Viewing page 369 of 547

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

This afternoon I had one of those brief experiences that gives a very unpleasant thrill.  We stopped the car so Rog could get out and pick some red pre-autumn leaves.  They were across a ditch and the tree in some tall weeds and I went along to help him because he was stymied for a moment by small bug on a weed in his path.  As we stood in the undergrowth, I felt something against my leg and thought it was of weed rubbing me - I looked again and still thought so and dismissed it from my mind.  Suddenly I felt a terrific, pinching pain on my penis.  I rubbed it and it went away only to be followed by another jab.  I leaped out of the grass and getting behind the car, pulled out and there on the soft, tender flesh near the end was a black bug and at first I couldn't brush it off!  Finally I picked it off bodily - it seemed to be fastened on!  For the next few minutes I had visions of being poisoned - I thought of various forms of spiders - I was so excited when I saw the thing.  I didn't recall just what it was like.  But as time passed and the creeping paralysis of some deadly poison failed to materialize, my agitation subsided and when I got home, there was hardly a mark to show where the thing had bitten me.

Erie, Pa.,
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1940.
Shapter got back today but so far as I know Whitey didn't interview him - if he did he failed to tell me.  I had occasion to speak to Shap about a proposition in the afternoon and got civil but extremely disinterested response.  It wouldn't surprise me if Whitey never followed through, having