And Pap received his just political reward.
Shortly thereafter, he was chosen as successor to "Uncle Joe"
Cravens as Minority Leader in the Indiana State Senate.
CHAPTER III: FAMILY YEARS, BULL BREEDING AND GOOD CREDIT—1930-1940
While continuing to attend legislative sessions, Pap did so in another capacity. He put his considerable oratorical and literary skills to work lobbying his former peers and Congressional representatives on behalf of some lucrative new clients—the railroads. The improved income situation also allowed him to devote more time to his growing family, and to write about the comedy and crises of domestic life: A relative's eccentric shipping practices, a daughter's distress at being blackballed by a sorority. As the decade progressed, the older children were flying the nest, going on to higher education and finding mates of their own.
Aside from domestic duties, his law practice and lobbyist activities, Pap became more involved running the family farm and in other agrarian pursuits, including the purchase of Hereford bulls. The livestock provided grist for his pen on more than one occasion, including a memorable account of some thoroughbred price-fixing. Pap even started thinking like a bull (or as he imagined one of his prize studs would feel after the animal was struck by a train).
He also found time to champion small and solvent independent banks like the family-owned Russellville institution against onerous government "reform" regulations during the Depression; to promote his old alma mater, Western Military Academy; and suggest a hospital tighten up its security after he fell victim to thievery.
Pap wrote some family history—a poignant account of a chair that was an heirloom, and a satirical account of his grandfather's attempt to create a new county with Russellville as its seat of government. That effort may have failed, but Russellville still wound up with good credit at the Waldorf-Astoria during daughter Joan's wedding.
OUTRAGED OVER SORORITY POWER
Excerpt from a letter Pap wrote to his mother-in-law, Mrs.
Sawyer, sometime in 1930.
. . . Joan has triumphed overwhelmingly and unequivocally.