Epistles from Pap: Letters from the man known as 'The Will Rogers of Indiana' Part 21

Your letter does not say how long you will be on safari . . . but rather indicates more than a year at the least. . .

Knowing more about U.S. finances than going around the world, I'll talk a little about that. You must own a house in Alabama and two in Virginia. That's too many houses by three to go off and leave--especially if you don't know when you are coming back.

. . . If you can make a little profit now, or break even, or even take a little loss, you'd better sell your houses. Rental properties are no investment for women at any time, especially now. Pay no attention to anyone who tells you to the contrary.

The odds are overwhelming. I think you have considerable U.S.

bonds. Bonds are rather poor property these days . . . because the buying power of money is now depreciating far more rapidly than the bond interest is bringing in--or more. Of course everybody should diversify--I mean everybody whose working days and moneymaking days are about over. Those out of business. . .

Time was when careful investors had about 40 to 50% bonds, 10 to 20% in cash, and say 40% in high grade stocks, common and preferred. All that has changed. Bonds and cash on hand are losers from an investment point, but not so much so from the view of diversity and security. Careful investors now go as high as 80% or even higher in common stocks (good ones of high standing and long regular dividend experience, not cats and dogs and speculatives). . . The common stocks of AT&T, Standard of New Jersey or Indiana, International Business Machines, Eastman Kodak and dozens of others are safer and easier for you than probably any house rental on G.o.d's green earth. Now is not only the time for all good men to come to the aid, etc., but also the time for all good women to get out of the clutches of carpenters, electricians, repairmen, repairs and replacements. You may wonder how come all this free and voluntary advice. If I recall correctly, you and Helen used to consult with me about finances occasionally. And so, I just sort of got started and jumped the gun, so to speak. What I say is not compulsory, so take it or leave it. I'm not infallible or I long since would have taken the places of Morgan and Rockefeller. . .

When you get over there in Borneo and Java, and have the time and inclination, and the ink isn't at the boiling point, write and tell us what things are like.

And may your trains always be on time--which they will not.

As Ever,

PAYING OUR OWN WAY

April 3, 1953 Mrs. Cecil Harden Member, House of Representatives Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

My dear Mrs. Harden: I am home today with a slight cold. My wife and daughter are gone to Indianapolis shopping. Tomorrow the parcel post packages will begin rolling in. Our parcel post man is an understanding fellow.

It has become a sort of standing joke when he stops his truck and starts in with various packages he smiles facetiously and says, "Well, I see the folks were in Indianapolis yesterday."

And so, tomorrow's delivery here at the house will add a tiny fraction to the already increasing postal deficit. Why? Parcel post rates are evidently too low. Mrs. Harden, that is wrong.

Some helpless somebodys, somewhere, will have to make up that deficit. The postage on those packages should slightly overpay their way, not underpay them.

A year or so ago the Congress enacted Public Law 199, which cut down the weight of parcel post s.h.i.+pments and thereby helped considerably in reducing the parcel post deficit, which I think is still up around 100 millions. Now the boys who use parcel post at the partial expense of the general taxpayers want 199 repealed, and have introduced HR 2685 to that effect. It also raises the poundage to 70 pounds. . . I understand HR 2685 has been sent to a Committee of which you are a member. . . I should like to know your and the Committee's reactions thereto. . .

This week's Newsweek says to not be surprised if there's a postal-rate increase before long--perhaps a 4 cent rate for most first-cla.s.s mail. Well, why not, if it takes that or 5 cents or whatever amount, to break slightly more than even? If my letters or packages aren't more than paying their way--and I mean just that--then let me pay more, or quit writing or sending, or else just deliver them myself. I don't want some fellow at Stonebluff paying any part of it. . .

Cordially,

AT&T DIRECTORS BETTER STOCK UP

April 4, 1953 To the Board of Directors of American Telephone and Telegraph Company:

Gentlemen: Your April, 1953, Notice of the Annual Meeting would seem to indicate there are 19 of you Directors. . . To my utter amazement, I seem to find out that I own a few more shares of your excellent Capital Stock than a majority of your Directors individually own. A shocking revelation to me. Something must be wrong. Either I own too many or that majority owns too few. I think the latter is the case. So, what to do?

Therefore, in all Hoosier modesty, I suggest we adopt an Incentive Stock Option Plan for our Directors only, patterned after that proposed by Standard Oil (Indiana) for Key Executives.

We must do something for our financially hard-pressed Directors, and I am one to help.

Please understand this communication is confidential between me and 18 of you Directors. I want to leave out that 30-share man because he is fairly well-up in an organization whose System pa.s.s I have proudly carried for lo, these many years. In righteous indignation he might rise up and take that pa.s.s away from me . . .

So let's centralize on our 25-share Director, Mr. W--, as the example. He needs help--and badly. And who knows? If I should be the Good Samaritan to start him up the AT&T stock ladder, maybe he in grat.i.tude would have me appointed Special Attorney for the Atlantic Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville Railroads (to avoid any Federal complications), and that way I could get to that American Shangri-La, Florida, for free. The possibilities of my strategy are intriguing.

But let it be clearly known to each of you (except the 30-share man) that if our 25-share man does not up his holdings to at least the low 30s between now and next year's Annual Meeting, and he is up again for re-election, and I am there which I won't be, and he is there which he should be, and is pointed out to me, I shall strike him for those two pa.s.ses before all and sundry. He will refuse, and then I'll publicly expose his puny holdings in our most excellent Company. The Chairman of the Boards of two big Railroads has no business humiliating us by such n.i.g.g.ardly holdings in our fine Company. And I am the angel with the temerity to say so. He can't get at me (The 30-share man can-- that is why I am laying off him). As to the 25-share man, I carry none of his pa.s.ses, I am not a candidate for office, and am standing no stud hosses. Other than being a Presbyterian, I am a free man.

This is no threat, but always remember that if matters come to the worst, I might come to some Annual Meeting, pull my Odd Fellows members.h.i.+p on Mr. Bell, my Farm Bureau card on Mr.

Forbes, my Notarial Commission on Mr. Root, Jr., my Kiwanis standing on Mr. Craig, My Law School diploma on Mr. Taylor, my Masonic a.s.sociations on one or more big stockholders who aren't Catholics, etc.; nominate myself for Director; conduct another whistle-stop campaign, and----?. Then wouldn't our splendid Company be in a pickle, with a Hoosier farmer, and a Democrat at that, on the Board, and maybe a double-jointed Railroad Board Chairman or some other worthy individual thrown into the discard?

Something drastic must be done for our low bracket Directors.

Let's do it--and soon.

I shall anxiously await your composite solution for the situation.

Fraternally, but apprehensively, Yours,

BEWARE DOCTORS AND WATCH THE COWS

To Heather Anderson, a granddaughter.

July 18, 1953

My dear Heather Bloom: What is our Heather doing in a hospital? They are not places for young ladies. Hospitals are traps for old people with sore backs and failing minds and memories whom doctors inveigle into these medical spider's webs for reasons best known to themselves.

Some folks, mostly older women, glory in their hospital records.

Each trip is carefully recorded and verified with unimpeachable evidence, and is to the owner the same as a home run is to Stan Musial.

There was a time when a young fellow, about your age now, cut his finger with a knife. What happened? Mother took a look. She washed the layers of dirt off with good old common cold well or cistern water, soused the finger in turpentine, then wrapped it in a clean, boiled white cotton rag, tied it round and round with Clark's white No. 70 thread, told him to keep it as clean as his conscience would permit--and in 48 hours it was well. Now what happens? The neighborhood is alerted, the ambulance called with orders to ring the gong vigorously enroute, doting grandparents are deluged with telegrams and telephone calls, the cigarette- finger stained family doctor is called and frantically urged to meet the ambulance at the back door of the hospital. He does. He inspects the knife gravely, sends it to the laboratory to check whether it has cut bread made from wheat infected with the dread wheat cholera or has come into contact with tuleremic pork plasma, etc. The case is too serious for him alone so he calls co-counsel. The poor little feller by this time is so bewildered he doesn't remember whether he cut his finger or wet his pants.

Grandpappy is grubbing and piling deadened thorn trees, piling brush, logs and dead limbs, spading-up locust, thorn, elm, osage orange and wild crabapple sprouts . . . and otherwise disporting himself in one of the big pastures north of town. . . Earlier in the year, a quail would perch on that big southeast corner post of the pasture. You would know he was there because he would whistle that shrill "Bob White, Bob White." If you weren't too anxious to work you would stop and try to figure him out. . .

Once I was working diligently near the east fence line. All at once I realized a squirrel was barking at me. I kept still and located the sound, but I never got to see the squirrel. But I did see birds, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, blue jays, rain crows and robins flying into a certain rather small tree, and I knew what that meant at this time of year--a mulberry tree. I tried to work toward it, easy like. When I got there the squirrel was gone but the mulberry tree and its ripening berries were right there where the sound came from. . . Where there is plenty of gra.s.s, cows never get hungry. They eat about all the time just to keep from getting hungry. If you see cows lying around in the shade, you know that all is well.

But you have to keep tab on your livestock wherever they may be.

Inside the highway gate, but some distance away to the east, was an open tool shed. . . Day before yesterday, as I drove in the pasture and pa.s.sed reasonably close to this tool shed, I saw a young calf in the shed on top of the hay. He'd weigh 100 to 125 pounds. I didn't stop. I thought he'd work his way out the same way he worked in. That evening as I went by, I forgot about any calf. Next morning as I went by, I was thinking about other things, so I didn't look in for the calf. About mid-afternoon, when I was working within hearing distance of the tool shed, I heard a cow bawling. It was the bawl of a cow that had lost her calf. When I came out, I stopped near the shed, walked over and looked in. There was the calf on the hay, and silent as your Uncle Frankfurter when he broke the stock of my shotgun. I went around to where he had gotten in and went in the same way, climbed up over the five or six feet of baled hay and then down toward him. He ran over the bales faster than I could climb. Back and forth, around and around we went. Finally I got him in the south part of the shed. He was tiring and I was already tired. He looked at me. I sort of fell toward him, giving out a big yell.

He got a big scare and climbed those bales toward the hole he got in through like a mountain goat. When I got out the same way, he was half a quarter away and going strong. He must have been a hungry calf by the time he found his ma.

This will conclude the agricultural lecture for today.

THE GRAND CHAMPION HAM

November 18, 1953 Honorable Frank J. McCarthy a.s.sistant Vice President of Pennsylvania Railroad 211 Southern Building Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

My dear Frank, Your Thanksgiving, or if you prefer, your Christmas ham deluxe is on its way, . . . part of an unbelievable success story to New Englanders and others east of the Alleghenys who feel that everybody or everything good must originate east of said Mountains. . .

Some six or eight years ago, a young fellow bought out a combination locker plant, meat market and grocery store in Waveland, Indiana, population about 500, and four miles from Russellville. He gradually went into processing pork products, particularly sugar-cured, hickory-smoked hams.

Last year the Meat Interests, or some such organization, of Omaha, Nebraska, held a contest open to all pork processors of the United States and Canada, from Swift, Armour and Wilson on down--or up--to Coleman, of Waveland, Ind.

All unheralded and unsung, our young friend picked himself out what he thought was the best of his modest stock of hams and had the temerity to betake himself and his ham to Omaha, where he entered said ham in its Cla.s.s. It took first prize--represented by a big platter, on the bottom of which a ham was engraved. Not completely satisfied with taking first prize in its Cla.s.s, our hero then entered it in the Grand Sweepstakes--the Grand Champion Ham of all Hams Cla.s.s--of the United States and Canada. Know what? To the utter consternation of the contestants, that same ham again took first prize--represented by a washed-in-gold ball- topped contraption that looked more like a pilaster in a Masonic Lodge Hall than anything I can think of.

There remaining no more ham worlds to conquer, our Champion rewrapped his winner in cellophane and tin foil and brought it and the prizes home and placed them on exhibition for all to see.

That is the story. . .

Now please understand I am not so naive as to be certain our man of the hour is a near-World's Champion ham producer or that chance and fate or pure gall did not, in some manner, enter into that decision. I just think the Champ is mighty good, and hope that you, after sampling his product, will agree he is in there pitching somewhere. . .

Happy Holidays and happy eating,

THANKS FOR THE BACKING

February 25, 1954 Mr. Leslie A. Lyon Lyon's Music Company 110-112 S. Green Street Crawfordsville, Indiana