Rambling Reporter, Ernie Pyle (1941-42)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 12, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

ALBUQUERQUE – What, pray tell me, have I wrought now? Lord have pity on my poor sinful soul; I must have been thinking about something else at the time.

For I have bought a Great Dane!

The whole thing is still a little vague to me, it all happened so suddenly. But as far as I can remember, it went like this.

That Girl was delighted and agog over the toy shepherd I brought from Washington. But I still had in mind getting her a Great Dane some day.

We talked casually about it, and she said yes she’d like a Great Dane, too, but perhaps two dogs all of a sudden would be too much for her, so she’d rather wait a while for the Dane.

But since I’m going to be gone a long time, I thought it would be smart to look at a Dane and sort of get things lined up, in case she wanted it while I was away.

So we drove out to a kennel here in Albuquerque. When we stopped the car, a monstrous beast stuck its gigantic head in the car window and almost scared us to death. It was just one of several colossal animals running around the place – all Danes. They set up such a fiendish baying that it sounded as though the Hound of the Baskervilles were entertaining at a murder party.

Well, we plugged our ears and looked around. We were rather struck by a seven-months-old puppy which was already waist-high and weighed 100 pounds. It was brindle-colored and striped like a tiger. Its face was a million years old and you couldn’t help but laugh when he looked at you. And the damn dog kept leaning against me all the time.

Good theory doesn’t work

I suppose it was that leaning as much as anything else that caused mv destruction. All of a sudden I knew the jig was up. I looked at That Girl and saw that her jig was up, too. So I just turned my head to the sky, bayed loud and long, and whipped out the old checkbook.

We did keep our heads enough, however, to make the purchase on the basis that the kennel people would keep the dog for two more months, and during that time they would housebreak it and train it.

The theory was excellent. I still think it was a fine arrangement. There was nothing at all wrong with the plan. Except that we didn’t keep it.

For the following day was warm and sunshiny and we had nothing especial to do, so we said, “Let’s get the Dane and bring him out for just an hour or two.”

The kennel people said that would be all right, so we brought him out to the house. We turned him loose in the big south lot with the picket fence around it. The little toy shepherd was there, too. A furious sniffing took place between Mr. Big and Miss Little. And all of a sudden they became friends. And also all of a sudden we knew we weren’t going to take the big dog back to the kennel – ever.

Miss Little leads Mr. Big

So now we have two dogs. The little one is named Cheetah. The big one Piper. The little one can walk night under the big one, with six inches to spare. Yet already she leads him around by the nose.

The two dogs are wonderful for each other. They walk everywhere side by side, like two soldiers. When we came out the door they were standing there at attention with their ears cocked, one so ghastly big, one so dollishly tiny.

Now Mr. Big has condescended to play and leap a little with Cheetah. He is so immense that he leaps exactly like an elephant.

That Girl is horrified and riotously delighted with her strange new team. Already she is starting to get sore at people who see our dogs for the first time and don’t go into ecstasies over them.

There is a lot of jealousy floating around our house. Each dog is jealous of the other one; That Girl is jealous of me because the dogs follow me; and I’m jealous of her because the dogs are hers.

And right now I’m facing a choice between two awful alternatives. I can’t bear to leave these creatures; and yet I don’t dare stay. For the brutes between the eat six pounds a day, so I’ve got to get back on the road in order to support them.

[NormanStewart]

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.”

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.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 14, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SCOTIA, California – This little town in the great redwood country of northern California is wholly owned by the Pacific Lumber Co.

I have just spent two nights here, as the guest of two lumber men.

One night was at the cottage home of a cousin of mine from Indiana. He works for the lumber company, driving a bulldozer to gouge out logging trails in the mountains.

The other night was at the luxurious mountain lodge of Stan Murph, who is president of the huge company my cousin works for. My cousin has never met Mr. Murphy.

My cousin’s name is Paul Saxton. His father is my Uncle Oat back near Dana, the coon-dog man with the laugh that peals and rings. I saw Uncle Oat just a few weeks ago, but Paul has not seen him for 12 years.

Paul Saxton was born in a log house in Indiana two miles from where I was born. We used to play together as kids. But we have seen each other only once before in 20 years.

Paul left the farm when he was 21, worked a couple of years in the shops of Detroit, and then came west with some boys in a Model-T. He has never been back.

Always worked in woods

He has always worked mm the woods out here. At first he was a “high-climber,” which is the precarious job of climbing to the tops of these towering redwoods and preparing them for the fall. That is dangerous and dramatic work, but my cousin liked it. He changed only because he could make more money driving a caterpillar.

I got to my cousin’s house before he got home. I never had met his wife, yet she knew me before I introduced myself. It was strange, too, because as far as she knows she had never even seen a picture of me.

They hadn’t known I was anywhere near this part of the country, so she decided to play a joke on my cousin.

She saw him pull up, and went out and told him there was a Government man inside to find out why he hadn’t sent in the papers about his car. “He’s good and sore, too,” she told my cousin. “Aw, to hell with him,” my cousin said.

Then he came in the house. He looked hard at me and I could see he was puzzled. “Why didn’t you send in those papers like you were supposed to?” I said, trying to sound tough. Obviously he heard me, but he looked startled and said “What?”

I said, “You’re gonna get in trouble for not sending in those papers.” He looked pretty grave and was fishing for an answer. It might have gone on for quite a while except his wife giggled, and then it was off. He took one good look and knew who I was.

Bought his own home

My cousin went only part of one year to high school, and he says that has deprived him of many better jobs. But he has saved his money and bought his own home – one of the few among his crowd who have.

They have nice clothes and a bath and a big radio and an electric washer and a Dodge sedan in addition to the old Ford. They are by no means badly off.

My cousin likes it out here. He loves the woods and the outdoors and the rain. He wouldn’t leave here on a bet. But his wife doesn’t like it, because there are occasional earthquake shocks, and they frighten her. One quake last summer knocked down both their chimneys.

My cousin has a scar on his lower lip. I said to him, “Have you had an accident since we saw each other last?”

And he said, “Why, no. Don’t you remember? I got this when I fell out of the eucalyptus tree when I was little. You ought to remember. You were up in the tree too.”

Funny that a boy who falls out of trees and gets a life scar should wind up working in the tallest trees known to man. He says he’s never fallen out of a tree since. And neither have I, for I’ve never been up in a tree since. And never intend to be.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 15, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SCOTIA, California – Stan Murphy is one of San Francisco’s bigger business men.

He is president of the Pacific Lumber Co. here at Scotia, the largest redwood timber operator in the world. He is not the “office” type of big executive – his heart is in the woods, and his personality shows it. He is easy to be with.

His time is divided into three sections. He spends about a third of it here in the forested hills, another third at his office in San Francisco, and the last third traveling – on frequent business trips East, and on hunting trips.

When up here he lives in his magnificent mountain lodge 14 miles from Scotia. I have just been a guest there, and I’m probably spoiled for ordinary living forever.

Stan Murphy is what you would call a good fellow. His company is run in the benevolent manner; his employees get bonuses and many perquisites. He thinks hard and worries about his business, but his movements are slow and calm and he never seems harassed.

He has a deep voice and swears with easy naturalness and has been known to take a drink. He would rather tramp all day through the brush in a pouring rain behind a bird dog than anything else he can think of. He has friends by the hundred.

Both of his boys are in the service – one in the Navy, one in the Army. The soldier boy is now on some unknown ship headed for some unknown destination. Mr. Murphy is all alone.

“But I wouldn’t have them anywhere else in times like these,” he says. Murphy himself was a naval officer in World War I. He still has the running lights off his old ship.

Lodge is a good place to be

Murphy’s lodge is called “Larabee.” It is in a spot of beautiful isolation. Thirty years ago Murphy worked up here in the redwoods, and lived in an old cabin within yelling distance of where his lodge now stands.

All around are redwood-shrouded hills, and the lodge itself hangs on the bank of a twisting mountain river.

The lodge itself is two-story, built in stockade fashion, of huge logs. The first floor is just one immense room, with huge windows and a giant stone fireplace.

No city comfort is missing. There are bathrooms galore and great deep chairs and fine rugs and soft lights and guest rooms complete to the last eiderdown puff.

The lodge is entirely of redwood, and so is most everything in it. The tables and chairs, even some of the lampshades, are of redwood. The lodge sits in a grove of redwood trees.

The lodge is the sleepingest place you ever saw. You can hear the river sighing past, and a little creek flows smack under the house. When the rain pounds on the roof it is like being rocked in a cradle. A case of insomnia wouldn’t have a chance up here.

Which one is better off?

Murphy is usually alone when he is here, but occasionally he brings up large parties from San Francisco and they all go hunting and wind it up with a big barbecue.

Two servants stay here constantly, and when Murphy comes up from San Francisco his chauffeur comes too, even when Murphy comes by train. Incidentally, he has an arrangement with the railroad whereby all trains stop on call at his ranch gate.

Stan Murphy lives in luxury, but there is no “put on” about it. Even an humble person feels comfortable with him. As happens to most people of importance, he has gradually come to live in a world where he is waited upon. Servants wake him of a morning, answer his phone, feed his dogs, run his errands, lay the daily papers at his table.

My cousin, who drives one of Mr. Murphy’s bulldozers, has none of these things. He gets his own breakfast before daylight, and doesn’t have a telephone. His wife washes on the back porch, and hangs the clothes in the kitchen to dry.

Yet I would hesitate to say that one is better or worse off than the other. Mr. Murphy carries the responsibility of 1700 people and great factories and vast investments on his shoulders. My cousin is responsible for only three people, and his daily job.

My cousin works for Mr. Murphy, whom he has never met, but also Mr. Murphy works hard for my cousin, whom he wouldn’t know if he saw.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 16, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SCOTIA, California – Since I have become a dog man, I am easy prey to any and all dog stories. This one is about a dog named Blondie.

Blondie belongs to Stan Murphy, president of the Pacific Lumber Co., who has had the rare privilege of bedding and boarding me recently.

Murphy is a hunting fiend. It was natural that sooner or later he should have an outstanding dog. Blondie was that dog. Blondie became famous.

He (yes, Blondie is a man-dog) has often been referred to by Tod Powell who writes “The Woodsman” column in The San Francisco Chronicle, as the greatest hunting dog in California.

Blondie is a setter. Pure white, except for one black ring around his tail. He loved to “work,” as hunters say. He was the workingest setter ever known in this state. He never tired. He would go all day long, and never slacken.

He was the finest retriever any of Murphy’s hunting friends ever knew. He was as good in ice and water as on land.

One day Stan Murphy and Blondie went for a little hunt by themselves, not far from Murphy’s mountain lodge here in the redwood-forested hills.

Murphy climbed a high hill and stopped to look around. Down below him Blondie was frozen in a set, if that’s the right hunter’s word. Murphy’s cue of course was to go back down and beat out the bird, to repay Blondie for his diligence.

Blondie finds a porcupine

“But I was just too damned lazy to lose the altitude I had gained,” Murphy says. So he gave the order for Blondie to go in after the bird himself. Murphy figured it was just one bird anyway, and he wouldn’t bother with it.

Finally, after many shouted orders, Blondie did go into the brush. Murphy waited. No bird came out. Strange, he thought, for Blondie never made a mistake. He waited longer.

At last he saw the dog come bounding out of the brush, headed uphill. He had something in his mouth. Murphy thought it was a bird, and since it looked all bloody, he was getting ready to give Blondie a scolding for “mouthing” it.

And then to his horror he saw that it wasn’t a bird at all – but that Blondie’s head was a solid mass of porcupine quills.

They rushed Blondie to the nearest animal hospital, at Eureka, 40 miles away. The vets put him under anaesthetic and kept him there longer than they had ever kept an animal before. They stacked up the quills in bunches of 25, and when they were through that night they had taken more than 600 quills out of Blondie’s mouth, face and ears.

For three weeks he was a terrifically sick dog, but he came through it.

Then Murphy went to Mexico on his annual hunting trip. It’s always a big party, with a bunch of San Francisco sportsmen making the trip. They take their own dogs, and for years Blondie has been the acknowledged peer of the pack, man or dog.

It’s quitting time, he decides

They drove several miles from the camp to the place where they were to start walking. Gear was unpacked and the hunters made ready. The dogs were turned loose, and the hunters started off. Stan Murphy walked up the hill a little piece.

Usually Blondie was so eager for the hunt that Murphy would have to keep ordering him to “heel” as they started out. But suddenly he realized that Blondie wasn’t ahead of him He stopped and looked back. And where was his great hunting dog?

Sitting in the front seat of the car, looking out the window!

Blondie has never gone hunting again. He simply made his decision and stuck to it. Still in his prime, still the greatest hunter in California, he just quit.

Hunters tell me they never heard of such a thing happening before.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 17, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SCOTIA, California – People from the east who drive up the Redwood Highway for the first time almost invariably wax enthusiastic over the monstrous trees.

I’ve heard scores of people speak of their sensations at driving among the giant redwoods, and invariably they say the same thing – how insignificant they feel before the majesty of nature.

Well, I’ve driven through the redwoods many times. I don’t remember what I thought the first time, but my main feeling now is a desire to get out of them, because it’s like driving in a tunnel. You are surrounded, enveloped, closed down upon, and I get a form of claustrophobia from being among them.

So, like all people who eat too much cake, my day of sensitive appreciation of the redwood forests is gone. When I come into them now I don’t say, “Ernest, you are insignificant.” No, I just say, “Ernest, here are those damn big trees again.”

I do, however, enjoy looking at redwood lumber. I’m sort of crazy about wood anyway, I’ve always wanted to be a cabinetmaker. And wooden sculpture is about the only form of art I appreciate. I love to feel of wood, love to look at it. Even finished lumber gives me a warm sensation.

If I ever get rich, I think I’ll build a shed about the size of a barn, fill it full of lumber, and just go around each day admiring it, as other people might stroll through their private art galleries.

Redwood lumber is beautiful. It seems to come in all shades of red – some so pale you can hardly tell it is redwood; some so violently red that it resembles the “purple heart” wood of Guiana jungles in South America.

Largest trees preserved

For years I have been laboring under two delusions about redwood – (1) that it was a crime to be cutting down those big trees, and (2) that the lumber wasn’t much good anyhow.

As usual, I was wrong. There is no danger of the redwood becoming extinct. The most spectacular of the big trees have been safely preserved in parks and groves, the better for posterity to see.

Nor are the lumber forests on the verge of demolition. There is right now enough redwood standing to last for 80 or 100 years, and new growths are coming in all the time.

As for the lumber, it’s fine. We don’t see it used so much in houses, because it is expensive. But when you do build a house of redwood, it is there practically forever. That is its chief virtue – it just doesn’t wear out.

At the lumber mill here they showed me some eave-troughs made of redwood, to use instead of metal gutters. “How long would those last?” I asked. “Four or five years?”

The man looked at me as though I were a moron. “Fifty or 60 years,” he said.

Redwood will burn, but it’s about the most fire-resistant of woods. You don’t see many stark and ghostly fire-paths in the redwood forests. They protect themselves well.

And when a redwood tree goes down, it will lie there for ages without rotting. They recently hauled in and sawed up a log that had been on the ground 500 years – and it made good lumber. They could tell how long it had been down, because a new tree had grown on top of it, and that tree was 500 years old by ring count.

One specimen 2300 years old

We’re always hearing about the great age of these redwood trees. The Pacific Lumber Co. has cut one tree that was 2300 years old. But that is practically freakish. They say the ideal cutting age is about 75 years. So you see the forest can renew itself in one person’s lifetime.

Since this country at war will have to have lots of wood, I assumed that outfits like the Pacific Lumber Co. would be swamped for the duration with Government orders, and would get high priorities for new milling machinery and what not, I mentioned this.

They said, “No, not at all. It’s true the Government will have to have lots of lumber, but it doesn’t have to have redwood. It’s too expensive. We won’t be getting much priority.”

Redwood costs about twice as much as ordinary lumber. Not because there isn’t plenty of it, but because there’s so much waste in getting it into lumber.

As a result of this high cost, a good portion of the redwood produced goes into specialty uses, rather than for straight building construction.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 19, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SCOTIA, California – In these past few years of traveling and reporting, I have gone through factories, foundries, malls, canneries, shops, abattoirs, assembly plants and mines until I feel like a walking edition of the American Review of Industry. I’ve become so adept at looking without seeing that I can now spend three hours in a plant and not know whether I’ve been in a shrimp cannery or a steel mall.

And yet, being thus thoroughly satiated with factory-touring, I have just spent a whole day inside a mill and actually enjoyed it. This was the mill of the Pacific Lumber Co. – the biggest redwood lumber mill in the world, I believe.

It was only by special dispensation that I got through.

In previous years the mill was wide open to tourists. As many as 20,000 would flock through in a season, following route lines painted throughout the mill. And whenever a lumber man or a foreign visitor came through, he was given a special guide.

One of the officials who took me around said it made him as mad as a hornet to think what saps they’d been. “Just typical bighearted Americans,” he said. What he was referring to was the Nazi visitors they’d had on several occasions. They posed as lumber buyers from Hamburg, and were given the run of the place. They never did buy any lumber but they took lots of pictures and measurements.

So now, visitors are forbidden. That is, all except well-known spies like me.

One mill covers 500 acres

A lumber mill is really just an amplification of a backwoods sawmill, but what an amplification! The resemblance between the old sawmill and a modern lumber mill is about the same as that between a peg-legged man and Fred Astaire. They both can stand up.

This mill here, with all its auxiliary sheds and kilns and drying lots, covers around 500 acres. They’re building one new storage shed that takes a whole trainload of lumber just for its construction. More than 1000 men work in the mill, and 600 more out in the woods cutting down timber for it.

Redwood is the only timber in the world that has to be barked before it is sawed. The bark is so thick and pulpy that it just “cotton-mouths” in the saws. They have known bark on a big redwood tree to be 18 inches thick.

Until a few years ago, redwood logs were barked in the woods where they fell. It is done by men with sharp-pointed steel rods, who jab the rod deep into the bark, they pry down and peel it off. It is a hard, tedious and expensive process.

But now the logs are hauled in with the bark on, and they are barked (still by the hand method) right in the mill. The barking is much faster and cheaper, due to machinery for holding and turning the logs.

They find a use for bark

But the main point is that they now utilize the bark. They grind it into fine chaff and make insulating material out of it. You know the old slaughter-house gag about utilizing every bit of a pig, even the squeal. Well here they utilize every bit of a log, even the bark. (Be a better joke though if they were sawing up dogs).

And take the sawdust. That’s all used now too. They mold it into round logs about a foot long for use in fireplaces. They are called Prestologs. They’ve been doing it for several years, but I never heard of them till I came to California this time.

Other lumber companies do this too, with other kinds of wood. All my friends in San Francisco use Prestologs for their fireplaces. But they don’t use redwood, because you can’t buy them that far away. They can’t even make enough here to supply the demand a few score miles up and down the coast.

The machines that grind up the bark and all the waste pieces from the saws are called “hogs.” They are ghastly brutal machines. I’ve seen a tough green plank five feet long and a couple of inches thick slide into the mouth of one of these “hogs,” and you’d hear a heavy, vicious “bzzt” lasting only a fraction of a second, and the whole thing would be mere sawdust.

It has never happened here, but there have been cases of workmen falling into the hopper of a “hog.” That was the last ever seen of them. And there have been cases of men jumping into them to commit suicide.

Since we have supplied Japan with so much metal in the past, I suggest we now send over a few of these “hogs,” accompanied by written instructions on how and where to jump.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 20, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PORT ORFORD, Oregon – This, folks, is the scene of the Great Secession movement of the Twentieth Century.

If the march of other events hadn’t come along, this kernel out here might have given somebody the chance to become another Lincoln. For the Union was about to rend itself asunder.

It would have taken a mighty man to preserve our great fraternity of states. Almost any mighty man on the street corner would have done. I probably could have saved it myself.

It all started last September in a remark somebody made that Curry County ought to secede from Oregon, because the state had been so neglectful of the county in mineral and harbor development, in roadbuilding, in committee-appointing and so on.

The mayor of Port Orford overheard this remark. The mayor was a dynamic far-visioned genius named Gilbert E. Gable.

He sincerely believed that Southwest Oregon was destined to become an empire, and he did everything he could to help destiny along. He built a whole community of new homes. He built a huge lumber mill. He was afire over his beloved Southwest Oregon. And he had a sense of the dramatic, too.

So he hopped onto this secession remark, and started the ball rolling. He knew as well as I do that a county couldn’t secede but it was a good attention-getter. And then the people swung in behind him and took it up seriously – at least sort of.

California counties join up

The first idea was to secede from Oregon and join California. The county court even appointed an official commission to study it. Furthermore, Gov. Olsen of California went so far as to receive an Oregon delegation which went to Sacramento.

But then the two northern counties of California got to thinking, and decided California hadn’t been so good to them either.

So they proposed that they secede from California, and the two southwest counties secede from Oregon, and the four of them throw in together and form a forty-ninth state – to be called Jefferson. Of course they all knew that Texas is the only state with power to divide itself into new states, but that was all right.

The thing got a lot of publicity. It went over the wires to thousands of papers. It tickled the country’s funnybone. Magazines sent writers and photographers. Secession boiled hotter and hotter.

And then, out of a clear sky, Gilbert Gable died during the first week of December. That struck secession a terrific blow. And five days later came Pearl Harbor. That ended the whole thing. It’s now just a chuckle in people’s memories.

But it did, in a way, serve its purpose. For the state began issuing statements protesting its deep interest in Curry County, and big mining corporations sent in their engineers to study the metals here, and a lot of people heard of Curry County who otherwise never would have.

Curry County has its charms

Southwest Oregon does have a lot to recommend it. At least I’ve never been any place where the citizens, without any desire to sell you a package, just continually keep harping about their wonderful country as they do here.

One of the worst is a newcomer named Frank Hilton, who owns the weekly Port Orford Post. He practically cries when he gets to talking about the charms of Port Orford.

Hilton says half the people in Port Orford are college graduates, although I suspect he’s letting valor get the best of him there. He says this is real pioneer country – he calls it the biggest, most savage country in America.

Why, Curry County is as big as Delaware, and has only 4300 people in it; the storms sometimes blow in off the ocean at 100 miles an hour and people can’t walk across the street: and everybody is friendly and kind and rough and ready.

They say Port Orford is the only natural deep-water harbor in 1000 miles of coastline. And even I will admit the view from the rim that rises sharply above the harbor is among the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

But I can’t keep warm on beauty, nor dry in deep-water harbors, so I guess I’ll still have to vote for New Mexico. So sorry please.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 21, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PORT ORFORD, Oregon – A new industry has sprung up on the Pacific Coast, and maybe you’d be interested in it. The industry is shark fishing.

Throughout eons of deep-sea fishing, sharks have been no good. All they did was eat bait and get on the hook you wanted other fish on, or ram around and tear up your nets. Fishermen cussed and despised the shark.

But within the last two years that situation has reversed itself. Now hundreds of fishermen all up and down this coast face high seas and miserable weather to gather in the newly elevated and respectable shark. Today, fishermen cuss the other fish that pet on the hooks they want sharks to get on.

The reason for all this is two-fold – the craze for vitamins and the war.

When this World War started it shut off a great portion of our vitamin-making ingredients from abroad. So we had to look around for our own source.

Scientists reported that the liver of a shark is just reeking with Vitamins A and D. And furthermore, to make it all the nicer for the fishermen, a shark just reeks with liver. The inside of a shark is practically all liver. So here was your new industry.

This little town of Port Orford is a good example of what has happened all up and down the coast. Two years ago there weren’t half a dozen fishermen here, and those few just sort of pecked at it. But today around 40 boats are working out of here.

Many make $1000 a week

Many’s the man who never had $50 in his pocket in his life and who now hauls off and makes $1000 in less than a week. One man paid for a $3500 boat in three days. During the peak of the season more than $1000 in shark livers comes into this little town every evening.

They catch two kinds of shark – soupfin and dog shark. Neither is the man-eating kind. Soupfin is what they want most, for the price of soupfin livers is $5 a pound, and the livers run from 6 to 12 pounds apiece.

The other kind is the dog shark, which is much smaller, and its liver brings only 25 cents a pound. But even that isn’t bad, when you consider that on a good day a fisherman might bring in two soupfins and 100 dogs – which would net him around $125.

One of these shark fishermen is one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met. Unfortunately I can’t write in detail about him, because he asked me not to.

His name is Jimmie Combs. He is a Harvard man. He keeps his past to himself. I know what is behind him, for he told me – both the highlights and the lowlights – but he wants old glories forgotten and old hurts left sealed.

He fishes for a living. He has been around Port Orford about eight years. He is 37. His shack on top of the hill is filled with classics, and he throws Latin into his conversation as though it were slang. And he cusses with a Harvard accent.

Rescues 24 men in storm

He somewhat resembles Bob Hope, of the movies. He is medium-sized, but powerful. They say he is the greatest fighter in southwest Oregon, although he is not pugnacious.

One night about six weeks ago a terrific storm was swirling over the Pacific. The Coast Guard had rescued 24 men from a lumber schooner that had broken up at sea. Many of them were in desperate shape. And then they discovered, on returning to Port Orford, that the waves were so bad the Coast Guard boat couldn’t get up to the dock.

And then Jimmie Combs came down the hill out of the night, got into an old leaking rowboat, and made 12 trips out across the raging black waters, bringing back two men on each trip. It took him hours. The whole town gathered on shore to see hum die. There is a movement now to get him a Carnegie Medal. But he wouldn’t care, one way or the other.

Combs is friendly and likeable. He says he didn’t have a dime for years, but now sharks have bought him a boat, an old car, a shack he built himself, and $3000 worth of fun.

He loves the ruggedness of the life at sea, and the solitude of the forests. When he feels the urge he dresses up and goes to Portland or San Francisco for music or the theater.

Jimmie Combs is one of those strange boiling souls, a combination of intellect and rebelliousness, who could not make himself fit into the regular pattern, and who finally took cloister in a little cabin on a bitterly beautiful shore far removed from the things he used to know.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 22, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PORTLAND, Oregon – The Willamette Iron & Steel Corp. is 75 years old, and it had never built a ship in its life. But it’s building them now, all right.

Two years ago it had 60 men working for it. Today the number is crowding 4000. That/s the way things go when you have a war. You can do what you gotta do.

Most of the shipyard workers at Willamette had never built a ship before either. They are green hands who are learning the business, under a cadre of experienced shipbuilders.

They learn pretty fast. Suppose you start as a helper. If you’ve got pretty good sense and try hard, you can be a welder or riveter in four or five months. And your pay jumps from 87 cents an hour to $1.12.

All winter I’ve been hearing yarns about the fantastic wages that ex-gas-pumpers were making in the shipyards. Stories about boys who’d never made $20 a week in their lives, now drawing down all the way from $80 to $150 a week.

I asked about it out at Willamette. They said nonsense. They said their scale was as high as any, but that the most even a highly skilled and long-experienced artisan could make, even with overtime, would be about $112 a week.

For the average journeyman mechanic it would be possible to make $100 in a week by working the regular 10-hour shift for six days, and all day Sunday at double time.

The young ex-delivery boy, working the same hours, could make a maximum of $78.30. His average weekly wage is actually below $60 (of course that ain’t hay).

Men work 10-hour shifts

At Willamette they work two 10-hour shifts – finding they get more done that way than in three eight-hour shifts. The men work six days a week, 60 hours. The first 40 hours are on straight time; the extra 20 on time and a half. And if they work on Sundays or holidays, they get double time.

The work is hard, but so is a lot of work.

During blackouts, work stops completely and all lights go off. The men don’t leave, but sit right where they were. That’s partly because it would be dangerous to clamber around in the dark, and partly so no time will be lost when the lights go on.

The sight of a huge ship being built wasn’t as thrilling as I had thought it would be. It’s just sort of like building a house – using steel plates instead of board siding.

They start at the bottom and just keep riveting or welding on plates, building up a story at a time, until they get to the top. They put in cross-plates as they go along, making the thing into rooms, you might say. The ship is really just an unspeakable number of cells, riveted together, if you look at it in the simplest way.

Navy wants still more speed

The really interesting part comes after the ship is launched, when the ship-fitters start putting in all the gadgets. It takes just as long to finish a ship inside, after it’s in the water, as it does to build it from nothing up to launching time.

Friends tell me it is traditional that shipyard workers loaf. I had never heard this before, but I watched anyhow. It didn’t appear to me that anybody was about to keel over from the mad pace, but I didn’t see any actual loafing.

For one thing, you don’t look awfully busy while you’re building a ship. You have to spend a lot of time twisting through little openings, and fitting plates together, and adjusting your tools. It isn’t as though you were supposed to be running up and down, waving and yelling.

The ships here now are running several months ahead of schedule, and I remarked that the Navy must be very pleased.

“Not especially,” was the answer. “Our schedule was set pretty loose to begin with, because we were inexperienced. And anyhow the Navy isn’t satisfied nowadays with your speed, no matter how fast you go. And that’s the way it should be.”

This rather staid old ironworks, which for three-quarters of a century has turned out heavy castings in a great, dark, dir-floored, hangar-like shed, has now mushroomed and spread all in a year until it teems like a beehive. To the oldsters in the works, it seems incredible that it could have happened at all.

Yet I asked the president what would happen if they got word from the Navy tonight, exactly doubling their contract. Could they get the men, could they handle the confusion of building more shipways, could they expand rapidly enough to make a go of it?

Easily, was the answer. In fact, they more or less anticipate a huge new load before long.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 23, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PORTLAND, Oregon – All up and down the coast I’ve been hearing reports of what a fine job Portland had done with its blackouts and civil defense. So I’ve nosed into the matter, and the reports seem to be true.

Portland’s good showing is due to two things – they started a long time ago, and one man, the Mayor, took the responsibility and carried the ball.

Way last spring the Mayor detached one of his battalion chiefs from the Fire Department, sent him to Washington to study up. and then made him fulltime co-ordinator of civil defense, responsible only to the Mayor. He is Edward Boatright, and he still holds the job.

The Mayor’s name is Earl Riley. The nice things I’m saying about him are not the result of any mesmerizing by the Mayor himself, for I haven’t met him. It’s just that everybody I’ve talked with gives him the credit.

Portland is a city that some visitors find, shall we say, unromantic. It has none of the Seven Seas personality of San Francisco; none of the hot-headedness of Seattle. It is a good staid town, with a deep New England background. And probably because of that it has something that many cities don’t have – which is unity Portlanders can pull together.

So when Mayor Riley and Co-Ordinator Boatright started going to town on civil defense last summer, the people worked with them, and followed. Long before the summer was over all the utilities companies had their plans worked out for air-raid emergency.

They’re ready for real thing

The Red Cross was busy as usual. Also women organized into what were called “Light Precaution Wardens,” the forerunner of “Air Raid Wardens.” And World War veterans started an organization which trained and grew until it was ready to be taken over en masse – it has now been – as a body of auxiliary policemen.

Then in October they had an all-out dress rehearsal – a Hallowe’en-night blackout. The Army was in on it, and they had elaborate plans. The Army was to send bombers over from various directions, interceptor planes were to try to head them off, guns brought in on trailers were to fire blanks at the sky.

Bad weather at the last minute prohibited all the flying and shooting. But the city did go ahead with its blackout. They say it was about 99.6 percent total.

So, when the real thing came, Portlanders knew how to go about it. On the day war was declared, word came from the Army at 5 p.m. that the city must be blacked out by 6.

The Mayor went on the air and told the people what to do. All through that first week the Mayor led strongly, and the people looked to him for leadership.

He took his instructions directly from Gen. Wash in Seattle (head of the Second Interceptor Command). Every time the Mayor had any fresh news he went right on the radio. He had a microphone at his desk, all six stations were hooked together, and they butted in on any program, regardless.

The secret: Only one general

There now hasn’t been a blackout here for several weeks. But as in other cities, the civil defense program is going on ahead, getting itself enlarged and polished up.

Many people are being trained. Even before the war, 3500 auxiliary policemen and 2500 auxiliary firemen had had training. Now more are being trained, and so are air-raid wardens. As far as I can see, the eventual setup will be like London’s.

When it is all finished, there will be two air-raid wardens for every block. Half of them will be women. The women will serve in daytime, the men at night.

As for the physical evidences of war and defense, there aren’t as many in Portland as in San Francisco. No sand has been distributed yet: no buildings sandbagged; no signs put up directing the public to daytime basement shelters.

The Fire Department already is in good shape. The Mayor is an amateur fire fiend, like LaGuardia. Going to fires is one of his hobbies. That may be the reason the Fire Department is so well prepared.

The only item in which Portland seems to have fallen down is the one that has stumped other cities too. Nobody can hear the sirens!

Sixteen new sirens are scattered over the city on rooftops. One certain siren can be heard eight miles away, but not in an apartment two blocks away. So now they are going to install 3¢ more, and put them close to the ground.

Nearly all of Portland’s business executives have worked hard on civil defense. But few of them have even had their names in the paper. It became a general policy for all responsibility to center right in the Mayor. There weren’t “too many generals,” as in San Francisco. That seems to be the secret. Maybe it would work in Washington too.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 24, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TACOMA, Washington – I’ve just hit a new all-time high in meal prices.

It was late in the evening when I got to Tacoma. I was tired and chilly; felt as though I’d just like to relax and eat in my room; felt like good old-fashioned bacon and eggs.

So that’s what I got. The ticket was one dollar and 94 cents. Yes – $1.94.

I had orange juice, fried eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. Just like an ordinary breakfast. $1.94. The four cents was tax. Fifty cents was surcharge for room service – which isn’t modest, you must admit. But discounting all that – still the price of the meal itself was $1.40, flat.

That tops by five cents my former record for the same dish at the Chateau Louise in Lake Louis, Canada, a few years ago. It was $1.35 there. I once had the same meal in St. Petersburg, Fla., for 35 cents.

So you see how things are going now. If they don’t get me in the February draft, I think I shall go into the bacon-and-eggs business for the duration. I’ll bring them to your room for one dollar even, and do a little dance for you besides.

And speaking of dollars, the cartwheel is passing from the scene.

Many younger people in the East have never seen a silver dollar. But until recently they were practically compulsory in the West.

Silver dollars become scarce

I remember my first trip to Seattle, 20 years ago, when a restaurant actually refused to take a dollar bill. They haven’t been that finicky in recent years, but still the silver dollar was predominant.

But now silver dollars are getting scarce, even out here. They say the Government has quit making them. Even when you do get silver in change, they usually ask if you’d prefer paper.

Before long the cartwheel will follow the buffalo, and we’ll have them only in museums.

Down at Gold Beach the other day, I inquired about my friend “Stuart X.”

You old readers may remember him from a column a couple of years back. He is one of the world’s oddest people. His egoism is supreme and superb. He readily admits two the greatest intellect ever known – past, present or future,

It was Stuart X who, after a long correspondence with George Bernard Shaw, wrote the great playwright (himself no mean egotist) a final letter, asking him not to write again, and ending with “Shaw, you weary me.”

Stuart X was well-to-do, and had built himself a large hidden estate up the Rogue River, some 30 miles back in the Oregon wilderness. That’s where I saw him last. He built this place in order to have a hiding place when the world finally broke into flames.

So on this trip – now that the world conflagration is upon us – I asked if Stuart X were secure in his long-prepared hideaway.

The answer was no. He sold out last year. He is again living in San Francisco’s East Bay region.

He writes his own obituary

Incidentally, Stuart X sent out his obituary this year as a Christmas card. A friend gave me one. As you will see, it is written in Stuart X’s own personally invented language, which I shan’t attempt to explain. Here it is:

AN OBITUARY
(As excerpted from Who’s Who in California, 1942/3)

X. STUART (Stuart X) – Prophet (past the five meditations of Buddha).

Psychologist (long before the term became respectable)–Philosopher–Philologist–Economist–Biologist–Individ-ualist and Recorder–of his now passing race.

Born – Brooklyn, N.Y., December 10, 1864.

Named – Henry Clifford Fowler Stuart.

Dropped the “Fowler” as soon as he grew strong enough. Dropped the “Clifford” because no one would use it. Dropped the “Henry” because there were too many other henerys. And anne-x-ed an “X” to mark his unknown-ness.

Left school at 14, escaping further e-duc-ation.

Lost 30 years – on other people’s busy-ness.

Author of “Principally About Finance” and “A Prophet in His Own Country” – (both of which he had to print and distribute himself) – and ori-gyn-all matter for many other books for which the whirled-are not yet read-y.

Retired over 30 years. And growing more and more tired of “Le Comedie Humaine.”

Aspiration – to avoid in carne re-nating.

When I last saw Stuart X, a few days after World War II began, he predicted that only the yellow race would survive, That’s tough for all you white people. Personally I have yellow jaundice, which I figure will qualify me for the great new world to come.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 26, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TACOMA, Washington – There are all kinds of records, but I’ve just talked with a man who certainly holds an odd one. He is a lawyer who has handled more cases than any other lawyer in the world.

His name is Oscar S. Galbreath. He is 95 years old. He was in active practice right up to a year and a half ago. Even now he has his license to practice for another year. He calls it his “dog license.”

“I’m going to keep right on till I die,” he says, “provided I’ve got sense enough left to apply for my license each year.”

Mr. Galbreath doesn’t know how many cases he has handled. He can’t even give an estimate. “I’m not very proud of it,” he says. But friends of his tried to figure up roughly for me, and they said a round figure of 75,000 wouldn’t be far wrong.

Mr. Galbreath’s career at the bar has been divided into three parts – 15 years in Nashville, Tenn.; 30 years in Durango, Colo., and 29 years in Tacoma. He has now been a lawyer for 74 years.

He hung out his first shingle in Nashville when he was 21. The suit of clothes in which he tried his first case was made from cotton that he himself had planted, picked and carded. His mother made the cloth and sewed it into a suit for him.

He started his wholesale filing of suits – which eventually resulted in his odd record – in those early days at Nashville. The county paid him $600 for collecting a $15 poll tax, whereupon he opened the sluice gates and poured thousands and thousands of poll-tax suits into the courts.

Then at 36 he went West, to Colorado. They say he made the change because he had gambled away all his money and wanted to start in a new place. From that day on he was a bitter fighter against gambling.

Never smoked, drank

Mr. Galbreath can quote large portions of the Bible from memory. When he lived at Durango, he established the Southern Methodist Church there. He never smoked nor drank. At Durango he had some historic fights with the saloon interests. He was county judge there in the ‘30s. Twice he was challenged to duels. Both times he accepted, but friends interceded and the duels never came off.

He was 66 when he moved from Durango to Tacoma – to start another career. It was here he put the finishing touches on his unique distinction of suing people along mass-production lines.

He worked for a collection agency – the National Association of Creditors. From 1912 until today they estimate he has handled more than 50,000 cases for this outfit. Why, for many years they were running 200 suits a week, and Lawyer Galbreath handled nearly all of them. When he’d go to the weekly sitting of a suburban court he’d have two suitcases of papers.

Oddly enough, Mr. Galbreath never made much money out of his colossal law practice. He worked on a straight retainer basis during these hectic years in the West. He is in comfortable circumstances, but not rich.

He has five children living, now well along in years. One of them is a millionaire.

Mr. Galbreath has made it a practice to go back to Tennessee once a year. He was there last fall.

Wished he’d been soldier

He lives in a ground-floor room of a residential hotel. When we went to see him he had one shoe off, and was toasting his foot before an electric heater, although the room itself must have been at 90. He was doctoring a corn.

His voice is high and frail. He isn’t sick, but the doctor comes to see him frequently. Like everybody else in America except me, he is taking vitamins. He listens constantly to an old-fashioned radio. Friends brought him a modern one, but he didn’t like it.

If Mr. Galbreath could live his life over, he would do one thing that he didn’t do – and that is get in the Civil War. He was 14 when the war broke out. He was a violent Confederate sympathizer.

Time and again he ran away to join the Southern armies, but his plans always went amiss. Finally his father put him in school to keep him from joining the South. And although that was 80 years ago, he has never got over it. He says the question “Why weren’t you in the war?” has embarrassed him all his life.

Mr. Galbreath has always been a determined Democrat. His first presidential vote was for Horace Greely (Republican), but he says he voted for Greeley on the same principle that made him use rye coffee sweetened with sorghum – he had to.

“Since that time,” he says, “if I have ever voted for anybody except a straight dyed-in-the-wool Democrat I’m not aware of it.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 27, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SEATTLE – If you are an old resident of Seattle, you will have been seeing the byline of “J. Willis Sayre” in the newspapers for over 40 years.

In fact, you will have been seeing it so long that you probably will have forgotten what J. Willis Sayre is really famous for.

Mr. Sayre, in his day, was the fastest man alive. He traveled clear around the world on a vacation whim, circumnavigating the globe by regularly established means of transportation in 54 days. The year was 1903. He broke the previous record by six days.

Even the boys on The Post-Intelligencer, where Mr. Sayre is now drama editor, had forgotten about it until Howard Hughes made his spectacular world flight a few years ago. They got to looking up around-the-world records in the World Almanac and here, lo and behold, was their own J. Willis Sayre, sitting back in his cubbyhole office typing out movie reviews.

So I dropped in to see Mr. Sayre, and he told me about his trip.

He was then on The Seattle Times, and just past 21. He doesn’t know what put it into his head, but he decided he’d go around the world on his vacation. He had $500 saved up. He carried the entire sum in $20 gold pieces.

He hopped a freighter on June 26, 1903, for Yokohama. It took him three weeks to cross the Pacific. He got in a little sightseeing in Tokyo, and went across Japan by train to Nagasaki. Then he took a boat to Dalny, Manchuria. He hadn’t been seasick crossing the Pacific, but he got plenty sick on this short trip.

Crosses Asia and Europe

From Dalny he took the Trans-Siberian Railway clear to Moscow. It was the first week the Trans-Siberian was in operation. The trip took three sold weeks. He says it was a wonderful train, with luxurious cars and fine food.

On the train he ran onto a Jewish merchant who had lived 18 years in Nagasaki. This man spoke eight languages, including Russian and Japanese, so Mr. Sayre clung to his coattails. When they got to Moscow this fellow was a little sore, for he said he’d been nothing but an interpreter and a lackey for Mr. Sayre all the way across.

From Moscow he took a train for Warsaw. Or rather he thought he did. When they were 18 miles out he discovered he was on the wrong train – headed for St. Petersburg.

So he got off, hired a horse and cart by sign language, and was driven 10 miles across country to the right station. It cost him 50 cents. Finally he got on the right train.

He stayed all night in Berlin, took another train to Flushing, Holland, caught a cross-channel steamer to England, a train to Liverpool, and hopped the Campagna to New York. He tarried only a few hours in New York, then headed west by train.

He turns down special train

He wasn’t aware that his home paper was making any fuss about his trip. After all, it was just his own personal trip, paid for by himself. But when he got to St. Paul, he discovered a special train – engine and two cars – waiting for him. The paper had arranged it for his final dash to Seattle.

But Mr. Sayre refused to get on the train. He had made all the trip that far on regular service – the kind where anybody could walk up and buy a ticket, and he wasn’t going to spoil it on the last lap. He came home on a regular train.

There was quite a to-do in Seattle when he got back. He made some speeches, and sold an article to The Saturday Evening Post about his trip. And that was the last of it.

Other people have claimed to have gone around faster by regular lines of transportation since then, but Mr. Sayre doesn’t believe it. And as for all those time-smashing flights around the world in the ‘30s, Mr. Sayre says they didn’t go around the world at all – they just went around part of it, up where the world is little.

Mr. Sayre was born in Washington, D.C. His father was a captain in the Union Army. When he was just a kid Mr. Sayre joined the Army and served a year in the Philippines, in ‘98.

He has had one other big trip. In 1928 he took his family and went all over Europe.

He has worked on all the Seattle papers. He has been bugs about the theater since he was a child. He says also that he’s a collector at heart. At his home he has 16,000 theatrical photographs – the biggest collection in the West, he believes. He had to build a special room for them.

He has also made a collection of all the theatrical programs in Seattle, extending clear back to 1863. He has given this to the Seattle library. He used to have a big coin collection, but it got too expensive, so he sold it.

He isn’t thinking about any more world trips soon.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 28, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SEATTLE – Having traveled slowly and deviously all the way from San Francisco to Seattle, I am now ready to file my report on the pulse of the Upper Pacific Coast. (Good old southern California will have to come later and in a separate category, as usual).

From what I hear in letters, the rest of the country seems to think people on the Coast are in a dither over the war. But to me the Coast does not seem in a dither.

The small towns have not changed in appearance from peacetime. I haven’t seen any service stars in windows yet. People on the streets act as they always used to. Occasionally in restaurants you see fat-stomached, middle-aged men in major’s uniform! – obviously not regular Army – which is one thing you didn’t see before the war.

Hotels all have blackout instruction cards in every room. But many hotels have made no arrangements for permanent blackout. Room and meal prices have gone up in some places, but not all. In most cities I’m paying the same price for the same room as in 1936.

Newspapers have instituted daily columns covering their war factories and shipyards. War news takes up most of the space. Police reporters and leg-men say it is almost impossible to get an ordinarily good story in the paper any more.

Despite denials, it is true that many people have left the Coast. I suppose there’s no way of knowing how many. The only ones I personally know of are retired people who had been living in hotels and who have now gone back to their Midwest homes for the duration.

Regular dwellers aren’t scared

But the regular dwellers aren’t scared. I don’t believe people on the Coast are half as excited about themselves as their friends and relatives in the East are about them.

War is talked at parties and wherever two people get together, of course, but the man with a zeal in his eyes is a rare one. War fever is not at the 1918 pitch. In spite of the drubbing the Japs have been giving us, I believe most people still look on them with contempt, instead of burning with the hatred we had for Germany the last time.

And in spite of the impossible having happened at Pearl Harbor, I believe 95 percent of the people on the Coast feel there is little likelihood of the Japs bombing the coastal cities – except maybe a few isolated suicide and token raids later in the war.

True, they are in earnest about their civil defense, but there isn’t the old spark that drives you when you know – as the British knew – that the raiders are coming tonight and every night and you’re gonna die if you don’t watch out.

Life, even on the “front line” here, has been disarranged very little by the war so far. There is plenty to eat, wear, drink and buy. I know an awful lot of people on the Coast, but I don’t know of a soul who is yet pinched in any way.

If the public has begun laying up its autos, it isn’t noticeable yet. Traffic in the big war-production centers is becoming a ghastly problem. It is like going through a major battle to get to work and back home again.

Traffic bottleneck is grave

Seattle’s transportation bottleneck is grave. Workers by the thousand have signed petitions calling on the city to do something about it – widen streets and augment bus and ferry services. One shipyard worker’s petition says it takes two hours to get from the yard downtown, and that 1500 men are late for work every day.

There are many boom towns. There is lots of money. They say in Seattle that probably never in history have so many bosses been told to go to hell. If a fellow doesn’t like his job, he just quits and goes to the shipyards.

In Seattle people are offering a $10 reward for vacant houses or apartments, and in the third-string hotels workmen are sleeping in the halls.

On the whole, I would say the Coast is far from all-out in its war effort. And I don’t mean any criticism by that. A country can’t get all-out until a war has been going on for a long time. England wasn’t all-out even after a year and a half of war.

A country isn’t all-out until everybody in it is being denied something, and is contributing something extra. Today the bulk of the population of the West Coast – including me – is living just about as it always did. “All-out” will undeniably come, but it hasn’t come yet.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 29, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SEATTLE – All my life I’ve wanted to know jujitsu.

Like most men of small dimensions and slight courage, I’ve always felt that if I only knew jujitsu, I could throw all these modern Greek gods nimbly into the ashcan and emerge a hero.

So now I have met a jujitsu expert, and I’m on my way. This fellow not only knows jujitsu, he has gone so far beyond it he could make hash out of a whole squad of regular jujitsuers.

I did not ask this expert to show me any jujitsu tricks. In the first place he was so big I was afraid he’d kill me on the first lesson; and second, he gave me four books on the subject. I’m going to study at home by candlelight, and then burst out all of a sudden one day throwing people right and left.

My jujitsu friend is Svend J. Jorgensen. He is a Seattle policeman. He is a hearty, good-natured guy who looks just like a cop. He is 50 and built like a yoke of oxen. Even if he didn’t know jujitsu, I’ll bet he could beat hell out of you.

He was born in Denmark, came to this country when he was 19, went to sea for four years, worked in Alaska, was a physical instructor in the U.S. Army in the last war, and joined the Seattle police force a few days after leaving the Army in 1919.

Patrolman Jorgensen has never fired a shot in his 23 years on the force. He is proud of that. “I’d rather have a medal for not killing somebody than for killing somebody,” he says. During his police career he has captured 67 gunmen, one murderer, and 30 safe-crackers. “And never fired a shot,” he says.

Used it on only three

I asked how many of those nearly 100 desperate cases he had actually had to use bis jujitsu on. Patrolman Jorgensen looked a little disappointed. “Only three,” he said. “The rest, I just got the jump on them.”

Jorgensen could shoot ‘em dead if he had to. He is a super crack shot. He holds 127 medals – more than anybody on the force – for sharpshooting. He has won the Distinguished Pistol Shooting medal in the National Rifle Matches at Camp Perry.

Jorgensen got interested in jujitsu shortly after joining the police force. What got his heat up was one night when a Seattle tough guy, with a gun in each pocket and another stuck in his sock, killed two rookie policeman and a detective.

“They got killed because they’d never been trained to protect themselves,” he says. So he started figuring out how policemen could take guns away from bad men.

First he got an American to teach him some jujitsu tricks. Then he took lessons from a Japanese expert. With that basis, he began inventing his own brand of jujitsu. Today his jujitsu is only 15 percent Japanese, and 85 percent Jorgensen.

“I’ve never yet figured out how to get a jujitsu hold on a bullet,” Jorgensen says. “If a man is 20 feet away, you better start shootin’ before he does.”

Children know jujitsu

Jorgensen has two grown daughters and a boy of 15. “Do the girls know jujitsu?” I asked. “Sure they do,” he said, “but they’ve never had to use it. One of them is married. She hasn’t even had to use it on her husband.”

The boy is already a hero. He saved a child from drowning when he was 11, and got a medal. Patrolman Jorgensen himself is no mean life-saver. He has rescued three people from drowning and 11 from gas. What burns him up about his kid is that be made this rescue before his father had got around to giving him a life-saving course.

In his off-time Jorgensen runs a little school called “Jorgensen’s Jujitsu Gym.” It is in the back end of a restaurant. He takes private pupils, averaging about 100 a year. He trains them in classes, twice a week for three months. The course costs $30.

He has written four booklets on his favorite subject. One of them, called “American Police Jujitsu,” has sold more than 40,000 copies.

Jorgensen is so wrapped up in his subject that he sometimes comes in for a little kidding from the other policemen. For instance, at roll call the other morning–

“I have here a cablegram concerning Patrolman Jorgensen,” the captain said to the assembled policemen. “It is such an unusual recognition of his work in jujitsu that I wish to read it aloud.” And the captain read approximately as follows:

“In view of the distinguished place Patrolman S. J. Jorgensen occupies in the world of scientific self-defense, it is hereby requested that the Seattle Police Department detach him for this period of emergency, in order that he may be matched by our Government with the best jujitsu expert in Japan. They shall then wrestle it out in a previously designated meadow, and the winner shall decide who wins the war. (Signed) General Douglas MacArthur.”

Jorgensen is still a little skittish when you mention it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 30, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SEATTLE – Recently I visited a place where a big merchant liner is being refitted as an armed transport. It was a ship I had seen before the war.

It takes about six months to turn a liner into a fighting-type transport, and costs almost as much as the ship did originally.

The man who showed me over this one said, “Do you know what the yardstick is by which they figure out the number of troops to put on a transport in this war?”

I said I had no idea. It has been a long time since I’ve had an idea on anything.

“Well,” he said, “they judge it either by the number of men that can get on deck at one time – they won’t carry more than can all get on deck at once – or they judge it by the amount of toilet facilities they can find room for. Whichever one is reached first, that’s the number of men they’ll carry.”

There’s no question but that labor scarcity will be one of the major things in the tremendous expansion of our wartime industry.

And yet, here in the shipyards and plants of the Northwest, they tell me skilled workers are still available.

They say experienced machinists and tool workers drift in every day from the hinterlands, thrown out of work as the small shops go under for lack of priorities. Also, every day brings small shop-owners from Spokane and Boise, and from clear on into Montana and Nebraska, who have come out to seek subcontracts from the big companies.

Heeds anti-rumor campaign

I believe the public is beginning to heed the campaign against repealing rumors that have to do with troops or ship movements or military strategy. I haven’t heard a remark of this type for a long time.

A friend of mine in Tacoma has had for several years a Japanese maid, American-born. They are on very friendly terms.

This friend was telling me that when the Pearl Harbor news started coming over the radio that Sunday, the maid just disappeared. They didn’t see her for three days, until my friend finally drove to her house and coaxed her back.

“What was the matter with her?” I asked.

“She was afraid we were going to torture her for Pearl Harbor,” he said.

I can sense, as the weeks wear on, a slowly growing doubt and intolerance of all Japanese, American-born or not.

While we’re on the subject of foreign-descended Americans, I’m reminded of nosing around recently in the grape-growing country a few miles north of San Francisco.

This lovely, gentle country of rolling hills and Old World wineries is heavily Italian, German and French. I wondered, as I came through, how those of Axis descent were being treated these days.

Hears one cute story about Italian

I heard one cute story that concerns an Italian near Santa Rosa, Cal. In times like these it wouldn’t be pulled on anybody who wasn’t pretty well thought of.

It seems this Italian registered for civil defense. A few nights later his phone rang and he was ordered to proceed at once to a certain bridge and stand guard over it.

So off he drove, at 11 at night, to this bridge, which was about 12 miles from his home. He got there and took up his post, walking up and down in a pouring rain. He walked up and down for four or five hours; nobody ever came past, he never saw a soul, none of his “superiors” came to check on him.

And gradually it dawned on him that maybe he was being ribbed. So just before daylight he drove home, and early next morning he made a few discreet inquiries.

Yes, it was just a little joke. He took it all right, too.

Seattle has been testing its new sirens every noon. But they don’t sound enough like London’s sirens to make you suddenly sit up with a start. They sound more like fire sirens. They lack that high, metallic, singing quality of London’s sirens. They sound mushy. I was disappointed.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 31, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SEATTLE – Now is the time to jot down, in your book of urgent addresses, that of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, on Colman Dock in Seattle.

You will find it indispensable. For example, suppose you were to find yourself in dire need of a whale louse. Where on earth would you find a whale louse? In Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, of course. One as big as your hand for 75 cents.

Or assume that you were caught in Jackson, Miss. Without a totem pole. Just wire Ye Olde Curiosity Shop – they’ll ship you an eight-foot one for $50.

Or you could order a calf-weaner, a five-inch grasshopper from Ecuador, or a stuffed chimpanzee with teeth bared. Practically anything you want, sir.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is an institution. It is known to thousands of sailors, and to scores of thousands of tourists. It has been a magnet for the curious for 43 years.

This odd business was established in 1899 by J. E. Standley, who went by the nickname of Daddy, and who always wore a skull cap during business hours. He died a year and a half ago, in his late 80s, and he must have been a character.

For 30 years or more he kept a combination grocery and butcher shop in Denver. But at heart he was a collector of freakish things.

After 30 years of this it got so bad that the customers couldn’t find the groceries. So Daddy Standley sold out, took down all his freakish mementoes, moved to Seattle, and set them up in business. They kept him in comfort the rest of his life.

Got old things from sailors

In those early days sailors would bring in nutsy things from the ends of the earth, and Daddy Standley would buy them.

I spent hours rummaging around the Curiosity Shop. It isn’t large, yet I’ll bet you could be there a week and on the eighth day find a hundred new things you’d never noticed before.

In Ye Olde Curiosity Shop you can buy shark eggs. You can buy a whole bear’s foot, or individual claws, as you wish. You can get an old mustache cup and saucer for $1.95. If you’re crazy for an African jungle marimba, it’s there. Maybe you’ve hunted all your life for a whale’s ear-drum.

There is a pass to the trial of Charles Guiteau in 1888. You can buy a narwhal tuck for $35.

After two hours I took off my hat and topcoat and decided to stay awhile. Mr. I. R. James laid them on a stool behind his counter. Mr. James is Daday Standley’s son-in-law. He and Ed Standley, a son, run the place now.

Sell stuff to lots of big people

Mr. James is a pleasant man who is very proud of the shop. He says they sell stuff to lots of big people. The duPonts of Wilmington frequently order giant clam shells. These monstrous things are five feet across, and the duPonts use them for bird baths. Robert Ripley ordered a 37-foot totem pole.

While I was there a class of small schoolgirls came in on a tour. “We have them all the time,” Mr. James said. “Twenty years from now they’ll be customers.”

One little girl came over to me.

“Have you got a picture of Buddha?” she asked.

“Little girl,” I said, “I am distressed beyond measure, but we disposed of our last picture of Buddha 10 minutes ago. However, and this is a bargain, I will furnish you a snapshot of myself for a mere five dollars.”

The little girl romped away to her teacher, pointed at me and said, “See that silly old man over there.” I suppose she will never think of the incident again, but I shall.

You’ve heard of the shrunken human heads from the Amazon jungles. Well, they’ve got them here.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 2, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

PORTLAND, Oregon – It was a cold, sharp evening in Portland, and what with the chill and the blackout threats, people were staying home almost in unanimity.

Around dinnertime I walked an abandoned block to a movie, and went up to the lonely ticket window. It was after dark, so I didn’t even have my own shadow for company. The girl looked at me and waited, I said nothing, but handed her my money. Then she said:

“How many, please?”

I turned and looked behind me, and up and down the street. Not a person was in sight. I turned back to the cage and said:

“Guess!”

And do you know what she said? She said:

“How many, please?”

You can’t win, brother, you just can’t win.

There is apparently a hidden clause in the regulations governing the management of hotels that requires every hotel in America to paint the hall on my floor the minute I move in. In my hotel career I’ve inhaled enough fresh hall paint to camouflage the British fleet.

Paint is one of the few things in the world that make me sick. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden. It creeps up so gradually that I always think, well, this time it isn’t going to bother me. So instead of moving to another floor or going out for an eight-hour walk, I just sit and try to work and am slowly immersed in a death-like sensation.

So it was here in Portland. I did give up twice during the day, and went out shopping for a while in the morning (overshoes, dictionary, and a pair of drawers) and late in the afternoon I abandoned hope again and went to a movie. But it was no use. I wound up sick, cross, and with a headache.

News of Devil’s Island fugitive

That was when I was here a week or so ago. And when I came back this time, back to the very same room, I’m not lying, they had given my hall a second coat within the hour.

So I’m sick again. I hope the Government will forbid all hotel hall paint for the duration.

Some of you may have missed the latest news about Rene Belbenoit, the Devil’s Island fugitive. You remember that last summer he once more ran out of countries that would harbor him, and in desperation swam the Rio Grande back to the U.S. But he got caught.

He was finally released Brownsville jail on bail. He went to New York, then to California. He somewhat established himself in San Diego, doing some lecturing and some writing. Then in December he took a bus back to Brownsville, to face trial.

Belbenoit was so positive of his acquittal that he didn’t even have a lawyer, intending to present his own case. But he got short shrift. The judge sentenced him to 15 months in prison for illegally entering the U.S. And he says in his latest letter:

“So after seven years of freedom, I find myself again in jail, in an American jail, and I am sad, because I love so much this country and the people of America.

“I have thousands of friends in this country, and they all like me, and this is my best reward. But I am not too much worry. Possibly I can be free on parole after a few months if I don’t get a pardon. I can take it. But it is hard.”

Poor Belbenoit. He seems doomed to an everlasting harassment. For him there has been no peace between these two great wars. And now because of the war, there probably can never be peace for him. For America, his last hope for freedom, is too busy fighting for its own liberty to bother with his.

Special plates draw attention

For almost countless years I have carried District of Columbia license plates on my car. But since my fingers are now raw and bleeding from helping support the great State of New Mexico, I decided this year to get New Mexico tags.

They came to me in Seattle a few days ago. I put them on and drove to Portland. And I’ll bet I wouldn’t have been stared at as much along the way if I’d been walking on my hands.

Do you know why? It’s because I’m a New Mexico “colonel.” And New Mexico colonels get special plates with low numbers, and alongside the number it says “Staff Officer.”

Boy, does that get attention! Some people salute, some laugh, and some just open their mouths and gawk. But everybody does something.

So be on your guard. If you see a car coming down the road with black and white license plates which say “63–Staff Officer,” that’ll be me. And I warn you, don’t stare.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 3, 1942)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

TIMBERLINE LODGE, Oregon – Let it be known that henceforth – anyhow for a week or 10 days – the author of this column shall be referred to as Ernst Otto Sven Pyle, familiarly called “Swish” by his intimates.

No, I am not turning Quisling or Nazi spy. It’s just that for an interlude my talents will be devoted to the slipping and sliding pastime of skiing, so of course I must have an Old-World name. The “Swish” refers to my here-he-comes-there-he-goes aspect (I hope).

I have been planning this winter sports spasm for three years – and managing to sneak out of it every year before this. You know me; I’m a tropical beachcomber at heart. I like to be hot, and to hell with the tang and exhilaration of frosty mornings and snowy slopes.

I’ve never had on a pair of skis in my life. Now that the time is nigh, putting on skis is the one thing in this world I do not wish to do. A man of my age! It is ridiculous. I might better take piano lessons or start college again, than try to learn to ski.

But the Timberline Lodge people saw that I was cornered, and threw their hooks into me. It was come up and ski, or else. My ski debut was all set for two weeks ago, on my way north. They almost got me then. But at the last minute I phoned and said I had to see about a bomber in Seattle right quick. It was a close shave.

I thought of going back south by way of Kansas City and El Paso, in what could be called a wide arc around Mt. Hood. But that would have taken too much rubber off my last set of tires. And I figured they’d catch me sooner or later, anyway, so maybe I might as well ski before my bones got even more brittle.

He tries to muster courage

So I drove back through Portland. I stopped there for a last deep breath. For two days I’ve been down in Portland (ah, sweet Portland, only 65 miles away!) trying to muster up the courage to come up here and face my Armageddon.

The thing actually became a horror to me. Last night I had nightmares of Japs by the thousands diving out of the skies at me – not in planes, but on skis. I saw the thing was getting out of control. I knew it was now, or the booby-hatch for me. So here I am.

I have not yet been on skis. I’m working into it gradually.

Until yesterday noon, my fear was largely devoted to the prospect of people laughing at me. That in itself is one of the worst fears on earth. But now I have a tangible fear.

For yesterday noon George Henderson came in to my hotel in Portland to have lunch with me. Mr. Henderson is connected with Timberline Lodge in a promotion way. Mr. Henderson is a young and handsome man of the athletic type, and one of Oregon’s better skiers himself.

An expert breaks his leg

And Mr. Henderson arrived at my door – get this straight, mind you – Mr. Henderson arrived at my door with his left leg in a cast. Yes, he broke it skiing!

It was the second break in two years for Mr. Henderson’s leg. He seemed to think nothing of it at all. He says practically everybody who skis has broken a leg.

He seems to think it a constructive idea, for when you break your leg it’s stronger where you break it than it was before. You get the impression that Mr. Henderson would like both his legs broken every half inch from his toes to his hips.

As I say, I’ve not yet been on skis. I’m just talking and stalling, like a child who feigns interest in everything around the room to keep from going to bed. My mind jumps and darts at possible excuses to get out of the whole thing.

It suddenly occurred to me that I have no skis. A perfect out. I rushed down to the instructor and said “Well, Olaf, this breaks my heart, but the whole thing’s off. I have no skis.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Olaf. “They’ve got lots of skis here to rent. And everything else – boots, pants, jackets, mittens. You don’t have to buy anything.”

That ruse didn’t work, so I hit on the scheme of carrying on a distracting non-stop conversation, not giving Olaf a chance to say a word, until it was too late to ski.

But I guess it’s no use. Tomorrow I face my doom. If there’s no column tomorrow, you’ll know what happened. Please omit flowers.