Did I promise a good letter this week? I should always qualify that statement, and say, "as good as I can make it - under the circumstances." The exasperating thing about this writing is that the fuller and richer your life is, the less time you have to tell about it. There are two subjects this week. I'll take them in inverse ratio to their importance, maternally speaking. Yesterday Virgil and I took time out, respectively, from gardening and grandmothering to celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary. For five years, including the silver wedding, we celebrated that important day with very good friends, a couple whom we had known for seven years before we discovered that we were married the very same day. A year ago last month Harold Allyn, after a long, brave fight with mysterious ailment that ended up as spinal meningitis, succumbed to that disease. The mutual love and devotion of that couple were rare and sweet. But Vi has that quality called "personal adequacy" by Lloyd Douglas in "Green Light." She carries on like a true thoroughbred, mothering four children, and making sunny space in her heart for a daughter-in-law - and now a lovely little grandson. Vi and her two young daughters and another mutual friend, widowed two years ago, went with us last night - to dinner at the Forum, and then on to Art Linkletter's show, "People are Funny." His show was brought here in celebration of Cleveland's Sesquicentennial. I wonder how many of you heard it. You might be interested in knowing how the "victims" are selected. In the half hour 'warming-up' period before the program goes on the air, Art gets the audience en rapport with him and his wit and friendliness. He explains that no one can buy his way onto the program, that there is never any personal contact before this first half hour. He called for six male volunteers to come up on the stage. Each in turn had to make an impromptu speech before the microphone. One had to tell how to make a lemon meringue pie; another gave a dissertation on the feeding and bathing of a month-old infant; so it went. Some of their vague and untutored remarks had us in convulsions. The audience, by their applause, decided who should go on the air, and he made the goats in the stunts that amuse the great listening public. Art L. and his gang had to appeal to the Cleveland marriage license bureau for two couples about to be married. One couple had to try to sell Art a cow, the other, a woman's girdle before the audience chose one couple (the girdle sellers) to go on the air. All our laughter and applause were spontaneous - except once. The delightful master of ceremonies, Art himself, asked for one big free laugh right after that first announcement on the air. It must have been quite a laugh when 12,000 people let loose. We were such a "swell" audience, as Art put it, that he and his helpers gave us an extra treat after the broadcast. Two volunteers came up on the stage, and were made contestants in a style show. Two undressed dummies - from the May Co. - were brought on the stage, and these two men had to dress them up. Well - you can imagine! After the foundation garments there was soft material to be draped over each figure. The winner did a beautiful job, but when they turned his mannikin around, we found that the rear had been sadly neglected. It was only 9 o'clock when we came out of Public Hall, where this show was held. Virgil and his girls were all in such high fettle that we went to a picture show after that - Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in "Cluny Brown." Fair to middlin'.
No, after at least two hundred and forty-eight interruptions, I have no time left to tell about that baby. Suffice to say that already she has at least eight people zany about her.
Sincerely,
Florence B. Taylor.
Next - 7/11/46 - 'Tis a beautiful world
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