't know that the Applegate party line in Medford also includes our "DULY ELECTED" County Judge Fehl.
    Well, we've gotta tear out and put the bee on the trans-Atlantic freight boats, and that can't be done from the editorial rooms of the Herald Tribune, influential as those offices may be, so I'll bid you a fond farewell. Remember, when we started out we said we MIGHT go around the world. We've now decided that we have to. That's the only way to get to San Francisco without riding freight trains. Adios, as our waiter would say...
Medford Mail Tribune, July 2, 1933, page 8


To the Editor.
    One time when Bob Colvig had just made a trip on board the good ship "Larry Doheney" from San Pedro to Portland, to get from Hollywood to Medford, he wrote me a letter telling me about his duties. All he had to do was arise at five in the morning, prepare breakfast for the crew, then clean up the kitchen afterward, wash the dishes, etc., and then continue by getting water out of the ocean to polish the whistle, and such menial tasks, up until dark, and then, providing that the dishes were washed, he had the rest of the day off.
    That seems to be the kind of job Don and I have nailed for ourselves, IF we get it. If we don't we'll have to stow away, and don't think we won't if we have to. I'd rather have to man a four-masted schooner singlehanded in a race around the Horn than have to get a job on a boat out of this place. One can sit for hours down at the waterfront, and watch boats putting out to sea every few minutes, but just try to get on one if you want to experience a helpless feeling sometime.
    Do you remember in San Francisco I couldn't make up my mind which would make the best theme song for this trip? There no longer remains the shadow of a doubt. You've guessed it! "I Cover the Waterfront." If there's a quarter of an inch of dock space in New York harbor that we haven't explored thoroughly, I'd like to see it.
    We started out last week full of the spirit of adventure, almost expecting to get aboard a boat the first day. About the first day or two we were more or less particular as to where we went, but we soon got over that! Now we don't care if we go to South Africa, Iceland, Borneo, Switzerland or San Francisco. When we go out to a dock to  investigate a boat that was mentioned in the shipping notes of one of the daily papers, we have to go through a cordon of cops that would make Lou Bloom and Cy Herr look sick, and that's saying more than some of you perhaps realize. How are you, Lou?
    When we get past the cons, which we generally don't, we then have to ace the steward's secretary. If, by some misunderstanding, he lets us talk to the steward, that gentleman (?) says "NO," without even bothering to find out what we want.
    In the middle of our work one day, while crossing on the Weehawken ferry to Jersey, we encountered the captain of the boat. The ferry boat, I mean. We had crossed the Hudson River in hopes of getting a boat on the other side, but from the river it was obvious that no liners were docked in that immediate vicinity, so we decided to stay aboard, and go back on the same boat to avoid paying another fare. While sneaking about the upper deck to keep out of sight, we ran right smack into the captain! He threatened to throw us off, till he had heard our story, and by then he had grown interested in us, and pointed out a steamer dock near at hand.
    The Black Diamond Line, going to Rotterdam teeth out, wait a minute, I mean Rotterdam and Antwerp. We talked to the head man, and he said that he had ten congressmen's sons to every boat, and had no room for mere newspapermen. That's what he thinks. I'll explain that later.
    After leaving the Black Diamond, we again went aboard the same ferry, and told the captain our story. His name was Smith, and he took us up in the pilot house, and let us watch him run the boat. We made several trips across and back with him, and he finally sent us to see a friend of his, a Captain Fleming, at the customs house, who was supposed to know every boat, and boat captain, in the country.
    We went down to see Fleming the next day and he just sat and looked at us, and finally fell in with our own suggestion that we go to see the American Export Line. Said he knew Mr. Andrews, who did the hiring over there. The American Export is in New Jersey, so we tore over there bright and early the next day, to see him. We got there at ten in the morning, and ran into some of the nastiest cops it has ever been my displeasure to see. They shunted us around like so many cattle, using no more manners than dogs. They even went so far as to tell us we couldn't see Andrews, and we wish now that we'd taken their word for it.
    But at the time we weren't used to that kind of language, and it made us mad. We told the guard on duty that we weren't looking for work and he thawed out a degree or two. Looking for a job is some sort of crime to the American Export company, I guess. We stood around for about five hours, being constantly ordered out of the way, by those dumb cops, before Andrews came in. We went up to him, showed him our press cards, and asked him if we could talk to him a minute.
    A more ill-mannered ape I've never met than friend Andrews. He did have the courtesy to invite us into his office, probably with the thought that he could work us for something. But he made us stand through the whole interview. He first said, as I drew my letter of introduction from Mr. Ruhl from my pocket, "Before you show me any of that junk, what do you want." Only he said, "Watchezwant." We told him that Captain Fleming had sent us over. Then he claimed had never heard of Fleming. So we told him what we wanted. That we wanted to work our way to Europe, comfort in accommodations being no object to us--that we'd take our own food, if necessary, and our own bedding. And that we'd pay for the privilege of doing so. We were getting desperate, remember.
    Did that impassioned plea make any impression on this mug? One might as well try to carve one's initials in granite with a piece of soap as sell an idea to him. It wasn't his saying "no" that groined us. We almost expected that. It was the way he said it. He called us "drugs on the market," among other things. Personally, I think a steamship official as dizzy as that one is the greatest drug on the steamship market. If I ever have any shipping to do, I'll let it rot on the dock before I'll let the American Export company ship it.
    He got off one of his most brilliant remarks of the day, when he said, "How do I know you're newspaper reporters?" He'd just got through looking at our press cards. We reminded him of this minor point. It didn't bother him at all. So we showed him a clipping from the Oakland Tribune, with our pictures, which mentioned that I was writing for the Mail Tribune. Unfortunately, I had no Medford clippings. To this, he replied, "Just a periodical. Doesn't mean anything." I guess he was right at that. It wouldn't, to him. Then he wanted to know if we had any identifications from the paper, and I pointed out that he had Mr. Ruhl's letter in his hand. He parried this with a gummy grin, which he thought was passing as wit, by saying he hadn't read it! There's a limit to everything, so Don and I left. First thing I do when I make my first million dollars is to buy that steamship line, and fire Andrews.
    Cheered on by this failure, we crawled back to our room about dark, and went to bed. It was hot as the devil in New York that day. About ten it started to rain. At ten-thirty the thunder and lightning was getting dramatic, so we got up, slipped on an old pair of cords apiece, and went up on the room. We picked out a nice wet spot and lay down to die. It was swell. The lightning would light up the whole skyline of Manhattan every few minutes, and the thunder would roar its approval of what it saw by the glare. We stayed there till we were soaked through, and nice and cool, and then went back down and got some sleep. Next day we started on the boats again, and just missed going to South Africa and Madagascar by about eight hours. The point germane to the discussion is that we missed it.
    That gave us our idea, and so we quit trying to go just to Europe, and offered to go anywhere. Still no luck, however. Finally the situation growing desperate, we decided to stow away, to Antwerp or Rotterdam, on the Black Diamond Line, because it seemed the easiest to get at. This morning we went over to take a look at "our" boat. A scurvy-looking old hulk it is, too. Reminds me of Andrews. While hanging about the dock, the steward came ashore and passed us. We hailed him, and gave him a sob story that would make Simon Legree weep salt tears. Simon Legree, you'll understand, was a sissy compared to these guys. But wonder of wonders, he promised to try and get us aboard. And if he doesn't he says that all they do to stowaways is make them work till the boat docks, and then they chase them out of Holland into Belgium.
    Which suits us fine. We weren't planning on staying in Holland very long anyway. So the next article will be from Holland or Belgium or New York. How am I going to have an article a week when it takes this boat eleven days to cross, and the mail almost that long to get back to New York, to say nothing of having to cross the continent after it does get here? Perhaps I should do like McIntyre does. I have it on his own word that he is on a three weeks vacation, and still his articles are printed every day, as though nothing unusual were going on. Only I'm supposed to be writing a travelogue, and it's hard to write one, I imagine, when not traveling
    Did you notice, in McIntyre's column, about Frank Ray and Barbara Stanwyck? The article that I wrote about them must have been printed about the same time. Do I feel proud!
    We were planning on going to the Sharkey-Carnera fight last week, but we were too busy to line up any tickets. The fight was pretty good, too, from what we've heard of it. One guy here in the office suggested that we stow away in one of Carnera's shoes.
    Another coincidence in our lives, proving that the world is a small place. Here in the Herald Tribune offices, Mr. Newman, the theater editor who has been so nice to us, introduced us to a Mr. Robinson, a young reporter who went to Russia, workaway, that year. Mr. Robinson, during the course of the conversation, asked us what lines we'd seen. We mentioned the Matson line, in Chicago. He asked us if we knew Joe Hurd. As he asked us, I was in the act of taking a card from Joe Hurd from my pocketbook. He knew Joe in Honolulu, where they lived together. Joe had written his name on the back of the card, telling us to look him up when we got to New York, but he didn't know what paper he was working for! And we discovered him by accident.
    Today, after finding that we might get aboard this ship for Antwerp, we went down to the Belgian consulate to get advice. We got there at three-ten, and the office closed at three. That's a heck of a time to close any office. The Netherlands consulate was also closed. So now we have to wait till Wednesday, since tomorrow is the Fourth. And Wednesday we're supposed to be getting ready to stow way, or go to work.
    When I get home, I'm going to punch a lot of noses of people who promised to write to me, but haven't. Lardo is the only faithful one of the whole township.
    The Lord only knows where next week's letter will be from, but join prayers with Don and me, and hope it's from Europe!
    Felicitations and osculations,
Medford Mail Tribune, July 9, 1933, page 8


To the Editor:
    The Applegate-Rafael theme song has again changed; first to "I Cover the Waterfront," and now to "Goodbye Broadway, Hello Montreal." We're going to Canada. And we're going tonight. I must get this written, and then away we go. It was all very sudden, and is a long story. Here it is:
    After walking about the waterfront for days on end without success, we drug our weary bones home one night with all intentions of doing the same for as many more days as it might take to get out on a boat. As I mentioned before, we were no longer particular as to where we went. We had one promise for job to Antwerp the latter part of August, so as we lay in bed, exhausted, we began to long for the wide open spaces of our own western coast. Idly we discussed a side trip to Canada as a cure for our homesickness. The more we talked, the more excited we became. At first it was to be a hitchhiking jaunt to the border. Later we decided to make it a bicycle trip to Montreal. Then the problem as to getting the packs on a bicycle, and we abandoned that in favor of an old model "T" Ford.
    The next morning we went shopping for one, and not a single, solitary Ford of ancient enough vintage could we find. Finally we ran across a Dodge sedan, an early twenty-seven model, with swell tires, good paint, and fair upholstery. The motor was perfect. In fact, it still is, unless it just went phooey with Don. He's out getting the motor tuned up before we leave. At least that's what he told me, although I think that he's just grimly trying to learn to drive in this traffic.
    While Don and I were in Chicago, we met two kids from New York, who had hitchhiked there, and Saturday, the day after we got the car, we took them along with one of the kids' brothers, on a weekend trip up into the Catskill "mountains." There was a nice little lake, and, as we got there after dark, we took a midnight swim. They had never heard of such a thing, and thought that we were just kidding when we suggested it. The water was swell. While in a service station in Port Jervis, N.Y., we picked up two hitchhikers who were counselors at a Catholic summer camp nearby. They told us about a little lake a mile or so from theirs, where we could camp. As we pulled off the main road on the side road leading to the camp, they warned me to drive slowly, as the road was terribly steep and crooked. It was about like East Main Street, leading out to Hillcrest! We let them off at their camp, and drove on to the place where we were to stay. It was beautiful. The moon shining on the water and the hardwood trees making a jet-black wall all around the edges. We parked the car, which had run beautifully all the way up, under some big trees, built a fire, and Don cooked supper. To be perfectly truthful, he burned it, but that would be telling. This job earned for him the title of "Chef," and now he wants to get a cook's hat for this Canada trip!
    After supper, we went down to the lake for a plunge. We found a small dock, with a rowboat tied up, and a diving raft moored about fifty yards offshore. Lou Tennereillo, the Italian kid from New York, became captain of our ship and Renny Myers the skipper. The two names are synonymous, but we must have peace in the family. The third New Yorker was an official tugboat, while Don and Dick had a swell time stowing away to "Europe," which to most people would look like a very ordinary raft. But not to Don and Dick. This getting to Europe has become a phobia with us.
    After exhausting ourselves in the water, we retired, Renny curling up in the back of the car, and the two "Lous" and the two adventurers on the ground outside. I forgot to introduce the "third New Yorker"--Medford, I'd like to have you meet a friend of mine, Mr. Lou Meyers. Mr. Meyers, this is Medford. To get on with this story: We settled ourselves for the night, and the next morning we were awakened at dawn by an outraged property owner who claimed we had kept her awake all night, and that if we weren't gone in half an hour, we'd have the police to contend with. The poor cops around here! They must lead a hell of a life!
    We moved on to another lake, and spent the day cooking dinner and swimming and eating the dinner after it was cooked. This strenuous day's labor so exhausted us that we decided to leave for the city about five in the afternoon. We'd have been home by nine, except for one thing. We ran into a traffic jam forty miles from New York, and had to proceed at a crawl all the way home. It was terrible.
    Tonight we are all ready to leave. We intend to go up through Montreal, in the general direction of Hudson Bay from there, and so on up till we hit a place that we'd like to camp. After a few weeks of that, we're coming back, and we have it all arranged to go abroad soon as we get back. It was arranged by Joe Hurd's friend, Ben Robinson, of the Herald Tribune, whom I mentioned last week.
    He told us he had a friend in a mercantile law firm, who had a lot of drag with shipping men, and that he'd take us up to meet him. He took us up to the New York Athletic Club, a very swanky club, by the by, and we had a decidedly eventful evening. On the way up we saw Primo Carnera walking up Broadway. He was just ahead of us for several blocks. Gosh, he's big. My dad looks tall enough, but this guy looks even taller. You'd have gotten a kick out of watching the people stare at him. He dropped a nickel he was trying to put in a beggar's cup. I suppose it would be ungracious to suggest that he did it for publicity, wouldn't it?
    At the athletic club we met Captain Sheridan, a direct descendant of the Civil War Sheridan, and he promised to get us a boat to Europe, but not before late August or September. Hence the Canada trip. We also met Mr. Deegan, head man of the Grace steamship line to South America. And also Boss Curry, of Tammany Hall. There were about ten big shots and Don and I, sitting around in a circle on the balcony overlooking Central Park, chewing the fat. It was thrilling. Don asked Curry what he did for a living, and Curry said. "Oh, I'm an engineer!" I wish he'd engineer a job on a boat around the world for us. While we were sitting there talking about Hitler, DeValera, Trotsky, Mussolini, religion, science, and anything else you might think of, the new dirigible Macon, sister ship of the unfortunate Akron, flew over. It was her first trip to the city. Her lights were all blinking at regular intervals in a signal of welcome to the multitudes. She looked smaller than the Akron, which I saw at Lakehurst last year. They say she looks smaller because she is of much larger girth. It destroys that long slender effect so perfect in the also unfortunate Shenandoah.
    During the course of the evening we also met the author of "Birds of Paradise," one of the first books printed about Bali. Ben Robinson has been to Bali, and knows Andre Roosevelt, who filmed the picture "Goona-Goona," which so thrilled Bob Colvig and Nooks Naumes when at the State Theater in Medford. He also knows the guy who wrote the best seller "Grain Race." We'd have met him too, only he's in Sweden on a trip to gather new material.
    Last Sunday we got an ad in the Herald Tribune, for companions to share expenses on the trip north. It ran thusly: "Two college men (!) from coast on news writing adventure around world, planning side trip to Canada, want companions to share expenses. Equipment furnished." So far no one that we'd have along has shown up. If they want to go they'd better hurry!
    Last week we tried to stow away on the boat to Antwerp, and after offering half the crew money to stow us away and keep their mouth shut about it, and meeting with no success, we finally found a guy who had a friend who had given a steward on the Red Diamond Line a few dollars to put him in the cabin. That sounded like something up our alley, so we dashed down to headquarters and got passes to go aboard the Minnewaska, a twenty-thousand-ton liner for France, England, and Belgium. The crew was entirely English. We asked for the steward and were informed that he was at the "rices." Sounds like a new game, doesn't it? It means "races," over in merry Hingland.
    We had to go back the next day, but we might just as well have slept, as I pointed out, with unerring accuracy, to Don even before we got up. He told us no one but Hinglishmen were allowed to work on the boat. I wish some American boats were that thoughtful of Americans. But then, the only American boats of any decent size are the Leviathan, which we took away from the Germans, if I remember my history correctly; the Manhattan, which hasn't been in dock since we've been here, and the George Washington, which is now engaged in making cruises to nowhere. And the Leviathan is tied up, probably for good.
    While we were on the docks looking over the Minnewaska, we saw the Leviathan, tied up at her berth. We went aboard, ignoring the signs promising instant death for anyone doing so, and were rewarded by seeing the guard scratching matches on the "No Smoking" sign. He was very nice to us. We asked him if the rumor were true that she was to be converted into a hotel, and he said, "Probably, yes." That will increase America's hold on the foot of the commercial shipping ladder. But the old Leviathan has had her day. She looks like she needed a rest.
    Since we've had the Dodge, we've been stopped by the traffic cops five times. The traffic is terrible here, and the signals are lousy. You can't tell where to go, and no matter which way you decide is right, you're wrong, so now we just go blithely ahead, as though we knew we were right, and we haven't been stopped all day. This old Dodge has a goofy shift, and it's hard to get used to it. Always starting off at a nice rate of speed when the light turns green, but not always in the right direction. Reverse is where low is on an ordinary car. Bob Spalding had one of them last summer, cluttering the wayside with flying parts.
    But it ought to hold together till we get to Canada, and that is where you'll next hear from
Medford Mail Tribune, July 16, 1933, page 3


To the Editor:
    Don and I are about 75 miles north of Montreal today, and intend to be that much more before nightfall. The old Dodge has run perfectly all the way, and we haven't had a bit of trouble. The night that I wrote the last letter we left at one o'clock, and drove about 50 miles out of the city, and camped on a little side road on a private estate owned by some woman in Paris, France. The car is fixed up for a bed, and as we weren't bothered, we slept till noon. We drove about a hundred miles that day, stopping off en route to go swimming in a river along the road. There was a nice big canoe there, so we appropriated it for a couple of hours. Don claimed that he never sunburned. He did that time. He looked like an Indian blanket the next day.
    I did a little better, in that I KNEW I sunburned, so I stayed out of the sun most of the time. We're both getting nicely tanned now.
    As evening drew on we again looked for a place to camp, and on a little side toad we found a good secluded place and started our fire for supper. Just as the coffee was beginning to boil the farmer who owned the place drove by in a wagon and told us to be on our way. We had to repack all our stuff, and just as we drove back onto the road he and his hired men came up. They said they hated to chase us out, but that they were afraid of fire, but that we could camp in their dooryard. We accepted this offer.
    He brought out an oil stove for us to cook on, and then changed his mind and invited us in to do our cooking in the kitchen. When our supper had been cooked and devoured, we sat and talked to the farmer and his wife for an hour or so, and by that time we had been invited to sleep in the house. The next morning they also invited us to breakfast with them, and then showed us about the farm. Their name was Gonyo, and they mentioned that the French spelling was Gagnon. Maybe they're some relation to Joe Gagnon in Medford, although they didn't know.
    Mrs. Gagnon showed us how to fry ham in water to get the salt out of it. We'd have had to throw it away otherwise. Gee, it was terrible. I've seen Mom doing the same thing, but didn't know why. We're getting to be quite famous cooks now. This morning we had hotcakes. We burned the first several; some were pretty good, and the rest of the batter we threw away. The jam was swell, however. I wish we had Fred (Simeon Gunch) Colvig here to cook for us. He makes swell biscuits and things. Get him to cook things for you someday. I used to go down and look hungrily at his hot bread just out of the oven, and waste a lot of good hints on how good it looked. He'd just say that they couldn't cut it till supper time. In such a decisive voice, too, that I just didn't have the nerve to ask why not. I've eaten plenty at the Colvig residence though. Thanks again, Mrs. Colvig.
    To get back to this drivel about the trip. At the border they took all our cigarettes away besides five packages each and the ones they couldn't find. They asked us if we had any ditched in the suitcase, and we said "no," which was correct. They then asked if there were any under the seats, and again we said "no." They asked about the bed clothes as a hiding place, and the tool box. The answer was always "no," but if they'd said hidden in the sugar and beans they'd have had us.
    We're letting our beards grow, and we look like the devil. That's the only way to describe it. Next week they ought to look pretty good. On the way up we stopped and went in swimming in Lake Champlain. The water was much warmer than we expected, probably because the whiskers kept our faces warm.
    When we got to Montresat. a city of nearly a million, we saw the funniest-looking cops we've seen yet, and that's saying more than you perhaps realize. They wear silly-looking white helmets, and bawl you out in French. It seems that nearly all the people around here speak that language. The street signals are in both English and French, but up here it is just French.
    This little village of St. Jovite is the most interesting one I've ever seen. It's a sleepy little burg about the size of Jacksonville, and did I have a tough time trying to get the typewriter I'm using. Only a few people in the place speak English. The rest just gibber when you try to talk to them. The two or three who speak the King's English work in the hotel and the service station. This is the service station tool I'm using now. I think it needs a new carburetor. Maybe Mr. Blerma of the Medford Typewriter Exchange could make it work properly, but it would require years of effort.
    All these little villages have beautiful churches. They are built of gray sandstone, with slate roofs, and the roofs glint like gold in the sun. The Catholic population seems to be very religious. Tiny roadside shrines are to be seen on the crest of every hill, and in the evening you see the whole town on their way to or from services in the churches. No matter how dilapidated the homes may be, the church is always lovely.
    It's hardly believable that we are only a day's drive from the United States. The customs and everything seem so foreign to us. This part of the trip has been the most successful of all, so far. Except that it is going to cost me 18 cents to send this story to Medford by sir mail. That's just twice the domestic rate.
    The country roads that we are now traveling are lined with two-wheeled carts of the "old country," and some are so heavily laden they look as [if] the slightest shifting of the weight would pick the poor old horse right up off its pins. Many of the people ride bicycles, and a great many drive horses, buggies and coaches. It's just as though the calendar had been turned back 25 years, except for the occasional car you see. Most of the cars are of American make, besides a few English Austins and Rolls-Royces. The Austins are both of the familiar "American" Austin size, and one I've never seen before, about the size of a Chevrolet.
    The small one would be the most appropriate size for this country, though. Gas in Canada costs 30 cents a gallon, although you get nearly five quarts to the "imperial" gallon. And oil is 40 cents a quart. Aside from that we can't understand why more Americans don't make this trip. It has all the thrill of a visit to a foreign country, without the pain in the neck which comes with associating with steamship companies.
    Another funny thing about this country. One must have a license to operate a radio receiving set. And American cigarettes, where you can buy them at all, cost 35¢ a package. The Canadian ones are not bad, although they, too, are rather expensive. The most popular brands are Winchester, Guinea Gold, Buckingham, Players, and a host of others.
    Most of the villages are named after a saint. In fact, all of them that we've gone through since leaving Montreal are. St. Martin, St. Therese, St. Augustin, St. Jerome, St. Adele, Ste. Agathe des Monts, St. Faustin, and then St. Jovite. Just follow these villages next time you're in Canada, and you'll be right here, and you'll like it.
    Mom is sore at me. I got a letter from her in New York the other day, and I don't think she'll mind if I show it to you. "Dear Dick: Here is a copy of your last letter to the Tribune. (That was to satisfy my ego, so I know she still loves me.) Since you aren't enough interested in your family to write, I won't bore you with any details--Mom. P.S.: Why the liquor price list? Just to fill space, or pure orneriness?"
    Here's my reply:
    My dear Mom--It was neither, although the first comes nearer to being correct. But if I wanted to be ornery, I'd have something in about that farmer's daughter! Gee, I feel ornery!
    As far as not writing home is concerned, I never get a chance to write. Don is always using the pen to write to his girlfriend in California. I'm trying to promote a fight between them, and when it is promulgated maybe I'll have a chance to write. Until then you'll all have to read the papers, I guess. That's what Will Rogers does.
    That's all for today, mon enfants, so au revoir--
Medford Mail Tribune, July 23, 1933, page 9


To the Editor:
    We are now registered bushmen, which is Canadian for hicks, having been in the "bush" now for over a week. The country around here is beautiful, there being thirty-five lakes in the immediate vicinity, the largest one, Grand Lac Nominingue, now serving as our home.
    The town of Nominingue has about three hundred people. It is a hundred and twenty-five miles north of Montreal. When Don and I got here, we had no intention of stopping. But it was getting late, and we were about out of gas. Our map showed a small lake about five miles away, that looked as though it might be very secluded, so we decided to drive to it and camp for the night.
    We found the lake, Lac Montigney, pronounced Mon-teeney, with no more trouble than having to travel over a brush road that is almost as bad as East Jackson Street in Medford, and selected a nice spot adjacent to an old deserted saw mill. The sun was just settling behind the hills, and the fish were jumping all over the lake. We found a rowboat, or chaloupe, as it is known locally (the spelling of that is correct. I just asked the town school marm) and since it was not tied and locked too securely, we went for a boat ride. Rounding a point of the lake, we discovered, to our chagrin, that what we imagined to be a deserted and lonely little mountain rendezvous for stray young Americans was in reality a thriving summer colony for very French Canadians.
    We also discovered, again to our chagrin, and entirely accidentally, the owner of our chaloupe! He didn't speak any English, but he made it quite clear that we were to get out of the boat right where we were. That being in about a hundred feet of water, or eau, as it is known in these here parts, we shyly demurred, and rowed back to our port of embarkation. It proved to be no free city, like Danzig, and the outraged citizenry suggested that we beat it. The only alternative being to pay two dollars a night for the privilege of camping there, we beat it.
    It was beginning to get dark, and we were about out of gas, so we elected to go back to Nominingue and ask for directions of someone who spoke the King's English. The barbier (barber, to you) told us to camp on Grand Lac Nominingue, all the eighty-five miles of its shoreline being open to the public, except that which was closed to the highway.
    That sounded fair enough, so we ran down to the lac, about two miles away, and started to look for a camping place. The first person we saw was a Catholic priest, wearing the familiar habit of the Jesuits. He was walking along the road, apparently doing his meditations. We stopped and asked him if he spoke English. He said that he did, a little.
    We explained the situation, and told him that we had gone to a Jesuit school in California. This seemed to delight him, and he invited us to the Jesuit villa, a beautiful white building on a promontory of a nearby peninsula. On the way to the villa, he explained that all that section of shoreline belonged to the Jesuits, and was maintained as a summer retreat.
    After a lovely drive along the lake, and out onto the peninsula, he took us in to meet a Father McDonnell, from the New York province. Father McDonnell proved to be a young man who was there for a few weeks to learn French, and he seemed awfully glad to see us. He and the first priest, Father La Chapelle, showed us through the villa. It was built by one of the Jesuits, twenty years ago from wood cut on their own property, and looks as though it might have been built yesterday. There is a platform on the roof which gives a swell view of the lake and the surrounding country.
    We stayed and talked with the Jesuits for hours. Many spoke excellent English, which surprised us, for so very few of the people around here do. It shouldn't have, of course, since the Jesuits are among the best educated men in the world. I remember when Charlie Reum came to Medford from Saskatchewan, Canada, someone asked him if he spoke English. We all got a big kick out of that. Didn't everyone know that Canada belonged to England?
    Whoever it was that asked him must have been in the Province of Quebec. Very few of the natives, and practically none who are not in business, speak any English at all. In Montreal both are spoken, but not so in Nominingue. That name, by the way, is pronounced Nom-ee-nang.
    But to get back to our Jesuit friends. After several hours of chatting we discovered that time moves on no matter how absorbed we might be in talking, and it was time to go. Father La Chapelle told us a good place to camp, on the villa grounds, and with the aid of the feeble glimmer which passes for headlights on the Dodge, we found it and settled down. We're still there.
    The next day was Sunday, and we had to get up before breakfast to get to mass on time. The faith of these people is amazing. Practically all are Catholic, and some walk as far as fifteen miles to church. One family that we know of came seventeen, and because they have no buggy, the parents walk, and the seven children ride the two plow horses.
    As time for mass draws on, the buggies, horses, and a few automobiles fill the large lot provided for parking. The ladies go into church, and the men stay around the front door to finish their pipes. It seems that all the men smoke pipes. The domestic tobacco that they raise themselves is too strong for cigarettes, and the manufactured ones have a ten-cent tax on each package. Yes, even this far back in the bush we have all the "conveniences" of modern civilization!
    The sermon was long and impressive. I hope it isn't sacrilegious to mention that the impressive part, to me, was the way the priest curled his mouth over his "R's." The sermon was, of course, in French, and consequently over our heads. I did better than Don at that. I heard "Quebec" at least twice, and a couple of "Marcredies."
    After mass we went back to camp, and after a strenuous week of loafing decided we needed a day of rest, so we alternately read and slept on the sandy beach in our birthday suits, trying to get a tan. In the late afternoon several of the priests from the villa came down to visit, and invited us on a hike the next day. That sounded swell, until we found that the hike involved the scaling of the highest peak in the Laurentian Mountains.
    Nevertheless, we decided to go, providing that we could take the car part way, to alleviate the strain on us. This was agreed upon, and the Jesuits departed, promising to call for us at seven the next morning.
    That night it rained. That's putting it in a mild way. It bucketed down all night. The wind came howling off the lake and stripped the poncho, or waterproof blanket, off our perishable supplies. We had to get up in the middle of the night in that driving downpour, and wrestle with the most unmerciful summer storm I've ever seen, and I've seen some darlings.
    The next morning our camp was a sea of mud. We had piled our boxes of provisions upon sticks to keep them off the ground, but they were still in three inches of water. Our "When it rains it pours" salt did just that, but I doubt if the advertising meant like soup. The sugar was the best syrup we've had so far. And cold coffee, brewed by a tempest in a mud puddle I never did like. By the time we had everything straightened out, in a matter of some two hours, we figured that our labors had exhausted us, since this was supposed to be a pleasure trip, so we went back to bed, that being the only dry place where we could lie down.
    Little did we dream that the hike was scheduled for "rain or shine." But the intrepid Jesuits, who must be prepared for typhoons or heat spells alike, arrived and routed us out about two hours later. The sun was grinning down from a cloudless sky, and not a mud puddle was in evidence. We all piled into the car, and away we went. We drove five or six miles, and still no sight of the mountain we were to conquer. At the end of ten miles I had about decided that we must go another fifty to get within striking distance of anything higher than the Hospital Hill, but in another mile we stopped by a lac, and dismounted to begin the ascent.
    The mountain, of which there were three ascents of the approximate height of the Medford Hotel each, loomed before us. Don and I almost laughed ourselves sick. We almost flipped a coin to see whether we'd drive up in the car, or run a race with each other afoot. We decided that this would spoil the fun for the others though, so we fell in line with the rest. We were the first to holler for a stop. Scorning the use of such a commonplace article as the path, our guide dashed into the thickest part of the brush he could find, at what seemed to be at the time to be a dog trot. Fine. This was something like it. No mollycoddling going on here.
    The first time I tripped on a wet moss-covered rock and caromed off into a tree just added zest to the party. Even the second time, while floundering up a gully full of peculiarly tenacious ferns, when I tripped again and undid the work of ten minutes by sliding half way to the bottom again on my jowls, I laughed. A bit hollowly, but still in the game. I'm still wondering why those ferns didn't hold me back on the way down, as they had on the way up.
    By this time the pace had increased to a run. And we could hear our guide dashing along ahead of us. We could even catch a glimpse now and then. But in a few minutes all this changed. Something had happened to that hill. The top of the thing receded in direct ratio to the distance climbed. It now looked almost as high as Roxy Ann, what you could see of it through the dense undergrowth.
    About this time, upon our gasped interrogation as to where the top had gone, we were assured that it was right in front of us. Only about seventy-five feet. But it was seventy-five feet straight up. Whew. The trees had also become very active. I'd start by one, holding out my hand to avoid coming too close, when all of a sudden it would come up, roots and all, move right over in front of me, and anchor itself right smack in front of me. Naturally I'd hit it. I didn't mind that so much, but when the thing would suddenly move back to its original position and take another run at me, I did get sore.
    It was that way clear to the top of the third hump. Don and I were both a mass of perspiration, bumps, mosquito bites, cuts and bad temper. And what made it worse, there were our friends as cool as a spring breeze, calmly viewing the scene below. It WAS lovely, but that was a bad time for me to be looking at it. I thought it was about time for dinner, and said so. Don backed me up in this. The Jesuits looked surprised, and asked us how long we thought we'd been climbing. We estimated the time as somewhere between two and five hours. It had been exactly twenty-three minutes. The next time I climb that hill, er--, I mean mountain, it's going to take me between two and five hours. Because I'm not going to try to do it at a gallop!
    For the next few days we just rested. We built two log rafts, with some nails we pulled out of driftwood. Don's was made of two logs nailed together with cross pieces, while mine was a single log with  outriggers. Mine was a little faster than his. It only took ME fifteen minutes to go a hundred yards. We were out about a hundred yards from the shore, having a swell time, the first day we had our vessels. But our good time ceased abruptly when we tried to get back. What we estimated to be a mild current offshore was at least strong enough to hold us like an anchor. We couldn't move an inch, no matter how hard we threshed the water with our improvised "paddles."
    At the end of a half hour spent in this idle pursuit, we had to swim them in. That is, I piled off mine, swam over to Don's, and together we alternately swam and push his Santa Maria to shore. Then we swam out and brought in the Half Moon. We called it that because we originally started out for Hudson Bay.
    We had planned on paddling out to a little island some two or three miles offshore, but abandoned that. The next day Father Ricard and Father Le Lande rowed down to our camp. They had a nice fast rowboat which skimmed along over the water at a dizzy pace. We were innocently playing around on the outrigger about seventy-five yards from the bank. Don was sitting on the boat, while I was standing in water up to my shoulders. He had a paddle in his hand and we were playing baseball with oysters. The bottom was covered with them.
    They're not good to eat, so I'd dive down into the goo, and come up with a handful of them. Then I'd chuck 'em at Don, and he'd scatter them all over the surrounding territory with his "bat." That is, he would if he could hit my very special in-out-upshoot-sideways slide-figure-eight-spitball curve. You can do that with an oyster, you know. At least I can, but then, of course, I'm a very extraordinary person.
    When we saw the Jesuits' chaloupe round the bend, we thought we'd have a little fun. I swam out and joined Don on the Half Moon. Then we asked them to give us a tow to shore. They cheerfully fell in with this suggestion, and tossed us a rope. Then the fun started. Father Leland sat at the oars while Father Ricard sat in the stern with a canoe paddle. They were going to give us the ride of our lives, but they reckoned without our raft.
    After straining at the oars for about ten minutes, even actually cracking one of them in the process, they looked around. We were about five feet or ten feet farther from shore than when we'd started!
    The next day, as we were up bright and early at noon, I decided to paddle out to the islands anyway. I started out in nice sunshine, and a calm and unruffled sea. Out in the middle a storm blew up, and it started to rain. The waves washed over the boat, and darned near over me. I was straddling the log, of course, and every big wave would wash me off. Undaunted, I'd get back on, especially since if I'd stayed off I would have been neatly and finally drowned.
    After a long time of this monkey business, I got to the island. I was cold and my legs were cramped. But the storm was dying down, so after about ten minutes I started back, The trip back wasn't so difficult, because the water was smoother. When I did get back, Don had long since eaten supper. We estimate that it took me about five hours to row about five or six miles.
    One evening we were in the village of Nominingue, sitting in front of the general store. There were several young fellows sitting around talking, and we horned in on the conversation. Two of them spoke English. Their names were Roland and Paul Morris. Roland is twenty-two, and owns the main garage here. He has owned it, too, for two years. Paul, who is twenty-four, is working on the new church that the community is building.
    The people here have been swell to us. Not all of them can speak English with us, but they at least try. We are going hunting and fishing with the Morris kids tomorrow, and are going to have with us a Canadian guide, who speaks excellent English, through having worked for several years in the States. He says he is French, although he has the good old Irish name of Burke! Today, when I needed a typewriter to get this story out, George Burke offered to find one for me.
    He introduced me to Mr. Louis Godard, who speaks excellent English, and I told Mr. Godard my story. With the amazing spirit of the community, he generously offered me his typewriter, and all the paper I could use. He then offered Don and me the use of his summer camp on the lake, to give us a rest from sleeping in the car. I wonder if he knows how welcome that was! He sells insurance here, and knows all the lakes and streams.
    This is a great fishing and hunting country. Moose and bear are the main game animals, and they seem to have every kind of fish, including trout, which they pronounce "troot." The Jesuits at the villa catch loads of fish, and Mr. Godard has a hunting and fishing lodge in the "bush."
    If this article is to make the mail, I'll have to close it now, and tear down to Mr. Godard's camp and hit the hay. We have another couple of weeks to spend here, so next week you may go fishing with
Medford Mail Tribune, July 30, 1933, page 3


To the Editor:
    To Medford kids who mostly know how to fish, Nominingue would be a revelation. Last week we were invited to go to tempt the wary poisson from its lair. All the tackle we have is one piece of line about the size of clothesline, two hooks, and a pair of girls' glass earrings for bait. This impressive array of junk was left in our limousine by the former owner.
    We left town about an hour before dark, and drove to a lake five or six miles away. Before leaving, our guides equipped us with a can of worms and four bottles of beer. The game was to see if you had time to fish between glasses of beer. The lake we were using had no beach, so we perched ourselves precariously along the logs and rocks on the shore, unwound our lines, and dangled them enticingly before the fish. This proved to be old stuff to the fish, and they ignored us, and all our works and pomps.
    Five or ten minutes of this was quite sufficient for Applegate, so he finished his beer and started back a mile or two to the car. By this time it was dark, and the path had been moved, and the hills had changed position and it started to rain. After wandering about for some few minutes, the car was finally located, and he went to bed.
    The rest of the party came staggering in about an hour later, soaked and sore, and sans fish. If there are any fish near Nominingue they are too slick for me, and can stay in Nominingue. I don't like fish anyway. Jack Murray and I went fishing up on Butte Creek one time. We ate fish for dinner, too. We saw to that before leaving Medford. We took a can of sardines along. And even at that we had to walk two miles to find a can opener!
    Now that Jack and I are at last through with school in Medford, the story can be told as to how we played hooky that day. I just stayed out of school on my own volition. Then I called up high school, and said I was Horatio Alger, and wanted a Mr. John Murray, who had been highly recommended to me, to do some very special work, which required his very special talents. I'll bet Miss Kirtley didn't suspect that those talents were mainly the ability to cast a fly where it should be cast!
    Anyway, Jack got out on the strength of it, and away we went in a shower of small stones. Jack caught several fish, but even moving down to the hatchery, like I did, wasn't enough to overcome the handicap of my bungling, and I caught nothing except hell at school the next day. Oh, well.
    Don and Dick went to a dance here last week. It was a square dance, and looked too complicated for us. We just sat by and watched. But the people doing it seemed to be enjoying themselves. The square dances are occasionally alternated with what are known in Canada as "blues," fox trots, waltzes and drags. Since we can't dance anything but the blues, we only get to dance occasionally. But some of the girls from Montreal are swell dancers, so we had a good time.
    Nominingue has no paved streets, and horse and buggy are the order of the day. One night we were in town driving around in the Dodge. The lights, true to their reputation, weren't so hot. I was playing with them, trying to get them to work, and I was driving with just the parking lights. With no warning at all, the front lights suddenly went on. They must have been broken. And there were two horses on the front end of a large and impressive-looking wagon bearing down on us. I swung the wheel hard and slammed on the brakes. The tires squawked, the car skidded, the back end came up in the air, and the front went down on its knees, but--we missed the nags.
    We have a lot of fun terrifying the horses. One day we scraped the muffler off on a rock. Clear off. And did that old car set up an awful racket. We thundered through town like an airplane, devastating a swath of horses the length and breadth of the valley. The poor things would either stand and shiver and wait for the end, or dash over a few fences and through a few barns, scattering excited Canuck farmers and Rhode Island chickens all over the landscape. I think they didn't care much for our noise.
    Every night we go to meet the train. The eternal "triangle" which grew so monotonous in Medford, namely Applegates to Colvigs to DeVoes, is carried on here by swimming in the afternoon, meeting the train in the evening, and then going to the "mail," or post office, at night. Everyone in town does it. And so do we. The night the muffler was gone we had words at the train with the sheriff, who warned us against, or "agin." as our good judge would say, disturbing the town that night. We did our best by idling along in low gear, but even so we made an awful uproar.
    McGill University, of Montreal, conducts a summer camp for boys near here. We have met several of the college kids, and have had a pretty good time over at their camp swimming and playing ping-pong. A little kid about ten years old almost took me over in a game yesterday. Not that that it is hard to do, but a ten-year-old kid!
    One of the McGill kids, Everett Crutchlow, started to walk the three miles from town to camp. It gets pretty dark around here at night and always rains on an occasion like that. He was trying to find his way home through the brush with a flashlight, and of course the flashlight went out. He threw it away, and spent the rest of the night wandering around through the tules. When we saw him the next day he was just getting back from a canoe trip. And some people call that a vacation.
    One of the kids at camp, Jerry Halpenny, is center on McGill's football team. He told us that the forward pass has only been in use for two years here, and they don't use interference. It is all defensive power and no offensive. A game like that wouldn't be terribly interesting to watch, I should think.
    There is a family here named Greer, who live in Montreal. They have a home near the lake, and they most always have a house full of guests. They have two boys, Gordon, who is the same age as my kid brother, John, or fourteen, and Eddy, who is eighteen. We met them at one of the dances, and now we are staying at their place. Just a couple of beachcombers, that's us. Gordon has a great time herding the old Dodge around. Aside from hitting most of the rocks around, he does pretty well.
    Monday afternoon, Mr. Greer took Don and me over to the McGill camp in their power boat. It is useless, I suppose, to mention that it rained. It always rains up here when you want to do something. It was a nice day when we started out. The sun was warm, and there wasn't a sign of a cloud. Mr. Greer wanted to know if we cared to take coats along, but we pooh-poohed the idea. He, however, wise man that he is, took them anyway.
    Halfway across the lake it started to rain. Just a sprinkle at first, then a drizzle, and finally a real rain. Not a summer shower, but a real old winter one. On the way back the motor wouldn't start. Outboard motors never will when you want them to. They're just like rain. Mr. Greer stood in the back of the boat and pulled on the starting rope for three-quarters of an hour, while we rowed. When we were nearly home the thing started and ran perfectly the rest of the way. And soon as we were home it stopped raining. If we'd waited for it to stop it would have been raining yet.
    We'll be here until the tenth of August, and then back to New York. Maybe then we can get away on this world trip we've been hollering about all these years.
    It seems now as though we'd been on the high seas for months, since we've had no mail since leaving New York, and will get none before going back to New York.
    Air mail costs the same from here to Medford as it does from New York to Medford, eight cents an ounce. I expected it to cost about twice as much. In fact, it's really cheaper, because they weigh the letters on a meat scales, and if it is a bit overweight, they don't know it.
    We saw something funny yesterday. While out in the middle of the lake we met four guys in a rowboat pulling another rowboat full of hay. Gee, it looked silly. Four men rowing about half a bale of hay.
    Don didn't get enough sleep last night. He's sitting across from me at Mr. Godard's desk sleeping. Guess we'll have to terminate this and get down to camp and have our bean soup. So long, till next week.
Medford Mail Tribune, August 5, 1933, page 3


To the Editor:
    Last night I started to write an article and finished one page and tore it up. If you had to write feeling like I did, you'd want to tear it up, too, I'm afraid. Tomorrow we leave for New York to try again to get out for Europe. After all the hollering we've done, we'll simply have to get out, whether the boats want us or not, and they don't.
    We've had a lot of fun here, fishing, getting sunburned, loafing and imagining it's winter. That's not too hard to imagine, either, since it rains most of the time. Mark Twain has nothing on us when he said that the worst winter he ever spent was one summer on Puget Sound. After the scorching summers of Medford and New York, it's kind of hard getting used to this kind. And I for one don't want to get used to them. The ideal summer to me is the kind they have in Medford, where it gets nice in the spring and stays that way till fall. The summers in New York are too hot. Not according to the mercury, but the humidity is so high that ninety seems hotter than a hundred and ten in Medford.
    It's been a long time since I've heard from Medford. We haven't had any mail since we've been here, and don't expect any till we get back to the city. If there have been any more riots or murders, I haven't heard of them. When I left Medford I supposed that nearly everyone in the country must have heard of the little war being waged in the Rogue Valley. But not so. Very few people around New York act as though they'd ever heard of Oregon, let alone Medford.
    We generally carry a map with us to show people where the Pacific Coast is. The United Air Line maps all show Medford prominently as one of the main stops, and that helps some.
    To change the subject abruptly, one day I was sitting on the beach with several members of the Greer family, and we got to talking about peculiar habits of people. That led up to the peculiar foods eaten throughout the world, and I remembered that somewhere I'd heard that in Italy blood pudding is devoured with gusto. Thinking to horrify my audience with this revolting dish, I let them have it, in my most disgusted tone of voice. And I caught a Tartar. They all eat it around here and think it's great. It really can't be as bad as it first sounds. It's made with beef blood and onions, made into patties like hamburger, and fried.
    I'm always sticking my foot in it like that. Last night I was panning Indians, trying to blast that old hallucination about the tall, straight and romantic Indian buck. The ones I've seen have been just the opposite. One of the gentlemen in the crowd was a quarter Indian, of course. Mmnyyah!
    This week we went to a party at a summer camp near here. The mayor of the village was throwing it, and there were about 50 people there. Where they all came from I can't imagine. During the festivities I met a young lady who had been studying English at Exeter in England, and she gave us a lot of addresses throughout Europe of friends to look up when we got over there. Dorothy Murray, Mr. and Mrs. Greer's daughter, and I were dancing one night at the salle de danse in the village. She's a swell dancer. A waltz number was being played, and I asked her for it. We were having a swell time till we noticed that we were all alone on the floor. Not another soul got up, and there must have been 75 people there. And I never could waltz. Gosh, did I feel silly? I think the natives frown upon the dip up here, for they certainly stared.
    One thing about Canada that I've noticed is that you seldom see people drunk. You do occasionally, but not often. The liquor is sold under government control, in liquor dispensaries, and can be bought only one bottle at a time. But there is nothing to prevent one from going right back in and getting another, and another, and so far into the night. In Nominingue there is no liquor commission store, so only beer and wine are sold. Beer sells for thirty cents for a quart bottle, and is guaranteed to contain not less than two and a half percent of alcohol by volume, and really contains nearly eight. Wine is 25¢ for a very small glass.
    According to the liquor price list that I sent you from New York, and to which Mom objected, grain alcohol and wine are cheaper in the states than here. Alcohol is $24 a gallon here (imperial gallon--nearly five quarts) and is $5 in New York. I'm putting this down just because Canada is generally associated with liquor, although I've found out that when it isn't prohibited, people aren't nearly so anxious to get it.
    When we get back to New York, I still have that interview with McIntyre to help along the newspaper situation in Medford, Oregon. And darned if I know what I'm going to say to him. As far as I know he's never been to Medford to fish the Rogue (by the way, as long as I've lived in Medford, I've never fished there, and probably never will).
    The beard experiment was a dismal failure. For the first week or so we let 'em grow, and they were coming along quite well. But at the end of that time we were invited to a dance, and shaved 'em off. Then we got in the social swim for good, and haven't had anything but a three-day stubble since. And I used to have twice that right in Medford. But on the other hand, the old haircut situation has done about everything for us that could be expected. I haven't had a haircut since the first week we were in New York and won't have another till I get back there. Don got one here in the village yesterday, and today his skull shows white where the sun didn't have a chance to tan it. The old wheeze about taking my hair down and having a good cry isn't going to remain a wheeze much longer. All I need right now is something to cry over.
    The main reason I'm waiting till New York to get mine worked over is the ten-cent barber school down in the Bowery. Vic Dallaire and I went down there last year to have our heads shaved. I got the front seat, where they were working for their first P.G.s and got a pretty fair job. But Vic went way in the back, and got a first grade day pupil. For several minutes nothing much happened, then I could hear a lot of grunting going on down that way, and when I got my head loose from the guy who was working on me, I looked around. Vic's playmate was almost sitting on his head, with scissors in both hands. They seemed to be having a rather exciting time, but my barber wouldn't let me watch it long. A few minutes later a petulant wail came floating down the room. I recognized it as Vic's voice, and he was saying: "Hey, I came in here for a haircut, not to wrestle with you."
    Boy, did he get a scraping! When we got out he walked along the street with his hand on his head so people wouldn't be able to see it all. Don's Nominingue product isn't a whole lot better.
    Since we are leaving fairly early in the morning it might be a good idea to say goodbye to our friends scattered about, so I'll start in by saying it to you--at least Au Revoir, if not goodbye, from
Medford Mail Tribune, August 13, 1933, page 9


To the Editor:
    I certainly is a true saying that God alone knows where Don and Dick will be on the morrow. We thought that by this time we would be back in New York for a certainty, but here we are in Montreal, with a good chance of staying here in Montreal at least for another month. You see, we sail from here for England on a cattle boat in a few weeks. That is more of a prospect than we had in the big city, so here we stay.
    Last Monday we left Nominingue, saying goodbye to the Greer family, with whom we had been staying, and promising to look them up in the next 15 or 20 years if we happened to be in Canada. Mr. Greer came down from Nominingue with us, and on the morning we were to leave he remembered a friend of his in the cattle shipping business, and that that it would not be amiss to look him up on the long shot that he might be able to do something for us. He did. We went to this friend's office, and were promised a sailing the next week until he learned that we were Americans, and not English subjects. Then it was all off. But he told us the name of another shipper, who was not so fastidious about nationality, and this man proved to be our oyster.
    He told us that last week he had scoured the city for men to go with a shipment of Kansas mules to Genoa, Italy, and could find none, although the pay was good. And here were we, not over a few hours' drive away, pining for just such an opportunity. Cattle boats have long been the accepted means of access to Europe for vagabonds, but the truth is there are practically none now leaving the United States. There is, for one thing. a 30 percent duty on American beef, and so American cattle are brought into Canada, and shipped from Montreal or Quebec.
    We would rather ship from Montreal, anyway. I have been out of New York once, and the trip is not so exciting. After leaving the grand view of the Manhattan skyline and harbor, and thence out through the narrows that separate Long Island and Staten Island, the only thing to see is a rapidly receding shoreline, and then nothing but the open sea. This way, after leaving Montreal we will have the whole delightful trip out the St. Lawrence, with a grand view of Quebec, and through the most interesting and quaint part of Canada.
    When we first went through Montreal we didn't think much of it. We found out, to our surprise, that it was built on an island, and that we would have to pay a toll to get off, as we had to get on, that it had about a million inhabitants; that the old section of the town is very French and not too clean, and the streets there are narrow and twisting, and that was about all.
    Since we've been back we've seen a little more of it. The town is literally swamped with colleges. McGill is the largest and best known, but there seem to be hundreds of others. The first day we were driving about the town with Mr. and Mrs. Greer we passed nine, and we didn't go very far, either. That day we went out to Brother Andre's shrine. It is something like the St. Anne de Boupre shrine at Quebec, where thousands of invalids are cured every year. The place itself is on the slopes of Mount Royal, and from the top one can look down on a long sweep of beautifully landscaped and terraced park. The old, original shrine, where Brother Andre first healed the sick, still stands, but is dwarfed by the imposing new one.
    A long flight of wide marble stairs leads up the mountainside, and the faithful may be seen at any time of the day climbing them on their knees. The sight is an imposing one. Inside the shrine is a huge pile of discarded crutches, leg braces, specially designed shoes for the crippled, and canes. And many of the crutches and things bear testimonials, and especially prayers of thanks for the cures that have been effected.
    Don and I were allowed to interview Brother Andre. He is a very old man, and we could hardly hear him speak, but he gave me his blessing for our trip and promised to pray for us.
    From there we drove to the other end of the island, to visit the Chapelle de la Reparation. (You ought to hear that pronounced in French. I can pronounce it now, but it took me all week to learn.) This place is one where a colony of monks have established their headquarters, and where they have the Way of the Cross laid out on a trail through the woods. The stations are made every day, and the procession is always swelled by people from town.
    We also, that first day, visited the Montreal cemetery. That is a rather peculiar place to go, but it really was worthwhile. One of the peculiar things about it is the huge vault where the bodies are kept during the winter months. That may not surprise you, but it did me. The winters are so severe here that it is impossible to dig graves in the frozen ground. So the people unfortunate enough to die at that time are stored in the vault until the warm weather arrives. Then the family of the deceased is notified, and whether they show up or not for the funeral, the body is buried. All the little towns between here and Nominingue have their little vault.
    We pass them quite often, but I didn't know what they were until recently. We are running a taxi service between here and Nominingue with the old Dodge now. Last weekend we took Mr. and Mrs. Greer up, and brought Mr. Greer back yesterday. And Friday we will take him back up. Then Don and I are going to take a canoe trip back in the hills for a few days, and Mr. Greer is coming back to the city with friends. And the week after that we will come down and get him, return to Nominingue for the weekend, and then return to Montreal for another week. After that we will probably have decided to stay here the rest of our lives, and try to get tanned.
    Upon leaving New York we were firmly decided that we would be tanned before returning. And we aren't tanned yet. The only week that the sun shone over two or three times was the week that I had a beastly cold from the time we got caught in the rain storm in the boat, that I told you about, and I was afraid to take off my shirt. The cold is gone now, but so is the sun.
    Hey! Hey; I've eaten blood pudding! And if it weren't for the thought of what I was eating, it wouldn't be so bad. We went down to the old French market with Mr. Greer one morning, primarily to see blood pudding in the raw. I expected to see buckets with big pools of clotted blood swimming around, but it was displayed in cakes like cheeses, and done up like little sausages. It didn't look half bad, but we couldn't eat it because of the thought. If you ever want to make a rather long but interesting trip, come up this way. The lakes are swell, and the mountains are small, but nice. And the lakes are not all cluttered up with summer camps like they are further south.
    There are three kids camped near us at Nominingue, two Canadians and an Englishman. They want to make the trip out to the coast, and down to Los Angeles one of these days. I spent about two hours telling them about Crater Lake, and the trip down the Redwood Highway. I even mentioned Diamond Lake, even though I never cared for it myself. I hardly realized, till I got to talking about it myself, how much scenery there is around Medford. I've been around quite a bit now, and I've never seen anything to compare with it. The streams in the East and up here are nice, but they don't have that clear sparkle of our own. The lakes are just as nice, though, even though they aren't very clear. When a lake is deep in this country it is advertised not by the clear blue or green of our lakes, but by a jet black color. And even jet black can be nice.
    Don and I are pretty well acquainted in Nominingue now. One of the quaintest characters is the fire warden. He is also the sheriff, the same one that I mentioned having bawled me out about the lack of a muffler that time on the Dodge. We were talking to him one time about his family, and he started to praise his wife. Said that she had given him 13 children. I gave a long whistle, and he hastened to explain that that was his second wife. His first had given him seventeen! He's some man!
    By this time next week we'll know quite a lot about Montreal. A funny thing about Canadians is that the average run of them know more about the United States than the average American that we met in the East. And we know so little shout their country. We are learning, gradually though. Maybe that is part of that education that one is supposed to learn by travel.
    Next week we may learn about the back woods, which is one reason that we are making the canoe trip. The canoe, by the way, is the real birchbark one, made by a real Indian. Maybe we'll find something interesting to tell you next week. Write General Delivery, Nominingue, P.Q., Canada.
    So long for awhile then, from
Medford Mail Tribune, August 20, 1933, page 9


To the Editor:
    One might think that Don and I were railway conductors, the way we shuttle back and forth between Nominingue and Montreal, with occasional loud cries about an intended trip back to New York. We don't seem to be able to make up our minds. The latest has us all ready to leave Montreal shortly for England, but don't depend on that.
    Mom sent me a sheet of clippings from the Mail Tribune the other day constituting the first news I've heard from Medford in over a month. And most of it was wedding announcements. Cupid seems to be getting a good workout in the valley of the Rogue. Congratulations to his victims, of course.
    We scaled that mountain (that I mentioned some time ago) again yesterday. This time in the capacity of guides. The underbrush is so thick that no trail is possible, so we took our directions from the sun and had little trouble. By the time we got to the top we were all tired, and laid ourselves down on the greensward to take a blow. We hadn't been there long when we heard a heavy crashing in the brush, and assumed that other mountain-scalers were at work. We did not go long undeceived, however.
    The crashing grew louder, coming our way, and Gordon Greer, the fourteen-year-old pest that I've mentioned before, got up to welcome them with loud voice. He disappeared, and in about two seconds later returned at a remarkable speed, white as a sheet, and unable to talk. He had seen something startling, we could see, and the crashing of underbrush had stopped. Arming ourselves (there were six of us) with clubs and rocks, we went to investigate--and scared up a young black bear cub, who vanished immediately into a large pile of boulders. Needless to say, we immediately started the return journey. That is the first bear I've seen around here, although I've seen several near Medford, up towards the lake.
    The first of the week, after coming up from Montreal with Mr. Greer, we secured a canoe from the McGill University summer camp and started on a trip into the bush. We'd gone about three miles when it started to rain, of course. It always does here, as I've mentioned before. It looked like an all-day affair, so we returned, and have kept postponing our departure until today. We've had beautiful weather for several days now, but this morning it turned cloudy again.
    When we first got to this country it looked sort of miniature. The hills were only hills, and the valleys were small. Now that we've been here for over a month, the hills look almost like mountains, and although the valleys are still small, they are so green and nice that we have become greatly attached to them. The glaring difference between this country and the West is that the valleys and mountains are always green. They don't dry up like the side of Roxy Ann every summer, and consequently the country is not nearly so scarred with forest fires.
    When we left New York we didn't wait to see what fruits our advertisements in the different papers for traveling companions had borne, since we had changed our minds about wanting them. Lew Tennerielo, a friend of ours there, volunteered to collect the answers for us and send them to Montreal. When we got to that city we asked for our mail in Don's name only, and the letter was sent to me. We didn't find that out till last week.
    We did finally get the letter, a month or so late, however, and among others not nearly so interesting was the following one:
"Dear College Students:
    "While scanning the usually uninteresting Public Notice columns of the Bronx Home News, your personal caught my jaded eye. After rubbing the aforementioned members, I re-read the six lines and decided that since opportunity knocks but once, I would open wide my door.
    "Like the several other thousands (or is it millions?) of discontented mortals, the words adventure and travel have always had a great allure for me. Although I have never been employed in the capacity of companion before, I feel that I could fulfill that post satisfactorily (providing that I fully comprehend the meaning of the word).
    "I am a FEMALE of twenty possessed of a knowledge of typing and stenography, and avid interest in journalism. Also a pretty fair sense of humor. These are my humble qualifications and I dare say they won't do at all.
    "But I'm quite sure that if YOU were within reach of Aladdin's Lamp you could not forbear to rub it just to see if it would work. Besides a three-cent stamp is such a nominal investment!
    "I realize my salutation would not be approved by Miss Emily Post, but you left me no alternative as you neglected to state your sex. Besides it's so much more original.
    "Until I hear from you, I shall still be, most hopefully, MISS ---------------"
    Since we did not get this interesting epistle until a few days ago, I suppose that we cannot really claim much credit for having resisted the temptation of having brought her along. I still have her address, however. And Lew has already promised to look her up!
    One of the nice things about being out on the highway of life alone like Don and Dick now are, is that those hard knocks of experience which we depended on to supplement our education are not long in making their appearance. For instance, right now our sum total of negotiable securities is thirteen cents (Canadian coin of the realm), a car of doubtful value, which we can't give away, and a lusty appetite. Two lusty appetites, to be more precise.
    In fact, that crack about negotiable securities can hardly be said to apply to the Dodge. We wanted to give it to Mr. Greer when we left because he's been so nice to us. In fact the whole family has. But when we went down to the customs house to declare our intentions they gave us the raspberry. It can't be done. The only way we can get rid of it is to take it across the line and sell it for what it will bring. But if anyone can tell me how we're going to get this old oil hog that far on thirteen cents, I'll be much obliged.
    This hardship stuff to harden one for the battle of life is all right in the abstract, but lousy in the concrete. But are we downhearted? Yes! I mean NO. In fact, Don, with a wistful look in his eye and a wistful catch in his throat, just said--"Hell, I wish we were in Tahiti."
    We may be, one of these fine days, and don't you forget it. We've got a pal here in Nominingue who wants to go to England with us. He doesn't know what he's sticking his head in, I'm afraid.
    We had one experience here in Canada that I've been wanting to have. We went on a hay ride. A great big hay rack, with about two feet of hay in the bottom, and a big canvas spread across it, and pillows scattered copiously about, and about half the young people in Canada all trying to sit on them. There was a swell moon, and the air from the lake was warm and sweet. Aaaa.
    On this pleasant and pastoral scene I'd best end this week's installment, and go out and start picking berries and looking up the edible herbs in the country, or whatever it is young men with thirteen cents are supposed to do.
    So long, cheerfully, from
Medford Mail Tribune, August 27, 1933, page 5


To the Editor:
    This is getting rather monotonous, I'll bet, listening to Applegate talk about running back and forth between Nominingue and Montreal, but monotonous as it may sound, we've really had quite a bit of fun doing it.
    Last week I believe I mentioned an attempted canoe trip that had failed miserably on account of rain. This week we completed the trip, and it was still raining.
    The trip was made in an eleven-foot birchbark canoe, the only weapon, I believe, ever developed by the Indian that ever threatened to hold the white man in check. If the government hadn't abolished their use in umpty-steen, this story would never be written by me, nor read with avid interest by you.
    There being no other type of canoe obtainable, Don and I therefore had to make the best of it and pack our blankets and grub and start out. The day was lovely, and hardly a cloud was in sight. The lake was like glass. Not a stir of wind. And it was nice and warm. Sooner or later I'll learn that those conditions of the elements are to be looked upon with suspicion.
    Before leaving we had obtained maps from the McGill University summer camp showing just where we were going and how to get there. I should say, "Vertigo--and how to get there," but that would be a pun, so I won't. These maps were the most lying documents I've seen in some time.
    The first part of the trip, six miles, must needs be accomplished with the Dodge, and Eddie Greer drove us over, to return for us in two days. Our starting point was to be an old saw mill on Lac des Isles, a lake about twice or three times the size of Diamond Lake. As we left the pier, two girls in a silver canoe came out onto the water across from us, and started out. Being in good condition from our mountain climbing, we put on the heat and flashed past them in a lather of foam. In a short time we were out of sight around the first bend of the rim of the lake. And there we made our first mistake. The map showed the turn, and so we took it. We could see a big arm of the late off to our right, but the map said left and we went left. We paddled for an interminable time, at last coming to a long, narrow strip of water which had no place on the map. But we went through it anyway, and then tried to guess our direction, Don and I almost getting into a fight about which way to turn. The map was very clear on this point. Scattered along our intended route were scattered various markers, such as stars, asterisks, and pothooks of an original kind that I have not seen before.
    At one part, it was very definitely marked with a sign saying "log cabin" and at another point "sunken boat." But we could find neither. So we decided to turn right, and keep going. We did so, and after about an hour and a half more furious canoeing, we rounded a point of land only to encounter two more girls in another silver canoe. The woods were full of them. So boldly we bawled across the water to find what lake we were on. Our line of march showed Lac des Isles, Lac Croix, Lac St. Denis, Lac Margol, and Lac Something-or-other-that-I-forget.
    Since we had gone through three lakes already, we reflected, we must now be on Lac St. Denis. But it is always a good thing to check one's position, just for luck. So we hollered over to find out. It took us quite a while to get this figured out, but finally we did. We had been paddling around a rather large island for the better part of the day, and were now within a half a mile of where we'd started, and the girls were the same two we'd seen before, only they looked different because when they went home for lunch they'd changed their costumes.
    The one who lived on the rim of the lake, for one of them did, could speak no English, and the one that could speak English didn't know a darn thing about the lake. But between the two we finally made out the direction we were supposed to take (almost directly opposite of the one we had taken) and started out, all over again. We invited the two girls along as guides but they declined.
    We finally found the first portage, accompanied by two of the log cabins mentioned on the map, although they were on the wrong portage. This first portage was about half a mile long, and we hoisted the canoe onto our shoulders and carried it, coming back for the other stuff. The other end of the trail embraced one end of a large though narrow lake, which must have been Lac Croix. The map indicated a right turn at this point, so we made a left one, and soon found the next portage.
    After making this one, by carrying the canoe right-side-up, with our supplies in it, we again launched on a lake, which looked nothing like any on the map, just as the sun went down. We had two more lakes to cross and three more portages before we were to camp at a McGill outpost for the night. The first lake was a little one, and we made no difficulty at the next portage, but by the time we made the second lake, it was almost dark. We could hardly see the farther shore, so we traversed that pond at an enormous rate of speed, and at an enormous personal risk, only to be unable to find the portage in the murky gloom of the farther shore.
    After paddling about in the dark for some minutes, we finally discovered a break in the trees, which proved to be a small, though deep, creek. Fearing lest we be forced to spend the night out in the open, we pushed on through it, and eventually emerged upon another lake, the size of which we were unable, naturally, to discover in that inky void. Anyway, we started out. If we got within fifty feet of the shore we could see the line of dead white driftwood which lined it, and thus kept from getting lost at sea.
    It must have been two hours that we pursued this foolish pastime in the vain hope of finding the camp. At last we came to another break in the trees, not nearly so well defined, but still a line of gray against a background of jet. We edged our decrepit and deceitful craft into this, an inch at a time, ascertaining our position every minute or so by the use of matches. The passage was only about a hundred yards long, but it took us at least twenty minutes to encompass the journey, caroming off sunken rocks one minute only to throw ourselves against an overhanging piece of driftwood the next. It was a decidedly eerie feeling. Not a star overhead, not a thing on either side but a sticky sort of black, only a hazy gray in front to show the way we were to go, and no sound save the drip-gurgle-swirl of our paddles. Don was in the front, and I was in the back, but we had to light matches to see if we had not reversed directions in the dark. At long last we came to the next lake, but the impenetrable black was too much for us and we decided to crawl out on the bank and hole up for the night.
    Even this could not be accomplished without a great deal of effort, since the slightest move off center was apt to upset us, and since the bank was tightly rimmed with a ten-foot-high pile of driftwood. We at last found, at the mouth of the connecting stream, however, a clearing a few yards square, and attempted to land a reconnoitering party. Don was it. We lit more matches so as to be able to dodge rocks till we got in close enough, and then he stepped out, and soon announced that the place would do. I followed him out by stepping from the canoe to a rock to the bottom of the lake, some few feet away.
    The boat had drifted out to the middle in the dark, of course. We had to build a fire of wet wood, and try to dry our clothes. I burned my socks, and Don didn't have to, since he had lost his earlier in the day. He's the best guy at losing his socks I ever saw. He lost one down at Valentine's one night, if I remember correctly.
    It must have taken us a good hour to get warm enough to think of going to bed, and by that time it had started to rain. We transferred operations higher up on the hillside into the dense underbrush, under a very large maple tree, and cleared away a place wide enough for two, and made a mattress of leaves. It rained all night, but our emergency home served us well, and we weren't very wet in the morning. In fact a flock of partridges woke us up in the morning digging for worms in the fresh dirt we had thrown up clearing the debris from our bedroom the night before.
    When daylight finally put in an appearance we crawled back down to the shore to cook breakfast, and darned if we weren't in the same place that we'd been at dusk the night before. The answer, of course, is simple enough. The last lake that we'd entered through the little stream in the fast gathering dark, although gigantic on the map, was comparatively small in reality, and we'd paddled completely around it, going out by the same way we'd come in. But I'll be doggoned if that stream looked the same. The last time it had seemed only about half as wide as the first time.
    The McGill camp that we'd scoured the countryside looking for the night before was about thirty feet further up the hill than where we'd slept. We stayed there all that day and all that night just listening to it rain, and feeling sorry for ourselves for having to go back through it. We made no mistake on that point, at any rate, for back through it we went the next day.
    We hated to just go out in the rain and take it, so we rigged up poles at each end of the canoe, and strung rope along them, with cross bars like a radio antennae, and hung our poncho across the resultant framework. May God bless the individual that invented ponchos! It helped a little, but it made the canoe top-heavy, whereas the canoe was quite top heavy enough in its native state. And it made it impossible to portage with the canoe over our heads, as is the proper way to portage, so I've been told.
    We were better than half way home, soaked to the skin and half frozen, when I suddenly made the cheerful discovery that I'd left my wallet at the camp, and had to go back after it. I wanted to go alone, but Don would have none of it. By the time we'd gotten there and back to Lac des Isles, the wind had whipped up a darling of a storm, and the lake was raging. Whitecaps were on every wave, and the rain was bucketing down slantwise, putting a nice layer of suds over the whole thing. Nice. Very nice, but we decided we'd rather drown in the lake than shiver with cold as we drowned on the shore so we struck out. It took us hours to cross that lake, and the wind was rising every minute, threatening to swamp us the next. We did ship a quart or two of water on every wave crest, but we were well equipped to bail, and we arrived back at the mill in a long time, nearly drowned, cold and shivery, hungry, and without even a dry match to afford the comfort of a cigarette.
    Eddie wasn't due with the car for a few hours, so we stripped, rolled up in our wet blankets, with bricks for pillows, in an old shed of the mill, and actually slept till he got there. How, I can't imagine.
    Neither Don nor I have any idea what is likely to transpire next week, but whatever it is, it can't be as unpleasant as that canoe trip.
    So long.
Medford Mail Tribune, September 3, 1933, page 4


To the Editor:
    The editor of the Star, I think, imagines that I imagine that I have a lease on this building, the way I flit in and out, appropriating the best typewriter and the best-looking women in the building to ask questions of, every week. At that, I've been here almost long enough to have a lease on the city hall. But it's been only so much time wasted, as far as accomplishing much is concerned. Oh, well, I've learned quite a lot about Canada, anyway. It almost seems natural to say "us Canadians."
    In a town the size of Montreal it seems strange that there should only be one big newspaper. There is another, La Press, but it is printed in French. The main difference, and the only one that I can see, between the Star and other big newspaper offices is that the reporters here are not eternally smoking cigarettes as they write. Not, I imagine, because the reporters are any more prejudiced against the weed than others, but the building is an old wooden one, and smoking is, of course, prohibited.
    We've been in Nominingue again this week, just returning to Montreal this morning. We're almost as fixed an attraction up there as the town bell ringer. Let me tell you about him. Don and I first noticed him at church one morning. He also acts as usher, when he happens to be awake when people come in. He is an octogenarian of the first water, to say the least. At important parts of the mass it is his duty to ring the large bell. He sits in the back on a raised platform, the rope in his hand, his hand on his chin, and his elbow on the desk in front of him. He seems to have the service timed, for he rings without ever looking up from his doze. Gee, it looks funny to see him there, half asleep with his long walrus mustache curling fiercely up, and his eyebrows drooping tamely down, as he sits week in and week out without ever changing his pose.
    The bear I told you about seeing a while back got itself shot for a deer this week. We were at the dance in the village one evening, and a guy drove up with good old Bruin tied on the running board. We assume that it was the same one, since it was shot within a few miles of where we saw it, and no other has been reported lately, and we know it was shot for a deer since the guy who shot it said so. About the only way left to disguise a deer so people won't shoot it is as a deer, I'm afraid.
    There were three guys from Philadelphia at Greers this weekend, and I now see why Americans have a bad reputation abroad, since these mugs have also been abroad this summer. They personified the American who is supposed to be telling how much better his country is than any other, getting quite drunk continually, and always expressing his lousy sentiments in a loud voice. Phooey.
    We've had a lot of excitement this week. The day before we left here for the country, last week, I picked off an old guy's Ford Sedan downtown with the Dodge. He'd stopped suddenly for a red light (traffic) and since I couldn't stop suddenly for anything, the way the brakes on the car are, I climbed right aboard from behind. The car belonged to a doctor, who was evidently, from his actions, suffering from hydrophobia at the time. I forgot to mention that he was in the Ford sedan at the time of the catastrophe. He didn't stay in it long, though. He got out, and seemed to prefer the Dodge to his Ford. He tried to climb in that. Not wishing to be bit by a hydrophobiac, on account of the children, I forestalled this intention by locking the door.
    A good hydrophobiac is not to be put off so easily, however, and he hung around till I got out (our bumpers were locked) which I didn't do till he'd quit frothing at the mouth, and then I warily crawled out on the opposite side. His car wasn't hurt much--just a bent bumper, which I'd have fixed in a minute, if he'd only have let me get close enough to it. But he wouldn't. Not until after telling me I'd broken his neck, wrecked his car, shattered his nerves and put his pipe out. I still don't think I put his pipe out. That was just a trumped-up charge, I think.
    Anyway, he wanted me to go to his garage with him and see how much the damages would be, whereupon I could pay him and be on my way. Since I was on my way already--to dinner--I declined, promising to look him up the next day, and giving him my address. The next day we went down to the hospital where he is superintendent. Don went in to see him, carrying a tale of woe about how badly hurt I was, with a severely sprained knee or something. But the old guy was so interested in telling about his sore neck that Don didn't have time to eulogize me. The bill was, or rather still is, four dollars and fifteen cents. I think he had the valves ground, too, that being the only thing that I can think of to account for the four dollars.
    And then that afternoon Don got him a nice fat kid on a bicycle. Every time anyone up here sees a United States license on a car, they yell "DAMAGES" at the top of their lungs and one can hear them for miles. In fact, everyone does, and comes running. The kid Don got on the notch happened to be going through a red light same as we were, though, and didn't have any kick coming. It didn't hurt him any, just knocked his bike out from under him, depositing him rather unceremoniously on the street. We're going after a baby buggy this week, after already adding a horse and buggy last month in Nominingue. Too bad we can't frame all these souvenirs and bring 'em back with us.
    For the first time in my life I've had roasting ears roasted. Last summer I didn't get any corn on the cob at all, being on my own resources in New York, except for the one roasted roasting ear I bought at Coney Island for two bits. It was nicely buttered and salted, but the sand--in which I accidentally dropped it--made it taste funny so I threw it away. That's an awful waste, I know, but I wasn't very hungry anyway. What I'm trying to remember now, with little success, is where the devil I got a quarter, last year, in New York.
    Anyway, for the first time in my life I've had roasting ears roasted. We built a huge bonfire of driftwood on the lake shore, and then held the ears of corn over the hottest part with long sticks, until they were nice and black, and all burned on the ends. If the stick didn't break or burn, and let the corn fall in the fire, we then drew off, buttered, salted, and ate them. And were they good? Most decidedly, they were NOT. They tasted like burnt popcorn. If it weren't for the sand which leaped up from the bed of the lake and hid between the kernels it would have been some better, but not much. I like canned corn, myself.
    Some time ago I mentioned something about a kid in Nominingue wanting to go abroad with us, and I guess he'll go. His name is Roland Moriss, and if he does attend us, may God have mercy on him. This vagabonding is swell at times, but this guy gets kind of surly at times and Oh! Oh!--the surly bird catches the germ. That doesn't fit very well, but it's the best pun I can think of at the time.
    We went down to see the shipping master of the cattle boat we are to go on, and now he says we can't go till the twentieth. I'm afraid if we have to wait that long we'll never go, 'cause we're getting pretty low on rocks with which to buy groceries. They claim that everything is two weeks behind schedule because the boat is tied up for repair of damages suffered during the recent Atlantic storms.
    Mr. Ruhl once told me that when there was nothing to say, say it in as few words as possible, so I guess I'd better throw in the sponge on this (thanks, Boyl).
Medford Mail Tribune, September 10, 1933, page 6


    Friends, lend me your chairs. Boy, am I tired! Just put in about 12 hours work, and now to write this! Our trip, I'm sorry to say, has flopped. The guy who was supposed to give us the job on the cattle boat decided that we'd have to pay him thirty-five dollars apiece for the privilege of working on his old hulk, and since even in a pinch we couldn't raise thirty-five cents, we had to give it up. Not for good, understand, but just until we can find more favorable conditions. Were not quite downhearted yet, but we're not a long way from it, either.
    There was no story last week simply because I didn't have eight cents with which to buy an air mail stamp, so there you are. We had to borrow enough money to pay the toll across the bridge getting out of Montreal, and then we started out to find work. When we had gotten as far south as Plattsburg, we heard that they needed apple knockers in the vicinity of Peru, and being more or leas familiar with the work, we applied for, and got, a job.
    The first place we tried was what they call a large orchard in these parts, and the foreman was busy in what they think was a packing house. That poor old packing house was a pathetic thing to see, and the grader--! An antediluvian relic that creaked in every joint, and which no self-respecting apple would go near. However, the firm seemed to be  suffering from no inferiority complex on that account, assumed airs, and wouldn't give us a job. But they did tell us about a guy named Weir who needed help, and so we looked Weir up.
    Gee, but he was a suspicious old goat. He gave us a job all right, and when we asked him what the wages were he said "twenty cents an hour, and if you don't earn it I'll tell you about it." Up till then we hadn't known that a person could even be on a job and make an occasional move and not earn at least that much. But boy, we learned. We asked him if we could park the car to sleep in the orchard so we'd be sure to be at work on time, and he thought that it was a preliminary move to stealing his barn, I think, 'cause he refused most emphatically, and even before letting us park in an empty field across the "hard road," he took our names and addresses, and the license of the car! Even then he warned us that the dog would eat us alive if we so much as stirred during the night. Having no use for the barn, anyway, we didn't stir.
    We worked for him for two days, earning seven dollars and twenty cents for the two of us, and then asked him if we could work on Sunday. He would have none of it, inasmuch as he wouldn't be there to watch us. We suggested that he number our crates, and check up on the amount of work we did that way, but he also looked upon THAT with suspicion, and said "no." So we went looking for another job. We heard that a guy at the largest McIntosh orchard in the world, at Chazy, needed help and that being only about 30 miles back toward Canada, we gave it a try.
    The guy there had no work, but he introduced us to the Cornell Experimental Fruit Survey official, a Mr. Burrell, who gave us work at twenty-five cents an hour, looking for codling moth and scab, to say nothing of curculio, aphis, maggot, sting and a few other ailments. We're still working for him, and hope to make enough here to carry us and the old Dodge back to the coast.
    As if subsisting on apples, bread and peanut butter weren't enough, last night the rear axle of the car parted company with the rest of the machinery, and left me stranded right in the middle of the heavy evening traffic of Peru (population 200). There was a garage way over at the other end of town in the next block, and since I didn't know what was the matter I had the old boiler towed in there to see. I was turning around at the town intersection, and the thing snapped with a horrible bang. The mechanic announced dolefully that it was probably a ring gear. With tears in my eyes as big as McIntosh apples, I inquired how much a new one would cost if I did the work myself. Fifteen dollars. CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT!--fifteen dollars, and all the money we had was about six bucks. Then the mechanic, in a still more doleful voice, announced that it might possibly be a pinion gear, which would only cost about twelve-fifty. Come, come, this was getting better. At last he admitted that it was probably the "exle," and would cost four dollars. I didn't tumble to what he meant by "exle" until he showed me a broken axle out of another car. It looks obvious enough in print, but didn't sound that way.
    Now they're putting in a second-hand one, and it will cost two or three dollars. If this went on long enough, we'd own the garage, but we need the old bus in our work. The work is interesting, and we get in long hours, but I'm afraid it isn't going to last much longer. So we'll probably be home before Thanksgiving. Unless we have another broken "exle," in which case we'll probably never get home. Oh, well!----
    Tonight we're sleeping in the car in the basement of the garage. Where the car is, there also is our bed, as we can't afford "an" hotel. Don's asleep in the thing now, while I pound this out. I'm using the typewriter of one of the kids on the job. He's a graduate of Cornell, too, and lent me his machine for the occasion. It's one of the portable variety, and has a trick lock that I couldn't quite fathom, so I had to trail all the way out to his place--about a mile and a half--in the rain--before I could use it.
    I'm so sleepy I can't hit the right keys, so I'd better let bad enough alone, and let Medford just sit and cogitate on their good fortune in being able to look forward to a visit from
Medford Mail Tribune, October 1, 1933, page 9


    We just got ourselves fired. Not because we were inefficient, of course, but just because there seems no more work to be done for Cornell University in this particular vicinity. That, at least, is what Professor Burrell says, although I think that the main reason is that I beat him two games in a row at ping-pong. That's a game I like, mainly because it's the only one in which I ever win. But for diplomatic purposes, it's not so hot. So now we're fired, which brings me right back to where I started.
    We arrived in town with thirty-two cents, and are leaving it with almost fifty dollars. The thing that we can't figure out is why we haven't more. Try to figure out how anyone can buy about seventy-five cents worth of food in a week and spend about seven or eight dollars doing it. We can't. The Dodge axle was four-fifty, and charging the battery is costing another seventy-five cents. Brake lining will cost a dollar sixty-five, and that leaves us what we're going to try to get home on.
    Last week we spent some time in very laborious mental gymnastics figuring how much it will cost to get back to the coast. With about thirty-two hundred miles from New York to San Francisco, and gas costing an average of twenty cents (which it won't), and the car going fifteen miles on a gallon--which it won't; with oil costing an average of twenty-five cents--which it won't; and the car going fifty miles on a quart--which it won't, and us having no more accidents with axles and such, which we more than likely will, it will cost us around sixty-five dollars to get home, providing that we don't eat, smoke, nor dissipate in any other manner, which I doubt our ability to do. So there you are.
    Living on a diet of peanut butter and bread, as has become our custom of late, and stealing gas and oil, and salvaging bings from gutters, the almost fifty dollars that we now have ought to get us somewhere in the neighborhood of Kansas City, or maybe even Denver. But that's still a pretty long way from Oakland and Medford, if you're thinking of walking it. We're not.
    How would you solve this puzzling problem? Find five faces in the above drawing, and mail with your name and--never mind, never mind. One way out of it is to sink the fifty in a trip to Florida, and live on sweet potatoes and fish all winter. But I'm opposed to such move, inasmuch as I have a highly important reason in being back before November 22nd, which date will be of no significance to anyone until they realize that that is just six months to a day after the date upon which we left Oakland. Even then it won't have any for most people.
    Another good reason for not going to Florida is that I hate sweet potatoes, or batatas, as they are sometimes called. And the third is that when, and if, we got to Florida, we'd still be just as far from home, and Europe, as we ever were, and we want to get back home and get some dough saved before next spring, so we can finish this trip around the world that we've been yelling about for so long.
    We can't save much out of twenty-five cents an hour when it costs as much to live as it does here. Even at that there are two Medford guys working in the immediate vicinity. Vic Dallaire is at Crown Point, just about fifty miles south of here. I heard that he was in Schenectady and wrote to him, and he answered from Crown Point, and said he was going to hitchhike up to Peru and see us last Sunday. He didn't arrive, however. We're going through there on our way home, and if he wants to come, he can be back in Medford afore long. After all the hard work that he and I went to to get out of Medford, I don't know why either of us would want to go back so soon, but it's just one of those things.
    Speaking of Medford, I picked apples a couple of days ago into a fruit picking pail designed, manufactured, and distributed by the Bear Creek Spray Company, Medford, Ore., Rosenbergs' fruit-picking pail. I had to come all the way to New York to use one of the darn things. Professor Burrell says that the people in this part of the country are not adaptable enough to be able to use them on any large scale, but that he likes them. It's nice to see stuff from Medford occasionally.
    The weather in this country is terrible. One day it will be nice and warm, but the next will be cold and bleak, with a blustery wind howling all day. By the time we'd get through work we'd be so cold that it would take all night to get thawed out, and then we'd have it to do all over again. The only thing that we particularly like about the place is the autumn foliage. It's beautiful. The hills are a splatter of green, flame, orange and red. The little country roads, blanketed in big multicolored leaves, stir something or other that is never touched by the clear, cold lines of our own evergreen forest roads. But when one has to look at them in the capacity of forerunners to the dismal winters, they lose some of their charm.
    We're only a few miles from Lake Champlain, which will be frozen over, probably, before we get home. Almost every farm in this part of the country has its own ice house, the men cutting ice for several weeks in the winter, and then packing it in sawdust. And every farmer has his "cutter" or sleigh. It seems strange to us to find them at all, but it appears even stranger to them that we should think it cold here now. They grin and say, "Come back at New Year's. It will be thirty or forty below then." We grin, and decline the offer. Wouldn't you?
    There seems to be two regular automobile routes across the United States. One is the Lincoln Highway, going through Chicago, Sioux City, and up through Montana, which comes out through Idaho somewhere and joins the Columbia River highway. The other is the "Broadway of America," which goes to the extreme south. Both have decided drawbacks, the former mostly being too cold, and the latter too long. We'll get it figured out eventually and then do something about getting home.
    Has the town been festooned with banners as per instructions? That ought to be looked after pretty quick now, since it may not take us as long to get home as expected, and the police and credit companies ought to have ample warning that I'm coming to sort of prepare themselves. Tomorrow we start devastating a swath of territory across the country, and people can go right on excitedly speculating upon the time of our arrival. That is, in case anyone reads this stuff by
Medford Mail Tribune, October 8, 1933, page 9


    This chronicle of events is somewhat late, but I'm lucky to be able to write at all, the way we hit small towns that don't have typewriters in the newspaper office. The country is full of them.
    Don and I left Peru some time last week, and drove down to Crown Point, where Vic Dallaire was lurking in the underbrush somewhere. We found him at his uncle's farm, and he seemed mildly surprised to see two cronies from the Coast. He was in the midst of house-painting maneuvers, a worthy action to which we promptly put a stop. He is now an official member of the squad, and is out in the car eating as we go to press.
    Even with his addition to the corporation finances we still haven't enough money to get home, so we're making a march to the sea somewhere in the vicinity of New Orleans. Vic and I have a bone to pick with a cop or two in Slidell, Louisiana, and we intend to pick it. They picked us up and made us stay (I almost said "sleep") in their filthy old jail all night last time we were there as "dangerous and suspicious" characters.
    The Dodge, which surprised Vic by being a fairly presentable automobile, instead of an old wreck like Bob Spalding had last summer, is functioning in well shape, as we say in Medford, and is still using so much oil that we are contemplating taking the spark plugs out and making a diesel motor out of it. We bought five gallons of oil at Montgomery Wards about five hundred miles north of here and it's all gone now. It isn't because the oil is no good either.
    On our way down we stayed on the west coast of the Hudson, and stopped at West Point. There being no one there that we knew, we contented ourselves with watching one guy in a football uniform showing off to a lot of girls. The regular squad didn't arrive till after we'd been chased away for not being army officers or coaches, so that dose of football had to content us. We camped not far from there that night, and got ourselves initiated in the art of three giants sleeping in the same automobile. We're quite used to it now, and it isn't so bad. At least, as Vic says, one can't very well fail out.
    (May I interrupt at this point and mention that two newspapermen in the office from which this is being written seem quite confident on the point that we'll have trouble with Germany within a year. They are offering, in very Southern accents, to bet each other on that point, but since they both seem to be on the same side, I doubt if any big money will change hands. Thank you.)
    The day after leaving the vicinity of West Point, we drove down to Philadelphia, and got ourselves pinched. It's more or less a lucky thing that we have a title to the Dodge, or we would be languishing in a Pennsylvania jail about now. I guess we do look kind of "dangerous and suspicious," what with our unwashed automobile and faces, and back seat piled high with apples, camping equipment, and oil.
    Just before getting to Annapolis, between there and Baltimore, darkness sneaked upon us, and we had to make camp. We drove off the road down to the bay (Chesapeake), and asked a farmer if we could camp all night. He looked kind of goofy, and proved it by saying yes, which is a sure test in this part of the country. At least people seem to think so. Anyway, this fellow looked goofy, and so did the rest of the family. It must have been a branch of the Jukes or Kallikak families. It rained that night, of course, and we heard strange noises till morning. Nothing was missing the next day, not even our heads, and you can't imagine how relieved we felt.
    That day we drove to Annapolis and looked the place over but George Winne, the only person that we know, now being in Medford, we thought it hardly worth the effort of looking him up, and left in an hour or so. If personal opinion has anything to do with it, and in this both Don and Vic agree with me, I'd rather go to West Point than Annapolis. Since any danger of my going either place might be said to be nil, it needn't bother me greatly. Perhaps the drizzling rain which transferred itself from Eugene, Oregon, for the occasion has something to do with our bad impression.
    The weather has been terrible for several days now. Cold and rain and sleet. We have been in Virginia for some time now and the days are cold as the nights, which are too cold for Siberia, let alone the so-called South. Ever since we have left Pennsylvania we've been cold. Even Washington, which is supposed to have nice weather this time of year. We didn't spend much time in the capitol city, merely driving around the official buildings and the White House, and going up in the Washington Monument. That makes the third time up that thing for me. A couple more times and I'll own it.
    Since leaving Washington, which we did by way of Mount Vernon, we've been following old Civil War roads. All along the way are markers telling who fought in that particular vicinity, and why, and when. Now that we are getting into the South we are beginning to see the use of "we" again to denote the Confederacy. Every so often is some old building with scars from the fighting between the blue and the gray. If it was as cold then as it is now they mist have been fighting to keep warm. A better reason than that supplied for most wars, at that.
    Plans for the continuation, and eventually the consummation, of our march are all very tentative and vague. One moment we are going to Florida and eat tarpon and rattlesnake, and the next we are going to Cuba and put a stop to all this bickering going on. Both will then be abandoned in favor of a trip to Mexico City, which in turn gives way to plans to hurry home, and plans being promptly abandoned for lack of funds. It's more fun. Beats crossword purposes and jigsaw stuff hollow,
    One nice thing about it, though. When we are cold, and wet, and hungry, and the car is sputtering for lack of fuel, and the rain oozes down our backs, we can always comfort ourselves with the assurance that touring the country in an automobile is great sport and not to be beaten as a means of enjoying oneself. Haven't we the service station literature and magazine articles to prove it? Go away, you nasty old man. We'll have a lot of fun out of this trip if it kills us.
    This town seems to be full of good-looking young ladies who stream through this office and gaze longingly upon my great beauty. But I am not for them. Not until I get warm, at any rate. How negroes can survive in such droves in this ghastly climate is beyond me. If there is anything at all in the theory of evolution they will all be Eskimos in another two or three years, though. Upon asking if they had any snow around here, I was told "very little." In fact they had a scant six inches last year, but even the native to whom I was talking had to admit that it was a mild season. Wonder what the snowfall in Tahiti is. For that matter, I wonder what the snowfall in Medford is. But then, after all the yelling I've done about going to Europe, and such things, I'm afraid to go back there. Couldn't get there anyway, so I might as well stop grumbling.
    We've been looking for work all along the way, and finding none, with the exception of making the bed every night, and cooking, and steering the Dodge, which is no child's play, either. But then there is no remuneration in that. We have made three dollars the last week in scavenger service, though. When we see a stalled car along the road, with some befuddled old gentleman peering in a frightened way under the hood, we sweep down on him like a bunch of jackals, offer to help, get out and look under the hood in a very knowing way, cough a few times, put the loose spark plug or wire back on, or put the head back on the distributor, or remedy any other minor faults, then crawl under the motor, "tck-tck" our teeth, say a few "mmmm's," ask for a wrench or two, smear a little grease on our faces, and finally come up with a triumphant look, make a few passes in the air, mumble incantations, and--presto--start the motor and receive heartfelt thanks and a dollar bill in the accepted bashfulness of full-fledged mechanics.
    The method is infallible, and was gleaned from watching hundreds of mechanics throughout the United States doing the same thing. Sounds kind of heartless, but "bisness iss bisness." One guy that we chose in that manner really had something wrong with his car, and we had to push him ten miles in second gear before giving up. We stood around while he mentioned in a loud voice the fact that he had very little money with him. We knew he lied, and said nothing. I really think he knew we'd follow him home where he could get more, or he wouldn't have shelled out his buck.
    That ought to be enough pearls of wisdom for one sitting, so I'll cease this chatter and see if I can get in on a little of that food that is being devoured by Don and Vic.
Medford Mail Tribune, October 29, 1933, page 5


    Dallaire Returns--Victor Dallaire, who spent several weeks this summer in New York, visiting his uncle, returned to Medford Sunday. He left Dick Applegatt in San Antonio, Tex., he reported today.
"Local and Personal," Medford Mail Tribune, November 14, 1933, page 5  Dick was listed as a student playing football at Southern Oregon Normal School the next month.




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