The 42nd Annual Report has recently come to me. Think of it, the 42nd Annual Report! How familiar to me are a great many of the names of the officers and members! I can even recall the very features of many of them. I am myself now ninety years old and practically house-bound. Though yesterday, a day almost like summer, I did take a taxi and a drive through the park amid the brilliant foliage, with Miss Dorothy Hapgood, who by the way is a member of our association a thing with which I may have had something to do. Recently I was in the Veterans Hospital at Newington for a couple of weeks. The doctors called it "polycythemia", the direct opposite of "anaemia", did 10 phlebotomies taking 5 pints of blood which they said they used for transfusions on ward patients, much to my gratification. I now have in, or had put in me, a dose, of radio-active phosphorus P32 which, they assure me will be getting in its good work for the next three months. Nothing like being up to date, even if valetudinarian.
You have made me Dean of the association. In the beginning Clarence Reed was always back of me with his abilities and vast fund of information. Although I believe I am, by virtue of my office, exempt from dues and entitled to the annual reports, I wish my five children to be at least once represented in the membership. I append their names and addresses:
Hawthorne, the eldest, is with the Gen. Electric Co. in New York. I don't know what he does but presume that with the other New York millionaires he is busy accumulating wealth. This hint may guide you in soliciting alms for the association some day. His home is in Hamilton Lane, Larien, Conn. But I don't know if he knows a nut from a lunatic. He has two kids, one now preparing for Korea. God preserve him.
Benton is already a member. He has a few acres in the town of Avon, Conn. where, among the rocks and the native rattlesnakes and copperheads he tells me he has Chinese chestnuts growing. Recently he got two of the copperheads. He is an energetic chap. He rises at 4 a.m. and drives the several miles into Hartford where he broadcasts from 7 to 8, for people's breakfasts, I suppose, and is released at 10 a.m. He has just contracted for a television program once a week in New Haven.
Olcott is a consul in the U.S. Embassy in Tokio, transferred from a similar position in Siam. If there is something you want from Japan I guess he is your boy. Mention my name! He has a lovely wife and three children.
Una King, my elder daughter, whose husband was killed in an accident, interviews VIP's on the same radio station as brother Ben.
Joan Howe (Mrs. Paul) and her husband, who is in a bank in New York, live in my old home on Umpawaug Hill, Redding, Conn. She writes of having had a crop of black walnuts from one of the trees I planted. I've forgotten all the others there may be there. Nothing of value I guess. Joan has two daughters. Ben has a son and daughter.
That makes five children I'm responsible for and they have acknowledged the eleven grandchildren for me. I want you to make four of my children (Ben is already ensnare) members of the association, for which I will enclose a check for $12.00 (if I don't forget.) (The many typing mistakes of this letter are due mostly to the age of the machine, not mine.)
My two sisters who live in our old home in Litchfield and who are close behind me in years, recently sent me a handful of nice chestnuts, Chinese, from a tree 40 feet or more high in our backyard. They have to divide them, very unequally, with the squirrels. The only other noteworthy trees in our little place are a few papaws. Asimina triloba, too shaded to bear. This fruit might be worthy of a little attention from the nut growers. The dictionary speaks of several other species of papaw.
Any of you who have outgrown the labor of caring for nut trees might find interest in mycology in which I found diversion and edibles for a while. Only beware the deadly Amanita and others of that ilk.