Viewing page 78 of 102

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

8

Two days later, I'm writing my diary in the evening while listening to Wayne King's "soft harmonies" and somehow they made me sad. I couldn't say why. To me, there seemed to be a certain beauty in sadness that music brought out--or maybe it was the other way around; perhaps there was a sadness in beauty. I seemed to have been in a rather confused state of mind. At any rate, I felt that Wayne King's music was always sadly beautiful. He was a genius of sorts and I never tired listening to him.
I'd spent most of that dark, rainy, raw Sunday indoors working on checks, checkbooks and GE stuff. I took Bab and Rog to see the choo-choos for a while in the afternoon while Willie rested. Nothing notable had happened. But somehow that day I felt a keen longing to play a game so good that I could always feel satisfied and at peace with myself. I felt very keenly about being worthy of the children. This seems to have struck me hardest in connection with Rog at that time because he was the youngest and seemed to believe implicitly in me at age three. He would put his arms around me and "love his daddy," and I would long for a completely good game filled with such peace and satisfaction. It seemed almost criminal not to strive to be everything he thought me to be in his childish little heart--his "little Daddy." 
We were very proud of Bab and Rog and that Christmas we sent out three dozen cards with a photo of Bab and Rog on them, most of them to friends and family afar who, for the most part, had never seen them. As I recall, we had these made up using one of the photos taken by Dorothy MacLeod. 
Most of my comments about George Bennett, the chief inspector for the Illinois Central, will be made in the GE section to follow. However, I find that we did have occasional social life with George and his wife, whom he'd married very recently and who was a daughter of the president of the Federal Bearing Co. in Poughkeepsie. She was a very attractive and charming little girl whom we became fond of. About this time, the diary records a Monopoly session at our house attended also by the Reeds and Bennetts. We loosened things up with "two potent Tom Collins" to get started. Apparently it was a good party and Barbara Reed had the satisfaction of having me lose the first game and then thoroughly trouncing me personally in the finals of the second one. This seems to have been a popular game at the time but I remember little about it except that I think it had something to do with real estate transactions and one name that sticks in my mind in this connection is "Ventnor Avenue."
Two nights later, we attended the Griswold Club Christmas Dance at Hunter's Lodge. It was a dinner-dance preceded by a cocktail party at the Ogdens which got us off to a fine start. However, a heavy snowstorm developed during the evening which actually threatened to strand all of out there for the night. I can remember the near crisis even now. However, with a lot of luck, we finally made it home successfully.

Transcription Notes:
There are three black circles in the left margin of this page of the document that indicates it was three-hole punched.