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Erie, Penna,
Thursday,July 4, 1940.

The main event of this July Fourth was a picnic out on 20 Mile Creek south of Ripley on the Wright farm, Wright being a friend of the Scarboroughs, particularly Walter. The personnel of the picnic consisted of ourselves, Reeds, Tamos, Maybelle and all the children including Mary Lou, Maybelle's niece, Bruce Hams and a couple of other pals of Mary Lou. Perhaps the highest spot of the picnic took place in a beer parlor in Ripley where Charlie, Lee and I put away three bottles of Ballantines ale each and discussed the Scarborough divorce case. Lee had been away on vacation and said the whole thing was like a thunderbolt to him when they got back and learned the news. Charlie, of course, had the real low down and I learned some new angles. One was that he felt the divorce would never go thru because the way Maybelle is carrying on, "Walter will have all the grounds." He said the term "indignities  to the person" (Maybelle's grounds) is a nice way of saying "one party has too much zeal for the other party." He intimated Maybelle has plenty of "zeal" but "she likes her pickles mixed." Lee made the reflection that it was funny what a fuss the human race made about "the simple discharge of a pair of glands", and Charlie thought they made altogether too much fuss - that the results of that sort of a misdemeanor occasionally were seldom half as serious as most people seemed to make out. However, neither of them indicated he had departed the straight and narrow in this respect. I didn't comment much on this phase and Charlie remarked, "There's the guy we've got to find out more about some day," which I laughed off. There's precious little about me to find out. The ale must have worked pretty well on Charlie because