He Who Got Spanked
Sirs:
I sure was surprised a couple weeks ago when your correspondent called me up long distance at Midland, Texas, asking me about that ad I had put in the Wall Street Journal.
He asked me a lot of questions that I answered as well as I could, but we were having a honey of a dust storm with a 60-mile wind and I couldn't make him hear very good so I couldn't find out why you were interested.
I didn't figure that ad made any news that TIME would be interested in.
The next day I drove 345 miles into Dallas and I figured I had found out. There was a letter from the SEG. And I figured you knew it was on the way.
Last week, March 18, I was plenty tickled with the way you wrote your article about me being spanked by the SEC. I expect maybe I ought to be scaired but it didn't hurt a bit. The letter the SEC wrote me was just a plain courteous letter, with no threatening and no cuss words, telling me that I had violated the law in advertiseing for a partner in a Public newspaper.
Since then many things have happened every day that also tickle me. Every time I see a friend I am invited to show the spank marks, in many Public Places. Corporations and individuals, mighty nice folks have been worried about me. And I have looked around for spank marks but I can only find old welts and busted places that have occured in the general course of my business when I have guessed wrong or moved too slow. A young boy called up from Oklahoma City--and wants to break in roughnecking and be an oil man. The boy is lucky as hell in not knowing that digging oil wells ain't exactly playing Ping Pong. I kind of admire that boy. It don't seem so long ago that I was riding freights and had wrinkles in my belly too. But they all came out.
I don't figure the SEC wants to hurt me too much. If the spanking turns to a whipping I expect I can take it standing up and both eyes open. I am going to keep right on digging wells like I have for 25 years. . . .
And every day, as long as I live, I am just going to keep on figureing that if it is against the law to advertise for a partner to dig a well, I sure am going to keep my own ideas. I am just a well digger, not a lawyer, but I sure figure that if it is against the law to advertise in a public newspaper half interest in an oil producing property, it sure as hell is also against the law to advertise half interest in a Greek restaurant. That sure would be tough on the Greeks, just like it is on well diggers. I don't beleive that is a good law. . . .
I sure want to thank you for printing that article. I have gained a lot of unseen friends, been ribbed to death, my pretty little wife isn't quite sure whether she wants to be seen with me in Public Places, and strangers write me that I am only one shade handsomer than that dude Angel the wrestler, but I have a hound dog that sure still thinks that I am kind of nice. So I don't care. And I'm not worried. And I am going to keep right on digging wells and probably getting spanked.
C. A. EVERTS
the digger that got spanked
Dallas, Tex.
Unwieldy
Sirs:
On p. 74 of TIME, March 18, you say that General Motors Corp. net earnings "came within sniffing distance of the biggest earnings in the land, the $190,280,877 of unwieldy A. T. & T."
In what manner do you account for the word "unwieldy," and why?
FREDERICK CARLES Winter Park, Fla.
> No business that has 300,000 employes and 16,713,000 customers can turn around on a dime--or even on a $1,000 bill.--ED.
Fight for Lives
Sirs:
In commenting on my picture, The Fight for Life, in the March 25 issue of TIME, your motion-picture reviewer says:
"Possibly women should not see it at all." I should like to point out that prior to its public showing, The Fight for Life was shown privately in 22 previews in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Dayton and Des Moines, to widely varying groups containing approximately equal numbers of men and women.
[Mr. Lorentz here listed a number of men and women, among them prominent physicians, who saw the picture in Chicago, Manhattan and elsewhere.--ED.]
. . . The film was shown to the trustees and heads of committees of the New York Academy of Medicine, a large number of whom brought their wives. . . .
Your reviewer also said "The Fight for Life runs for only 30 minutes." The Fight for Life contains 57 minutes of music, the longest continuous symphonic score that has ever, to my knowledge, been used in a motion picture. The picture itself runs the usual approximate length of a feature--68 1/2 minutes.
PARE LORENTZ
Director
United States Film Service
New York City
Sirs:
. . . AS REGARDS YOUR ASTOUNDING STATEMENT THAT "POSSIBLY WOMEN SHOULD NOT SEE IT AT ALL," I HEARTILY RECOMMEND THAT EVERY WOMAN SEE IT. THE PICTURE WAS MADE FOR THE SINGLE AND SIMPLE PURPOSE OF SAVING WOMEN'S LIVES AND THEIR BABIES' LIVES. . . . PRIVATE SHOWING OF "THE FIGHT FOR LIFE" BEFORE MEMBERS OF THE DAYTON OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY AND SO OTHER DAYTON PHYSICIANS AND THEIR WIVES PROVOKED ONLY ENTHUSIASTIC PRAISE. DAYTON OBSTETRICIANS HAVE ASKED FOR PRINT OF PICTURE FOR TEACHING OF INTERNS, RESIDENT PHYSICIANS AND NURSES. DESPITE HOLLYWOOD RESISTANCE VIA BLOCK BOOKING STRANGLEHOLD AND DESPITE ANTAGONISM OF A FEW DOCTORS THE LORENTZ-DE KRUIF PICTURE WILL INEVITABLY ACCOMPLISH THE TWO PURPOSES FOR WHICH IT WAS MADE. IT WILL SAVE LIVES OF MOTHERS AND BABIES AND IT WILL PROVIDE THE INTELLIGENT ADULT WITH ONE HOUR AND EIGHT MINUTES OF A THRILLING EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE WHICH HE OR SHE WILL LONG REMEMBER. . . .
WALTER M. SIMPSON, M.D.
Director
Kettering Institute for Medical Research
Miami Valley Hospital Dayton, Ohio
> To Producer Lorentz, congratulations for making 68 minutes seem so short. To the women who can take it, congratulations.--ED .
Cribber's Ultima Thule
Sirs:
Thank you for your fine account [March 18] of the cribbage tournament and presentation of the history, theory and practice of the game. But you make no mention of that almost fabulous will-o'-the-wisp, that ultima Thule of all cribbage players, the "29 hand." It is to crib fans what the hole-in-one is to the golfer, the 13-spade hand to the bridge player. . . . Three generations of our family watched and waited for it, in vain, till on a rainy night in the winter of '32, when playing with my husband before the traditional blazing logs, I picked up my hand. After the discard, I held 5D, S, C and Jack H. Tensely, I said: "Careful, now. If you cut me the 5 of hearts, I'll have the 29 hand." He cut; I turned the card; it was the 5 of hearts!
The count is: 15 -2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 + 12 (4 of a kind) + 1 for the nob = 29.
In this mad world of frustrations and disappointments, I have not lived in vain. I have held the 29 hand and can die in peace!
DAPHNE BOVARD
Berkeley, Calif.
Webster's Surprise
Sirs:
I am neither "surprised" nor "astonished" that what Mr. Gogarty or Mr. Palmer [TIME, March 25] "thought 'e might require, 'e went and took the same as me," but the story does have a long white beard. Years ago it was told about as follows, happily illustrating Noah Webster's nice discrimination in his choice of words.
One day Mrs. Webster came upon Noah quite unexpectedly and found him daudling the maid upon his knee.
Said Mrs. Webster, "Really, Mr. Webster, I am surprised."
Said he, "Mrs. Webster, how often must I correct you? You are astonished. I am surprised."
MABEL REEVES NORTON
Brattleboro, Vt.
Skidoodles
Sirs:
We should like to put in our claim as originators of a word used on p. 63 of your March 18 issue--skidoodlers--not because we want public recognition for adding a rather silly word to a language which has too many already, but for the sake of future students of the American language, who may be unaccountably interested in its evolution.
Shortly after Jan. 1 of this year, the Stephen Daye Press staff was gathered in conference to think of a good name for a series of ski cartoons which had been drawn by Max Barsis, author of one of our books, Bottoms Up: An Unreliable Handbook for Skiers. . . . Dubious suggestions from each one of us (witness skitoes, skiskits, skiddings, shinnies) were mentioned and howled down, when one of us suggested skidaddles, and another of us bridged the gap to skidoodles. . . .
Or does someone else claim to have originated it or heard of it before January 1940?
MRS. JOHN HOOPER
Editor
Stephen Daye Press
Brattleboro, Vt.
New Language
Sirs:
Either you or the Government of the U. S. have made a very serious error. TIME for March 18 reports that "the Navajos had no written language" as of the year 1940. . . .
If you would take the trouble to check these facts with the American Bible Society you would find out that in 1905 the Rev. Herman Frijling and the Rev. Leonard P. Brink began the reduction of the language of the Navajo Indians to print. This work has been progressing continuously ever since.
On a visit to the Navajo Reservation in 1933 I saw the school maintained by the Presbyterian Church at Ganado and I am quite sure that written Navajo was in use at that time. However, as I remember it, English was the language of the classroom.
I have before me a copy of the Navajo language written in 1905 and it looks somewhat like the Navajo printed in your magazine. . . .
JOHN A. LAMPE
Pastor
First Presbyterian Church
Jerseyville, Ill.
Sirs:
. . . The new Navajo language will of course be used when, and only when, certain preliminaries are effected:
First, the teachers must learn to speak, read and write Navajo, a notably difficult language.
Second, the Navajos themselves must learn to read and write.
When all this is done, the Indian Bureau will proceed to explain to the Navajos that they must reduce their stock. But the explanation, and the subsequent reduction, was inaugurated in 1934 and 1935. By the time the bilingual teachers get around to it, the Navajo stock will be reduced to the vanishing point. They think it's far too near that point already. Doesn't your article put the cart before the horse? . . .
(MRS.) FLORA WARREN SEYMOUR
Attorney at Law
Chicago, Ill.
> TIME offers the following letter from Mr. La Farge, head of the American Association on Indian Affairs, to take the kinks out of the record--ED.
Sirs:
. . .Your preliminary summary of the complicated Navajo problem and the urgency of stock reduction to save the soil on the reservation, was remarkable. I never would have believed the matter could be stated so completely in so little space.
However, in regard to our work, you have the matter backwards. I should not like to leave anyone with the impression that Dr. Harrington and I, or any other scientists, had undertaken anything so fantastic as inventing a new native language, or a variant on an existing one. . . .
There did exist, not a "jargon" invented by scientists, but an alphabet for recording the Navajo language--a competent language, incidentally, with a large vocabulary. The alphabet, worked out by scientists, was minutely accurate in catching every sound and intonation, but contained so many odd characters, special marks and accents as to be utterly unusable for ordinary purposes. Dr. Harrington and I were asked to work out an alphabet in which Navajo could be written understandably, using only what is to be found on the keyboard of a standard typewriter. . .
The second problem in developing accurate, clear communication between the Government and the Navajos was not handled by us at all, but by Mr. Rudolf Modley, who should receive public credit. It is not quite correct to state that Navajo, as it exists, can't find a word for such terms as "sheep unit." The trouble was that the interpreters, misunderstanding such terms, used the wrong terms in Navajo. Mr. Modley gave statements involving all such new terms to an interpreter, who passed them on in Navajo to several other English-speaking Navajos. These in turn told Mr. Modley in English what they had understood from the interpreter. He thus uncovered a vast quantity of misunderstandings, and cleared them up.
With a workable alphabet, interpretation corrected, and a collection of phrases which had been tested on a number of non-English-speaking Indians, Mr. Modley got out his posters, with text in Navajo and English. . . .
OLIVER LA FARGE
President
American Association on Indian Affairs, Inc.
New York City
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