U.S. winning output race
4 members of Congress optimistic in battle of production
…
The Pittsburgh Press (April 3, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PALM SPRINGS – It happens that, in addition to the many signal honors that have come to me – such as being frequently mistaken for a poet – I am also blessed by being a personal friend of the most popular girl in this popular desert resort.
She is the queen of this year’s annual desert circus. She is referred to in the newspapers as “the tops in local royalty.” Everybody is nuts about her. But having known her and her whole family for some years. I just treat her like dirt, which gives me a terrific sense of superiority over the rest of the population.
This girl’s name is Edie Bush. She is 21 years old (and purty, too). Despite my superior airs toward her, I make it a point in a sort of underhand way to court her good-will, because by the time she’s 40 she’s going to own this whole damn place, and 20 years from now I may be needing a nickel for a cup of coffee.
Edie is hostess at the Deep Well Ranch where I’ve been staying (in fact, that’s why I’ve been staying there). If it would interest you, I’ll tell you how such things as this come about. If I had time I’d make a novel out of it.
Well, some five years ago I was going down the Yukon River on a paddle-wheel steamboat. That sounds pretty romantic, but it was cold and the mosquitoes were terrible, and anyhow Edie wasn’t on the boat, so don’t get ahead of your story.
But on this boat I met a couple from San Francisco – Duane and Sevigne Bush – and we became good friends. I stayed with them at their gold camp in Alaska, and visited their home on our return to the States.
He meets rest of the family
The following winter there came to this couple a beautiful baby daughter named Vondre, a remarkable child, and for some mysterious reason I was appointed godfather to same.
In the ensuing years I have cultivated this child with perfumes, candy, gardenias, love letters, old lace and an occasional pinch, and have finally made such an impression upon her that now, at the age of 4, she actually remembers my name.
In the course of this courtship of my god-daughter, I naturally met the rest of the family, including my god-daughter’s elder sister, Edie (now 21 and purty – or am I getting old and repetitious?) But, anyhow, I met her, and then she went off to Oregon to college.
After three years of higher learning she decided her time had come, so she turned her back upon the classroom and looked about for something to conquer. And since her Cousin Melba rather runs the Deep Well Guest Ranch, she chose that as her first conquest.
She didn’t choose wrong. In one season she has captured the whole place. Everybody in town knows her, from Mother Coffman down to the lowliest cowboy. She walks gaily into the snooty Racquet Club in her overalls as if she owned the place, and they hold out their arms.
She hasn’t been out of overalls since last October, and dreads the near day when she will have to return to San Francisco and put on a dress. She wears her hair in pigtails, and guests can’t believe she is more than 15. That saves her a lot of trouble, too.
She is absolutely agog over “hostessing” at the ranch. She loves to ride and swim and talk to people, and thinks it’s perfectly ridiculous that she should be getting paid for it.
She plays miserable paddle-tennis (I beat her, 6-2, and me with athlete’s foot) and she’s lousy at dominoes, but she’s got what it takes to make the guests happy. She has a crush on the word “wonderful.” If a disgruntled guest were to come up foaming and yell, “This place stinks!” I’m sure Edie would say, “Wonderful, Mr. Nibbs,” and he would be whipped.
She does her bit for war
She has one day off a week, and spends three hours of that day serving as airplane-spotter on top of a Palm Springs office building. She has completed her Red Cross course. She sold more defense bonds than anybody else in a recent Palm Springs contest.
Her family home is within poor-aim range of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and she has only disgust for those who talk big and do nothing about the war.
Edie smokes cigarettes, used to take a cocktail but doesn’t any more, and keeps her overall pockets full of string and nails and things, like a little boy. She knows her way about the world, and yet there are a lot of bad things she hasn’t learned yet.
For instance, one day coming from town in the station wagon, one of the ranch’s women guests got mad about something, and told Edie and the other girl hostess off in a manner considerably unbecoming to a lady. The girls arrived at the ranch practically in tears.
So Frank Bennett tried to get out of them what had happened, and just what the woman had called them, and finally they told him, but neither of them knew what the words meant. And Frank said to them, “It’s a hell of a lot of good three years of college did you girls. You don’t even know all the words.” (The vulgar guest left next morning, by request.)
In the big Palm Springs annual circus, Edie will ride (or has ridden by the time this appears) on the leading float surrounded by her “court” of five girls. I wish I could have been there, to swell with pride. But a man can’t have everything, and I’ve already had my inning – walking nonchalantly down the main street of Palm Springs with overalled Miss Bush on my arm, the cynosure of all eyes, as they say. It was “wonderful.”