Banquet for Oscars dropped by movies
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences at home, prior to showing off for another assignment to a war zone.
Dana, Indiana –
Mrs. Howard Goforth, one of our farm neighbors down the road, is recovering from an impact with a corncrib.
The other day she and Howard drove over to Nellie Hendricks’ after something. Howard doesn’t drive. Mrs. Goforth has been doing all the driving for 20 years and never had an accident.
But this day she swung around in the Hendricks’ barn lot, and then something unexplainable happened, and she couldn’t get the car stopped, and rammed head-on into the corncrib.
It smashed the front end of the car, shattered the windshield, broke the steering wheel into three pieces against Mrs. Goforth’s chest, and almost cut one of Howard’s fingers off.
And, incidentally, it moved the big corncrib nine inches off its concrete foundation.
Farmers do have the finniest auto accidents. Things like barns and corncribs and wagons are always getting in the way. And if nothing’s in the way, they have accidents anyhow.
Nary a tree nor a bush
I remember years ago when Bill Satterlee was trying to switch from a Model-T to a brand-new gearshift Ford. He took it out in a 20-acre open pasture with not a tree nor a bush in it, and without ever hitting a thing he wrecked that new Ford so badly they couldn’t even trade it in. It seems he just kept turning it over and over.
This country drivin’ ain’t safe.
They’re telling a joke around Dana in which my name figures.
Last spring, The Indianapolis Times had a big statewide collection going on, to raise money to send cigarettes to our troops throughout the world. The fund was promoted in my name, since I was overseas writing about the boys.
Newsdealers and drugstores all over the state put up collection boxes. In the drugstore at Dana, they had a mason jar on the glass counter, with a penciled pasteboard sign saying “Ernie Pyle’s Cigarette Fund.”
One day a woman came in, looked at it in astonishment for a long time, and finally said to the druggist:
Why, I always supposed he had enough money to buy his own cigarettes.
Iva Jordan, who was my first schoolteacher nearly 40 years ago, had a stroke while I was out west. Berthas and Iva Jordan live all alone on the farm, just a mile from us across the fields, but two miles if you go around the road.
Will Jordan, Bertha’s husband, died a long time ago, and Bertha and Iva have done it alone on the farm ever since then.
Iva’s left side is paralyzed. She can just wiggle the fingers on her hand, that’s all. They have a hospital bed for her in the west room, and she is quite comfortable.
They’ll manage somehow
All these years Bertha and Iva had a hired hand or two, but now they are in a predicament, because everybody has gone to the Army and they can’t get a man anywhere. Bertha has to do everything herself, as well as look after Iva. They don’t know how they’ll get through the winter, but I suppose they’ll manage somehow.
The stroke didn’t affect Iva’s face, nor her speech. She says maybe it would be a good thing if it had, for she just talks everybody to death. She says twice visitors have just got up and left after about ten minutes with her, because she wouldn’t let them get a word in. But, as she says, what’s the use of having visitors if they won’t listen to you?
I can’t see that the war has affected our farming neighborhood very much at all, except that none of the young men are left.
Farmers set groaning boards almost the way they used to, and I don’t know of any serious shortage of anything. In the country stores you can still find things that have long been extinct in the city. The crops are good, and nearly everybody is getting things fixed up around the farm and getting a little ahead.
Nobody from our neighborhood has been killed in action yet, although two have died in camp of ordinary illness. In a vacant lot on Main Street, where a store burned down nearly 30 years ago and nothing was ever built in its place, they have a huge signboard bearing and names of everybody in our township who is serving with the Armed Forces.
Oddly enough, my name is on it, although technically I’m not in the Armed Forces at all. But I’m proud that they waived the technicality and included me. And oddly enough again, although I’m a civilian and also older than all the others, I guess I’ve seen more action so far than anyone else on the list.
Here at home, I see the veterans of the last war, most of them my contemporaries, and for some strange reason I feel more easy and at home with the boys of this war than my old cronies.
I suppose that’s because some mysterious fate has merely delayed for a year or two the arrival of my inevitable rheumatics. But I carry my liniment all the time anyhow, just in case. Nobody’s pulling any of this youth-stuff wool over my eyes.
is this the sofia terror bombing obiwanbul was taking about?
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 16, 1943)
BOMBS RIP NORWAY, GREECE
Berlin indicates Oslo area hit by U.S. fliers
Yanks report vital objective destroyed; U.S. and Yugoslav planes raid airports near Athens
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Yanks batter Jap outposts
Islands in Gilberts and Marshalls bombed
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
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Convoys attacked –
Jap cruiser hit in Rabaul area
Catalina attacker scores with 1,000-pound bomb
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
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Yanks yield small area to Germans
Americans of 5th Army driven from part of mountain
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer
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Capital fears new uprising in coal fields
Ickes’ warning taken as unwillingness to seek showdown
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Court document shows actress adopted child
Estate of Philip Plant fights Connie Bennett’s money claim
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Hope is revived –
Pre-war fathers put last on conferees’ draft lists
McNutt order nullified by Congressional committee; vocational grouping to be barred
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Lt. Roosevelt given award for heroism
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Congressman charges –
Interned Japs used tractors to play polo
Disloyal group also buried thousands of pounds of meat, he says
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Lag in war housing traced to lack of AA-1 priority
Builders warned of a quarter of a million shortage if materials are not made available
By James K. Chandler, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Blast kills 6 at Yorktown
At least 20 others hurt at naval depot
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The heavy bombings of Sofia happens in 1944:
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