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5

I'd say that in 1936, "story telling" was far more popular than it is today. Story-telling sessions, particularly among men in their relaxed periods, were frequent. And it was common for a man to be famed as a storyteller. Jim Chambers of Ingersoll-Rand had such a reputation as did Bert Pero of our New York Office. You could be reasonably sure that any story they told would be genuinely funny. It might also be "dirty" but never for dirt's sake. On the other hand, there were men whose stories were almost invariably dirty with the humorous aspect relegated to a minor role or perhaps not even there at all. There were men who drank but never told stories and those who told stories but didn't drink. In general, it seemed as though our railroad customers were a class who enjoyed stories and I used to try to have a few on tap when required. However, I did require that they be funny first and then if they were a bit off-color too, that was excusable. I think I accumulated a fair collection. I'd preserved a list of stories in the form of a few catch words for each that would remind me of them and I reviewed this recently, wondering what value it possessed. I supposed there were 150-200 stories covered but, like a "minimal diary," many of the references are so brief that I can't recall more than 75% of the stories referred to. Of the ones I can remember, they can be recalled almost always by some remark someone else makes. So, having no intention of putting any of them into this account, I decided the list had no real value and I tore it up.

For years, we'd subscribed to TIME and enjoyed it--and we still subscribe and still enjoy it. But in November 1936, Henry Luce and his colleagues at TIME launched a new magazine called LIFE. It was to be a picture magazine, it sounded good to us, and we became charter subscribers. Some 1,500 issues later, in the late 60s, we finally cancelled our subscription, and, having kept all the copies over the 30 year period, I donated the collection to Penn State, taking a $500 income tax deduction for it, the latter never being questioned. LIFE lasted a few more years and then folded a couple of years ago.

I continued my desultory short-story writing all through the 1930s, never selling anything but continuing to hope. As I read them now, I see how amateurish they were although in a few spots in them here and there, there might be a flash of fairly good writing. In 1936, I wrote three stories. Thinking I really had something in my piece about James Wolfe--"Return"--I wrote a fourth version of it, this being the one I included in the 1934 write-up. I wrote "Adrift," a piece based on my 1933 experience with the hatcheck girl at the Van Curler in Schenectady. I boldly submitted this to ESQUIRE and had the satisfaction of at least getting something better than a printed rejection slip--I got a memo sheet on which was written in longhand: "Not quite." I was elated. The third was a story titled "Down to Beautiful Earth Again," which was based