The Pittsburgh Press (January 13, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
ALBUQUERQUE – One more Albuquerque column and then we’ll hie (what a silly word) back to the Coast and see how the war is getting along.
It’s a good thing I’m leaving here, or this column would probably consist of nothing but dog stories from now on.
When we got our dogs we had to send away, like children, for all the books we could find. We’ll probably never read them, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.
The other afternoon, when I was away, That Girl decided to take a nap. The two dogs – the Giant and the Fox – kept playing around in her room and she couldn’t get to sleep, so finally she put them out in the living room and shut her door.
Then she listened, just to make sure, for the dogs are young and haven’t had very much house training.
For a long time, there was complete silence – not a sound or a sniff. “They’re asleep,” she thought, and she was just dropping off to sleep herself when from the living room came a tornado of sound – a tearing, shaking, chewing, ripping and rending.
She leaped out into the other room and there, strewn all over the floor in a thousand little pieces, were the remnants of a book. And the book was: “How to Train a Dog,” by Will Judy.
Two books in three months
Speaking of books, last fall’s three-month layoff gave me the first chance I’ve had in years to do all the reading I’ve wanted to do. And what do you suppose I did with this golden opportunity? Well, I threw it plumb away.
In all that time I read only two books. One was Arnold Bennett’s “Old Wives Tale,” which I’ve been trying to get at for years. The other was Erich Maria Remarque’s “Flotsam,” the pitiable story of present-day refugees in Europe.
I enjoyed both books, but it took me a long time to get them finished. Which proves what I said in an earlier column, that when I’m lazy I don’t even want to think.
A friend of mine went duck hunting along the Rio Grande one morning last fall. He and his companion built a blind, and after they’d waited an hour or so a flight came by. My friend banged away, and lo and behold a big greenhead dropped out of the sky practically at their feet.
Whereupon the other hunter turned to my friend and said: “You just wasted that shot. The fall would have killed him anyhow!”
When That Girl was so sick last fall, she spent her time in St. Joseph Hospital here, which is operated by the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. She was there seven weeks, so we both got on pretty old-pally terms with all the Sisters.
Most of us who are seldom in contact with Sisters of the church think that they are dour, humorless people who can’t talk our language. Well, that’s all wrong. The Sisters at St. Joseph are the sweetest bunch you ever saw. And not just churchy sweet; they’re as human and witty as anybody.
Nun is rabid baseball fan
The Mother Superior is Sister Margaret Jane, and do you know what she is? She’s an absolute nut on baseball. She can just about tell you the name and batting average of every player in the Big Leagues. During the World Series she’d gulp her lunch and whisk away to her room to listen to the broadcast. She was for Brooklyn, and it almost killed her when Brooklyn lost that game they’d already won.
The nun who goes around to the various rooms and visits the patients is Sister Marie Isador. She is friendly toward baseball, but admits she doesn’t know a thing about it. In fact, the only player whose name she can recall is Babe Ruth.
So while discussing Sister Margaret Jane’s rabid interest in baseball, Sister Marie Isador got to telling That Girl a story about Babe Ruth.
It seemed that a certain priest went to see a certain game, and before game time Ruth was sitting in the stands talking with him. Just as the game was called Ruth shook hands with the priest and said to him (according to Sister Marie Isador):
“Father, I’m going to make a touchdown for you this afternoon.”
And Sister Marie Isador continued:
“And he did, too. In fact, he made three touchdowns that afternoon.”
That Girl never cracked a smile, and Sister Marie Isador doesn’t know to this day about her mistake. She’ll find out about it when she reads this column, and I’ll bet she goes to the other Sisters and laughs and says: “How silly that was of me. I meant to say he made three goals.”
O.K. See you in California.