RUSSELLVILLE HAS GOOD CREDIT AT THE WALDORF
March 17, 1940
Mr. B. C. Byers
1150 Oakwood Ave.
Dayton, Ohio
My dear B.C.: Well! Well! Well! I'm threatening to do a thing I've been threatening for about a year—write you a letter. . .
Joan was married Nov. 18th, 1939 in St. Bartholomew's Church (Episcopal), corner 51st and Park Avenue, New York City, across the street from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Her parental father and his family retinue, large and small, married and unmarried, were hosteled on the 12th floor of the Waldorf. And you can imagine what a stir among the employees we simple country folks made. They had seen nothing like us in that place since its corner stone was laid, and they haven't since. . .
Dr. Oxnam's (now Bishop Oxnam, stationed at Boston) wife and daughter were to be our guests at the Hotel in our suite of rooms count them, 8 of them. The Bishop was to have been present to give a prayer—Joan had graduated at De Pauw when he was President there—but old St. Bartholomew said: "No. No Methodist, or other cult, can pray at an Episcopal Church wedding. We run the Church, and incidentally the wedding, and what praying is done, we'll do." So the Bishop got sort of miffed and went on to Arizona ahead of time.
The wedding was at 4 p.m., the reception immediately following. Joan was a feature writer on the Associated Press in New York City—a splendid job. Naturally her associates were newspaper folks and writers, mostly men, who knew Kentucky Tavern from Coca-Cola. The wedding reception was to be held in the New York Newspaper Women's Club in the Midston House (hotel near Rockefeller Center). It had a bar, and Joan somehow got the silly idea it was the duty of the bride's father, for this occasion, to stock that bar with tools having an alcoholic content. . . So we brought along the main feature of the reception refreshments: 8 quarts in my grips, 8 in Frank's, 4 in Munny's, 4 in Margaret's, and Sir Walter Scott Behmer brought 3.
Mrs. Oxnam was to know nothing about it. She didn't—until she stepped into the Club rooms. Then anyone would know it, unless he had spent a lifetime refereeing skunk-squirting contests.
Old man Thomas, I think his name is, formerly Editor of the New York Times, now a sort of newspaperman head of the Pulitzer School of Journalism, and who had Joan in his classes when she went to that school, got tight and went all around telling the guests his great grandpappy was half Indian. His good old wife stayed sober, and as a result sprained an ankle on the scuffed-up rug. The woman Editor of Vogue, or else one of its principal writers, kissed me because she said I looked like her cousin who had his leg shot off in the Spanish-American War. In the excitement I kissed Mary Beth Plummer—top woman writer on the Associated Press and incidentally about the best looking—just to show my good taste.
Early in the game, Munny saw what was coming. So she shepherded Mrs. Oxnam and daughter away early. They put the daughter to bed. Then went out on their own, and in some unaccountable manner got into the bar of the Hotel, saw what they had done—and ordered lemonade. All Munny needed to complete the picture was a basket of eggs on one arm and a fresh dressed chicken under the other.
My Gosh! But we had a time.
What with buying extra booze, taxi-cabbing everybody all over Hell's Half Acre, eating in the "Cert Room," which was named for some famous Spanish painter, or paperhanger, and tipping hundreds (it seemed), I thought I might run low in cash. So I slipped quietly around to a room labeled "Credit Manager," walked in and saw this woman sitting in the big chair. She saw the surprise on my face, smiled and said: "I am the Credit Manager. Are you looking for me?"
"My name is Durham. I live in Indiana, and they're taking it away from me around here faster than they do back home on Thursdays at the main gate of our County Fair. I may run out of money, and I want to know how I'd go about getting a draft cashed, if I had to."
"May I see the draft?"
I pulled out the bill fold, fetched out a $50 draft, and sure enough there it was in big letters, RUSSELLVILLE BANK, payable to me.
She looked at it, then at me quizzically, and said: "Are you the father of Joan Durham, the Feature Writer who was married yesterday over at St. Bartholomew's. I read her AP features."
"Yes mam," I said proudly, "I'm her Pap."
"Have you any sort of identification card, letter, driver's license, or something to identify you?"
"Yes, mam. I have a bad note on Peter M— back at Russellville for $20 I wish somebody would collect, a membership card in the Putnam County Farm Bureau and a New York Central pass"— cautiously saving the best for the last.
"The pass will be sufficient." She looked at it and then at me and said: "We will cash the draft any time you want it cashed— now, if you want it."
"No," I said, "but if that won't run me, is there any way to cash checks?"
We talked quite a bit—about Russellville (which she never heard of), the wedding, the Hotel, farming, cattle and hogs, etc.
Eventually she said: "We'll cash checks for you up to $1,000, Mr.
Durham."
Well. By that time she was far, far ahead of me, so I tried to catch up. "Miss", I said, "how long have you been Credit Manager here?"
"About six years", she said. "Why?"
"Because you won't be Credit Manager very much longer, giving out credit that way."
Then she did throw the witty bombshell. She said:
"Well, Mr. Durham, no one from Russellville ever gave this hotel a bad check yet."
And after a little more talk, in which she bragged, for my benefit, how she could tell people who wouldn't give bad checks, I left and went upstairs and bragged to Munny how Morgan, Loeb and I could cash checks at the Waldorf—just like that. . . Yours,