LETTERS
“One day,” writes Oswell Patout, Jr., of Jeanerette, La., “our gang (I’m enclosing a picture showing the three of us reading Jerry Todd books) began receiving mysterious maps and letters informing us about missing pearls. Here was a fine chance, we thought, to solve a mystery like Jerry Todd and his gang. So we set to work in regular Juvenile Jupiter Detective style. But, alas, the pearls were a fake. The letters and maps were a trick of boy [[x]]friends of ours who know how ‘bugs’ we are about your peachy books.”
“I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to be a book writer like you,” writes Charles Jordan of Chicago, Ill., “or at least try to be. If all men were like you it sure would be a swell world for us kids. I sure do appreciate your books. Yes, sir, I do. My cousin and I have tried many times to do things like Jerry. But what can a fellow do here in this big city! Boy, Jerry and his gang sure have peachy times, if you ask me. Whenever I read a Jerry Todd book I have the feeling that I’m right there, going through all the adventures the same as the other boys.”
“I belong to a gang of Boy Scouts,” writes Billy Johnston of Little Rock, Ark. “We have bully good times. One time we had a cave, to get into which we first had to raise a trapdoor and then crawl through a dark tunnel.”
Boy, that sounds hot! And I’m reminded, too, of the cave that Trigger Berg and his pals built. Did you, Bill, like Trigger and his gang, catch a robber in your cave? This episode of Trigger’s, I believe, took place in the Treasure Tree book.
And as though in answer to Bill’s letter, Joe Griffith of Allegan, Mich., writes: “Our cave, built back of our barn, didn’t last long. For a boy walked across the top and two boards fell on the kid’s head who was inside. Ouch! I was glad it wasn’t me.”
Also from Allegan comes this interesting letter from Jack (Yam) Hale: “As the leader of our gang I am called Jerry Todd. Don Garlock is Peg. Zeb Jones is Scoop. And Si Herrington is Red. Having a raft with a big slingshot on it we frequently dress up like pirates, using wooden swords. Also we built a lean-to in the woods and made a totem pole—not so good, though, as the one in Poppy’s book. Nor must I forget the ‘Stricker gang’ that we have battles with. That’s the name we have for a rival gang near us. They’re hard, like Bid.”
Here’s a joke (I think it’s good, too) sent in by Emanuel Bernstein of Newark, N. J.:
Jerry: “It’s only six o’clock. I told you to come over after supper.”
Red: “That’s what I came after.”
Another boy—George Browne of Rye, N. Y.—submits this one:
Father, to little Tommie who had just started to school: “Well, son, what lesson do you like best?”
Tommie: “I like recess best.”
And what do you think—Alfred Burke of Cranford, N. J., states that he has read the Whispering Cave book twenty-four times! [[xi]]
Here’s another snappy one: “I tried to make a dinosaur egg,” writes Jack Hanson of Rockford, Ill. Jack doesn’t say how the egg turned out. Yet how glad we are that he didn’t try to lay it!
“My chums and I recently organized a Juvenile Jupiter Detective Association,” writes Wilfred Hinkel of Elmont, L. I., N. Y., “only we call ourselves the Jerry Todd Union of Detectives. Boy! You should see our peachy badges.”