NO MINK SOUTH OF KEY WEST?
At Rio and Santos we lost upward of a third of our original passengers. Newcomers filled all the vacated cabins, Portuguese or Spanish speaking peoples. Most of them were business men and not tourists out for a lark. Talk started about going through customs at Buenos Aires, and how many cigarettes and how much liquor we could take in. For some reason opinion on number and volume differed. . . As to liquor, the question centered around whether it was liters or number of bottles that counted, and if so what size bottles. All of which didn't help those who had it in jugs. I never will know how the jug crowd came out.
Sugar Foot's problem is something else. It has to do with a neck piece Mummy or someone else in the family besides me is sending to Ann Drew in California. Now you know why it is taking this roundabout way of getting to California, so why ask me that simple a question? But so far on the trip there has been no place for the display of furs, and the only way that comes to me now that we can achieve that air of affluence is for the hot water system of the flying machine to give out when we are 2,000 feet in the air going over the Andes to Santiago. But let's hope it doesn't. I don't want anything to happen to anybody that high up, much less Sugar Foot and me. I wouldn't want that to happen even to a Republican—provided there are any of them left up there by this time.
I see I started out telling you about Aura May's problem and wound up in politics. Her problem is this: she didn't declare said alleged mink neck piece on leaving the States. Now some low fellow tells us we will have trouble getting "back-in" with it. My hope is there are no mink south of Key West. And besides, the more I get the few glimpses of that neck piece the more I am convinced they're house cats made up to look like anything that has to pay a duty.