The Pittsburgh Press (February 19, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – I know of a man who had a rather odd experience the other day.
He was driving from Portland to Seattle, and on the way he picked up a tramp. The fellow was not one of your modern hitchhikers, but a plain, old-fashioned tramp.
However, he was pleasant and courteous, and thanked the driver when he got out. As he left the car he said mysteriously, “You’ll be carrying a corpse before you get to Seattle.”
And sure enough, a little farther on the fellow came upon an ambulance stalled by the roadside, so he took the sick passenger into his car and sped on toward Seattle with him. And the man died on the way.
But the main point of this strange occurrence is another prediction made by this authenticated seer. He stated flatly to this same motorist that the war would be over by July.
Well, he may be a mystic, and maybe he can predict corpses, but about the war I’ll betcha.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hey, Ernie, you fell for something. This story about the corpse and the end of the war was circulating around Pittsburgh several weeks ago. It was reported to us at that time with the request that we print it, but nobody who told the story could actually identify the auto driver. Now it’s worked its way clear cut to the Pacific Coast.
I love to pick out odd signs as I drive along.
In Seattle the other day I saw one on a bank which said “Burglar, Fire and Mob-Proof Vaults.’’ The “mob-proof” was what struck me as funny.
And going into Portland, I noticed a small restaurant run by “Yonson & Yackson””
The girls in the coffee shop here at the Hotel Californian had read about me paying $1.94 for bacon and eggs in Tacoma, so they organized a joke to play on me when I came back to San Francisco.
All the girls know what I eat for breakfast, for I never vary. So whoever got me on my first morning back was going to make out my bill for $3 or more.
Well, I got wind of it, so I was all set. I was just going to look at the check, never crack a smile, sign the manager’s name to it, and walk out.
But the girls spoiled the whole thing by forgetting to do it.
My four-year-old god-daughter, Vondre Bush, who is so beautiful I get palpitations every time I look at her, was dining with me in considerable state at the Ritz French restaurant here the other day.
She was having filet of sole, and I had some kind of salad with maraschino cherries on top of it. Vondre studied my meal for quite a while, and then said, quite casually as though she were discussing the weather, “I eat cherries all the time!”
So you know where my cherries went. And quite willingly, too, we are raising Vondre to be very subtle and we like to reward all such delicate little about-the-bushs that.
In a restaurant up in northern California the other day I heard a fellow telling about having a small auto accident out in the country, which necessitated his hitchhiking to the nearest town to get repairs.
And when he got back to his car, some patriotic citizen had stolen the tires right off his wheels. I’m broadminded about murder and mayhem, but I’m not so sure I don’t favor capital punishment for tire thieves for the duration.
Here is a new war peril we must ail guard our children against.
A letter from an Albuquerque friend says her young son is staying home from school with a sore throat, which he attributes to the fact that his sergeant in high school military drill the day before wouldn’t let him spit!
I have another friend – quite a girl, too – who has just written me of a lifelong ambition, in case she ever gets rich. It’s to wear nothing but red shoes (oh, clothes, of course, but only shoes that are red) and have a boy follow her around constantly with a tray full of fresh celery, so she can nibble all day.
I’ve been trying to think what I’d like if I were rich. And all I’ve been able to think of is that I’d like to be the boy who carries the celery tray.
You remember when I was up at Timberline skiing, I told about my friend Annie Keezer skiing off the edge of a precipice and landing on her head in the snow.
Well, here’s a later report on the case, just received by letter. Two days afterward she got to having violent headaches, finally went to a doctor, and found she had concussion of the brain! Moral – never trust a snowbank.