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Chips From The Woodpile
The intellectual giants of the National Amateur Press Association came to Columbus loaded with dynamite but nobody touched it off. Why? Most of the proxies were for, and very few were against. The absentees seemed to know just how the presentees were going to vote. The Bilious Bull is weeping again. Great big tears. No bull fight. What a convention!
That Indefinable Something
‘Tis strange how that indefinable something works. The Clevelanders of the C.S.P.C. spent a whole evening last year discussing that indefinable something but got nowhere, because it is indefinable. Maybe it is love. Oh, yes.
Or maybe the Bilious Bull can tell us.
Love Was There
Journalists came to Columbus from the east, west, north, and south, all bubbling over with love. Yes, love. That is why the Bilious Bull wept. So full and running over with it was the Convention that it crept into a greetings telegram to the rival United Alumni also then in convention in far California. Palpitating heart throbs of it. (But no telegram of welcome to young Ferdinand.)
And a Few Frowns
Oh, there were a few little bits of skirmishes. Burton Crane condemned the widow line. Lois Grimes busted her garter, and publicly disclosed her heart’s reaction. Eleanor Nelson was forced to read a paragraph of her report which she had purposefully left out. “It really doesn’t matter,” she insisted, but the Giants thundered threateningly and she had to read it.
All Were So Peaceful
At the Convention in Cleveland two years ago the Big Shots fought so hard. This year in Columbus they so awfully peaceful. Some of the big fellows went across the street to the Capitol Building and talked with Governor Bricker for a while. Burton Crane and Lieutenant Ralph Babcock took pictures of the bunch in front of McKinley’s monument.
Batchelder Held Sway
Frank Roe Batchelder took the chair once, and the next time he ever does I’m going to put cotton in my ears. He wields a wicked gavel; it really bangs. All the old past presidents had a whack at it but Batch delivered the biggest one.
Boston Next Year
Boston in 1944! Ah! The city of two-dollar bills! Yes, and where Paul Revere drove the early morning milk wagon; and where Bunker Hill monument says to the apartment houses: “Thus far and no farther.” “Wait till you see the whites of their eyes.” But Michael White’s eyes just closed in innocuous desuetude, as the election proceeded. He had met his co-editor. “Now I know she is okay,” he was dreaming. The two editors of the Forrer Leaf Clover had never met before in person though they had used the same ink bottle.
Vondy likes Ohio. Or is she shy of us? Her spending a couple of pre-convention days in Cleveland, as she did, was like F. D. R. and Churchill at Casa Blanca before the big push. And whatta push the election was! The western pioneers casting knowing glances at each other when the big shots began to nominate our candidates. But if they had not come, the results would have been the same, although Crane and Townsend would not have had that thick slice of juicy, rare roast beef at Baker’s Cafeteria in Springfield the night before the Convention in Columbus. Maybe that is why the Bilious Bull wept. Bulls make good hamburgers.
Michael White was the most elusive of them all. Did you ever try to find somebody at a convention? Somehow we got hungry all at once, when someone suggested the Miramor. So down Broad Street we went like a big Fourth of July parade. Michael White was among the missing. Thrice did Driftwood’s editor strive to include him in the pictures he took, but he just wasn’t there. Where was he? Every time we did see him he was wearing that same evasive merry twinkle, the way Mona Lisa looks. White and Batchelder sat together during one session and they were like a pair of turtle doves. Further bak sat Helm Spink and he was like a woodpecker. That was while the Bilious Bull was bellowing.
Vincent Haggerty’s Last Convention
The Haggertys were there, bless their hearts! Little did we dream that it would be Vincent’s last Convention so we’re glad we saw him there; we’ll miss him more than mere words can say.
Some others came and surprised us greatly: Lieut. Ralph Babcock, up from Texas; Sheldon Wesson, the longest legged soldier in the army; the Martins; George Lindstrom, whose superb book Out of the Sand is just running off the press; Grace Phillips of Columbus, who handled the banquet tickets; Bob Holman, who walked back to Pennslvania, a conquering President, after having to stand up in the train from Pittsburgh to Columbus; Bayard Oxtoby; Benton Wetzel; Earl Bonnell, who lives in the southwest part of North East, Pa.; and Alonzo Leonard of a rival Association, the editor of &mpersand. He drove from Chillicothe, Ohio, stopping every ten minutes with radiator trouble. He prints a 16-page 4 by 5 journal, one page at a time on a toy press he has kept since boyhood. He had never met but two amateurs in his life until we began introducing him to our illustrious ajays.
Alma Weixelbaum and Willametta Turnepseed, local heroines, with an elective office apiece, keep Springfield on the map for another year. Anna Maria rolled in on a bus after the show was over, bubbling over with her usual enthusiasm, like a late pupil called to report her reason for tardiness, and bustles up with:
“Hi, Teacher! Hi, Kids! I see you all got here okay!”
The Convention Paper
Raymond Jeffreys who resembles a decorated French count, gave us oodles of fine newspaper publicity, including the Associated Press (who advised our new vice-president of his election early on the morning of July 6th) and who, as a speaker, would fit in well across the way from the Neil House on the Senate floor of the State Capitol. He also published a Convention paper, The National Amateur News.
From Akron came Pearl Adoree Rawling, an amateur publisher in the N.A.P.A. and A.A.P.A. From Ann Arbor come Sesta Matheison, and from Milwaukee Eddie Daas, a former live wire in Amateur Journalism. Helen Vivarttas, lovely President of the A.A.P.A., and Vivian Chatfield, also prominent in the A.A.P.A., were there. Oh, yeah, let ‘em all in. They will all be Nationals anyhow, after the Duration.
Want a Convention Photo?
The photographer at the banquet came with only one flash bulb; said that was all he could get. Such sureness should elect Bricker our next President. The picture came out fine. Copies of it can be obtained from the photographer, Mr. George Neiswender, Columbus, Ohio, at one dollar each, or by writing to the station to which you are listening. (Printer’s P. S. – Send buck to either address.) And Mr. Neiswender, who took the picture, got so interested in it all that he applied for membership in the Association. It must have the come hither in Mabel’s eyes.
We Needed A Little Jacking-Up
Our new vice-president, Alfred Babcock, is a live wire. He wrote Driftwood’s Editor immediately on getting word of his election. He wanted to know why Driftwood had not been seen during the past year. And here we are in the mailing bundle again. If he can bring all the rest of the Inactives to life, the coming year will be okeydoke for the N.A.P.A.
Then A Nightingale Sings
I sit by the road as the sun sinks low,
An acorn falls down at my feet;
The shadows are long in the golden glow,
Stretching over a field of wheat.
The sunlight and acorn, the shadows and field,
Fade into a wonderful night,
Like the happy young days of the past, that yield
To an older man’s fuller delight.
I watch in the stillness the stars go by,
No hurrying fear of the dawn
Have they; while my burden is lost in the sky
A nightingale sings and is gone.
Colophon
Published by Albert Pedrick of Springfield, O., who supplied the paper and the first line of type. Handset in ten-point Bookman with heads in eighteen-point Cloister Oldstyle Italic.
Product of the Kitty Kat Press