HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD A RADIO?
March 19, 1940
My dear Mrs. Cunningham: After the very kind and considerate treatment received from you, Harlan and his wife during my rather short stay in Miami, you must be thinking I am an ingrate for not writing sooner, but the fact is, I've blamed near been sick all the time since leaving there. Coming home I was a trifle dizzy for a day or so, but I attribute all that to those two singers who broadcasted from your music room that Sunday night. Good old Walter sized up my trouble in his efficient way, and knowing my background, realized those girls coupled with Miami's metropolitan hours and night life would make any native of Russellville dizzy. And so, he drove practically all the way home. . .
Passing through Jonesville, a town about like Waverly, Walter saw a sign, "Home Cooking." Of course we stopped and went in. A hill-billying radio in the kitchen made the dining room hideous with its squawking. The Old Brakeman asked for grits, fish and sea food. He got boiled side-pork, boiled cabbage, boiled beans and corn bread. And later he was to get what was advertised as pie, but looked like unto no pie I had seen in my 58 years of active pie viewing.
I asked the waitress: "Where is that terrible noise coming from?"
With a puzzled expression, she answered: "Why that's the radio."
Then something dawned, her face lighted and she asked: "Haven't
you ever heard a radio before?"
"Is it a bird or an animal," I asked.
"Neither one," said she. "It's a little box you turn on and the music comes out. Ain't you ever seen one? We turn it on of a mornin' and it plays all day."
"No. But if we came this way again and brought company, would you turn it off while we're eating?"
"I shore will," she said—and she meant it.
The foregoing was among the lesser highlights of our trip straight home. . .
Was in Detroit last week. Saw Joannie, husband and apartment. The husband is as big as the apartment is small. It's an up and downstairs affair. Little stairway from living room upstairs. The whole thing is about the size of a smallish hen-house, the upper floor representing the roosts. As ever,