Munny wanted to see Elizabeth Shoaf Purnell (Red's widow) who lives at Attica, Ind. . . . (She) was giving a party tonight for another old woman friend of ours, and who is her cousin, the former Miss Sina Booe; then became Sina B. Songer; then Sina B. Ross; and now has a new husband, some Frenchman whose name I do not remember and am too hurried to look up. They were married about the first of this year. She met him at Hot Springs, Arkansas—and is he a honey? He is. (After seeing Elizabeth we came home by way of Veedersburg, where Sina and said husband now live. Sina's parents struck oil years and years ago, and built a rather pretentious house in Veedersburg. At the time of the striking of oil, Red Purnell said to me that the "oil would agree with Sina," and it has). If ever I saw an adventurer for a rich widow, he is it. She is about 75 and he is 12 years younger than she. Therefore he will outlast her, in all probability. I doubt if he has ANY business, but says he is a sort of artist; sells pictures or something like that. Says he will be having an exhibit soon in New Orleans and southern cities. For a wedding present he gave her two pictures—God knows what they are. I think I probably saw them but am confused with the multitude of objects he showed hanging all over HER house. She takes all that stuff in like a real soldier. I have seen four flushers in my time—but he is tops in my opinion.
This new husband talks a blue streak and he fails utterly to speak illy of himself. To be truthful, I was amazed the way he talked. Maybe the highlight—if there could be a highlight in his conversation—went something like this. On the grand piano (Sina's) was a small picture in a sort of glass rope frame. We think the picture was named "Blowing Bubbles." Anyway, it was one of Hitler's favorites and Bro. Hitler kept it on his desk. In some miraculous way, this new husband of Sina's got hold of it. I think he said he stole it, maybe meaning he gave so little for it that same was next to stealing, but however he got it, it is now valued at $250,000, which I would say was a dam sight too high, but sitting there in Veedersburg on Sina's piano, right out in the open, I should venture the guess it will soon disappear once the Public finds out its value. There is one thing sure—I will never break into Sina's house to steal that picture. It is absolutely safe so far as I am concerned, much safer than the weather-beaten tomatoes on Ben's back porch right here next door.
Eventually he asked my business. I told him I was a farmer, and then the fireworks did start. Above all things on this Earth he wanted to be a farmer. That was his life's ambition, and on and on he went. I told him there was much more about farming than meets the naked eye.
Sooner or later Munny will give you the address up on 5th Ave. near Tiffany's where he is very prominent in some way or other.
This will do for today,
Pap
METHODIST PIONEERS THINK OF PERU
November 16, 1952
Dear Footser: . . . I have, in a rather small way, suggested to Mutiny and Margaret that we try to spend from mid-January to about mid-April in Lima, Peru. . . There was an article in the Nov., 1952, Holiday telling about Peru and how cheap it was to live there. . . I realize how much of a handicap we would be under. As time goes on, I get a little deafer, and God knows I am too old to try to learn any Spanish. . . If we could rent a modern furnished house and get reliable servant(s), then I don't know but what I'd try it. I just don't like cold weather. At the same time, I don't want to get into any particularly tight place. The article in Holiday was very favorable, as you know it would be. But the real facts might be far, far different. If I were 30 years younger, and without any wife or family, I think now, I'd sure try it just for the hell of it, if for nothing else. I wouldn't under those circumstances stand back, or even be fearful. But as it is, it is different. What do you think about it?
Frank and I had a whale of a time last month going to Kansas, Okla., Texas, Miss. and Kentucky. You just don't know how high in Methodist circles us Durhams are. I'll tell you. I found it all out on this trip Frank and I took. Grandpappy, my grandpappy, Jacob Durham, came to Russellville from Perryville, Ky., in about 1828. About three miles east of Perryville, on the way to Danville, is what is known even now as the old Durham Farm. A man named Godbey now owns it. Old man. He was there when Mutiny and I went camping on that farm about 35 years ago. His mother was a Durham. Well, since we were there, the Pioneer Mothers or DAR or Methodists or somebody have erected a granite monument to my great, great grandpappy, one John Durham. He owned the farm, and in 1783 he organized the first Methodist Church—then called "Methodist Society"—west of the Allegheny Mountains. He built a log church on his farm about 300 feet from where the monument now stands. The marker says that, and the records in the First Methodist Church of Danville back it up. My great Uncle Milton Durham in the 1890's, put a stained glass window in said church, with a full size picture in colored glass of what they must have imagined John Durham looked like. But there it is, brass marker and all. Uncle Milton graduated from Old Asbury in 1844, I think it was. Grandpa Durham put him through college. I have seen him. He carried the cane for a few years prior to his death. He was tall, and the cane didn't reach the ground. He was the first Comptroller of the Currency the U.S. ever had. Grover Cleveland appointed him in the '80s.
Now what do you think of all that? And to think this Methodist
DePauw University some 50 odd years ago broke relations with me,
and the faculty gave me 24 hours to leave—23 of which I still
have coming to me.
Pappy