THE ADVENTURE AND REALITY OF WAR

Dearest Hem,

Well, as they say back home, "In for a dime, in for a dollar."

You write of your arrival in Paris, "We heard our first shell arrive soon after Breakfast. Nothing but a dull boom (like blasting at Summit). We had no means of knowing where it hit but it was a long way away."

Paris was starting to feel the pressure of the enemy shelling, but there was still room for levity and fun for those newly arrived and unaware of the pending danger, "Have seen all the sights. The Champs Elysee. Tuilleries, Louvre Invalides Arc D'Triomphe etc... Ted Jenks and I are having Le Grande Time. Tonight we went to the Follies Bergert. Hot puppums... We leave for Milan tomorrow - Tuesday - night. Travel first class all way. Tis Ye gay life."

You follow with a brief note to your father, "Everything Lovely. We go to the Front tomorrow. I'm in the mountains. Ted and I were split up. Everything quiet now they say. We've been treated like Kings. Been two days here. Wonderful in Alps." Dated that same day as the note to your father was a note to a friend in Kansas City, "Having a wonderful time!!! Had my baptism of fire my first day here, when an entire munition plant exploded. We carried them in like at the General Hospital, Kansas City. I go to the front tomorrow. Oh Boy!!! I'm glad I'm in it. They love us down here in the mountains."

Later in July you wrote your friend, Ruth in Oak Park, Illinois, "It all seems about a million miles away and to think that this time last year we had just finished graduating. If anybody had told me when I was reading that damn fool prophecy last year that a year from date I would be sitting out in front of a dug out in a nice trench 20 yards from the Piave River and 40 yards from the Austrian lines listening to the little ones whimper way up in the air and the big ones go scheeeeeeeek Boom and every once in a while a machine gun go tick a tack a tock I would have said, 'Take another sip.'"

You go on to tell Ruth about a shell that came right through the roof of the house where you were staying, but it's the description of what you are doing in the war effort, and for whom that I find most interesting,"What I am supposed to be doing is running a posto Di ricovero. That is I dispense chocolate and cigarettes to the wounded and the soldiers in the front line. Each aft and morning I load up a haversack and take my tin lid and gas mask and beat it up to the trenches. I sure have a good time but miss their being no Americans. Gee I have darn near forgot the English language."

Dear Hem, what a mess you are in. The local paper in Oak Park, Illinois was ablaze with your story, "Ernest Hemingway, son of Dr. and Mrs. C.E. Hemingway and a member of the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in Italy, received his baptism of fire just five weeks after his arrival overseas and, moreover, has won a citation for bravery."

Hem, how did you do it? With over 200 pieces of shell lodged in your body you managed to rescue and carry a fellow soldier to the first aid dug-out. Your friend Ted writes to your parents, "An enormous trench mortar hit within a few feet of Ernest while he was giving out chocolate. The concussion of the explosion knocked him unconscious and buried him with earth. There was an Italian between Ernest and the shell. He was instantly killed while another, standing a few feet away, had both his legs blown off. A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dug-out."

You later wrote your parents about the event, "You know they say there isn't anything funny about this war. And there isn't. I would say it was hell, because that's been a bit overworked since Gen. Sherman's time, but there have been 8 times when I would have welcomed Hell... F'rexample. In the trenches during an attack when a shell makes a direct hit in a group where you're standing. Shells aren't bad except direct hits. You just take chances on the fragments of the bursts. But when there is a direct hit your pals get spattered all over you. Spattered is literal."

You, who just turned 19 in July, now laid up for months in a military hospital in Italy would struggle for much longer than you expected in order to recover from your wounds. At the end of August you wrote your mother to tell her that your still awfully weak yet, that your right leg was taken out of the cast and that there's still more "carving" that has to happen to repair the damage.

As always a romantic, you also wrote her that you have fallen in love with an American nurse who works at the Hospital, though you try to play it down as you know your Mother has a habit of getting worked up over news like that.

You write your parents, at the end of September, that you're getting out and about a bit and that you are enjoying your recovery time in Italy now that you are more mobile. One of the most poignant things that you wrote your parents about the war has to do with death and dying, "There are no heroes in this war. We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen, but it shouldn't reflect any special credit on those that are chosen. They are just the lucky ones. I am very proud and happy that mine was chosen, but it shouldn't give me any extra credit. Think of the thousands of other boys that offered. All the heroes are dead. And the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death, and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. When a mother brings a son into the world she must know that some day the son will die. And the mother of a son that has died for his country should be the proudest woman in the world, and the happiest. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered."

How has your view of the world and yourself changed, Ernest? Is the burden of these events weighing on you? Do you dream of your prewar life and does it now seem forever lost in the stark light of war and death? 

As I look ahead to your own eventual aging and death I wonder if you still felt that way when you were older - if you still felt that dying in a youthful "blaze of light" outweighed old age and death. In your mind did aging exclude youthfulness? I may have thought that in my 20s, but I've discovered that the mind ages differently than the body and that it's possible to remain youthful in thought and view well into the more advanced years of life. That discovery, for me was a revelation, as I had assumed, aging precluded a youthful mind. I am hard-pressed, at times, in marrying the thoughts of "growing old gracefully", however, I don't necessarily see youth as an advantage either. Each stage of life comes with its upside and its downside.

What I see, for you, is that the idea of adventure as lived by inexperienced youth has been seriously wounded by the reality of war. It will be interesting to see what comes out the other side of recovery.

THE PULL OF WAR

Ernest Hemingway, Ambulance Driver

Well, Ernest,
We both knew this time was coming.

You're off to war!

In a flurry of bustle and preparing you've left family, home, and the familiar behind. In your eyes, another great adventure!

As you travel east by train, you write your grandparents, "We are at Cleveland and having a great trip. It is a fine bunch of fellows."

You continue by writing your parents, "We are having a great trip and the bunch is very good. There are 15 fellows from mostly New Trier and Evanston and they are a dandy bunch...At New York I am going to get a canvass water proof Duffel bag with a chain and lock to keep all my stuff in. The meals have been very good so far."

Your train journey ends with a letter to your grandparents, "We are stopping at a hotel in Washington Square and are being completely equipped and uniformed. New York is a beautiful (city). Everything is lovely. I don't know my overseas address yet."

Your brief stay in New York where you are staging for passage to Europe is marked by excitement, discovery and eager anticipation,"We are quartered here at a very nice Hotel in Washington Square. The heart of Greenwich Village. It is just a half block from 5th Ave. and the arch and right on the square...Our uniforms are regular United States Army officers' and look like a million dollars. Privates and non coms must salute us smartly."

You shared with your parents how you met up with your friend, Ted, "I met Ted all right yesterday and we are rooming together here. We have a bunch of dandy fellows in our unit and are going to have a wonderful time...We bummed around and went up in the top of the Woolworth Tower 796 feet - 62 stories high. We could see the camouflaged boats going in and out of the harbor and see way up the East river to Hell's Gate."

Hem, what were you thinking? You wrote your parents in a letter dated May 18, 1918, "Have decided against ye little choich around the corner temporarily. Much nicer to be engaged."

You mother lapsed into epiplectic worry and your father writes (after you wired that it was a joke), "Your wire explained the 'joke' which has taken five nights sleep from your mother and father... hope you have written your dear mother, who was broken hearted."

Hem, your parents are filled with concern for what is coming. However you seem to be simply full of love of the adventure! You write, "Cheer up Ye Old Pop for nobody gets my insurance save yourself... we sail Wednesday via France. Landing at Bordeaux. Go to Paris, and then to Milan. Were going on a rotten old tub on the French line... We are having a great time. Don't worry about me whatever you do and trust my good judgement."

Hem, you're 19 years old. Your world and life is about to change in ways you never expected. You write you father about getting engaged to Mae Marsh, the actress, "Miss Marsh no kidding says she loves me. I suggested the little church around the corner but she opined as how ye ware widow appealed not to her. So I sunk the 150 plunks Pop gave me in a ring so I am engaged anyway. Also broke. Dead... Any way my girl loves me and says she believes I am going to be a great newspaper man and says she will wait for me." When interviewed years later Mae Marsh would deny ever meeting you.

What is going through your mind? Is there fear, some desperation, the need for something to hold onto? Your life is morphing faster than you can keep up with. What acts of grasping at what straws unfold as you are pulled inexorably towards the killing fields of Italy?

You write your parents from shipboard, before landing, "According to the latest dope we are going right down to our headquarters after we leave Paris and then go right out to the lines. To take the place of the gang whose time is up. Our six months start from the day we start driving so it will probably carry us pretty well into the winter. Address me care of the American Consul Milano Italy, Italian Ambulance Service American Red Cross. Much Love Ernie."

Hem, your in the mix now! 


EVENTS IN EUROPE AT THAT TIME: May 28-29, 1918 - Troops of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division capture the village of Cantigny from the Germans and hold it. The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) is commanded by General John Pershing who is determined to maintain all-American fighting units, rather than parcel out American troops to the British and French armies. By now, 650,000 American soldiers have arrived in France, with the number growing by 10,000 per day.

You arrive in Italy following their lowest point and worst defeat. They are a battered nation who will carry the scars of this war for generations, never mind the resentment at not having been given what they felt they had been promised at the Treaty of London, and disappointment and resentment would fester for years following the disappointment.

EVENTS IN ITALY: In October 1917 came the disaster of Caporetto. In this battle, in fact a series of battles, the Italians had to fight the whole Austrian Army and 7 divisions of German troops. The Italian Army lost 300,000 men. Though the Italians had a victory at Vittorio Veneto in 1918, the psychological impact of Caporetto was huge. The retreat brought shame and humiliation to Italy.

You, dear Ernest are walking into the middle of a lit powder keg.

THE CLOUDS OF WAR ARE BUILDING

Ambulance Service Drivers

It is all coming quickly to a head, isn't it Ernest? 

The clouds of war are sweeping across the skies of Europe and will shortly jump the pond of the Atlantic and land squarely on the shores of a country unprepared for the impact of it's ripping forces. Young men now daily line up to sign up as the call goes out for soldiers and skilled workers. In your article of April 17, 1918 entitled Six Men Become Tankers you write, "Six men were accepted today for the new tank corps by Lieut. Frank E. Cooter, who arrived from Washington yesterday to recruit men for the special service. The men were selected from a crowd of twenty that appeared at the army recruiting office at Twelfth Street and Grand Avenue today." 

On that same day you also wrote an article titled, Big Day for Navy Drive where you covered the enlistment of sixty-one men at the recruiting office at Eighth and Walnut streets. But it's perhaps your description of what it's like to be a Tanker that I found most interesting, foreshadowing your growing skill at story telling:

"A returned officer from the western front now training recruits at the national tank training camp at Gettysburg, Pa., tells the inside story of one of the land ships in action.

For several days the men prepared for the coming offensive. The tanks are brought up behind the first line trenches under cover of darkness and the crews crawl into the close, oily smelling steel shells. The machine gunners, artillerymen and engineers get into their cramped quarters, the commander crawls into his seat, the engines clatter and pound and the great steel monster clanks lumberingly forward. The commander is the brains and the eyes of the tank. He sits crouched close under the fore turret and has a view of the jumbled terrain of the battle field through a narrow slit. The engineer is the heart of the machine, for he changes the tank from mere protection into a living, moving fighter.

The constant noise is the big thing in a tank attack. The Germans have no difficultly seeing the big machine as it wallows forward over the mud and a constant stream of machine gun bullets plays on the armour, seeking any crevice. The machine gun bullets do no harm except to cut the camouflage paint from the sides. 

The tank lurches forward, climbs up, and then slides gently down like an otter on an ice slide. The guns are roaring inside and the machine guns making a steady typewriter clatter. Inside the tank the atmosphere becomes intolerable for want of fresh air and reeks with the smell of burnt oil, gas fumes, engine exhaust and gunpowder.

The crew inside work the guns while the constant clatter of bullets on the armour sounds like rain on a tin roof. Shells are bursting close to the tank, and a direct hit rocks the monster. But the tank hesitates only a moment and lumbers on. Barb wire is crunched, trenches crossed and machine gun parapets smothered into the mud."

Little do you know, Ernest, that you will soon be among the ranks of fighting men like these Tankers, battling it out in the killing fields of Italy. The time of war is approaching like a great tsunami, and it will sweep over you, literally knocking you off your feet and wreak havoc in ways you could never have predicted. The call of war has thinned the ranks of your fellow reporters as they enlist and go off to Europe and you're feeling the strain. Your letter to your father dated April 16, 1918 has you at your breaking point.

"Dear Old Pop:

I have been down here about seven months, granted. Until lately I have been making not enough to live on. I am only a kid of 19 granted, and have been hitting the pace pretty blame hard. Working in competition with men with three to ten years more experience than I have. I have had to work like sin and have concentrated about three years work into one... And now Pop I am bushed! So bushed that I can't sleep nights, that my eyes get woozy, and that I am losing weight and am tired all the time. I'm mentally and physically all in, Pop, and there isn't any body knows it better than myself."

Hem, my friend, there will be no rest for the weary. The paperwork to call you up to serve was likely being drawn up even as you were planning to take a break and try and get away for some fishing and time in the wilderness. You will barely get your line in the water before your father will reach out to you, in a letter dated May 8th, to let you know that you've been called up for duty and are to report to New York immediately. The telegram from the Red Cross headquarters in St. Louis had arrived in Oak Park that same day. The good news is you will be traveling with a great group of guys and you will meet up with some old friends in New York. The bad news is: the clouds of war are building.

LIVING LIFE AT FULL THROTTLE

Mae Marsh, Hemingway's Crush in K.C. 1918

Ernest, you are in the thick of it!

You wrote to your family, in your November 19th, 1917 letter, "This last week I have been handling a murder story, a lot of Police dope and the Y.W.C.A. fund stuff a couple of times so am mixint em up." You also wrote about riding in the Ambulance several times and that there is an epidemic of small pox. I get a kick out of the way you write about your fellow workers at the Star, "There are a bunch of dandy fellows down here at the Star and we have all kinds of fun in the office."

When you write the family in general, or your parents in particular you are much more reserved in what you share and how you share it. It's your letters to your sister Marcelline that are much more revealing. Those letters bespeak a sibling relationship that is much more connected an honest. What you share with Marcelline is much more open than what you share in letters to your parents or the family in general.

In your January 1918 letter to Marcelline you tease her about possible beaus that she might have and you share that you are about to pull the trigger of joining the war effort, "It may be the Navy blue, or the snappy O. D. and officers belt of an American ambulance man in the Italian service which it may." After sharing such a life changing possibility you immediately lapse into discourse on the Cub Reporter's life you're leading, "I scooped the world on a big, roarer of a story and nearly got bumped off doing it." You go on to instruct your sister not to share the dangerous details but you're OK with her sharing the news paper clipping of the event.

You speak to the fact that, "The old Carl and I are living in our dump and having the jazzy time," and that you're living a speedy existence - throttle full out. You share how much you love the gang your with in your letter to Marcelline, dated 30 January, 1918, "Most of them call me The Great Hemingstien of Hospital Hill. That being one of my hang outs. There are a swell bunch of buds here Ivory. Almost as good as the old gang. They are a bit to the wild but a peach of a gang."

If your passion for and immersion in your life and job isn't enough, You share with Marcelline that you are head-over-heals in love with a Mae Marsh - an actress that you met at the Muehlebach hotel - site of your news paper satellite office. Again, you caution your sister not to tell the family anything about it, and you close your letter with, "I don't see what anybody can see in the brutal Steinway but I hope she keeps on seeing it." 

To be so young, so passionate, so immersed and involved, and to have so much going on in the world - it's a powder keg and once it's lit there's no turning back.

Hugs to you and the gang - when next I lift a pint I'll be sure and toast you and the richness of your life that you embrace so wholeheartedly. Bravo Hemingstien!

A BIG, HANDSOME, KID, BUBBLING OVER WITH ENERGY

From the Early Days of Boxing (not Hemingway)

Dear Hem,

I've been avidly reading your letters dated from around October 1917 to January 1918. Just so I understand the back story of what is going on in the world and in events in your life:

• Your parents have a younger brother of yours at home now - Leicester Hemingway was born in Oak Park on April 1, 1915 (you were 15 years old when he was born)
• On April 6, 1917 the United States declared war on Germany and entered WWI.
• June through September  of 1917 you spent your summer working in Michigan, at Longfield Farm.
• On October 15, 1917 You began work as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star
• On October 19, 1917 while working for the Star, you moved to Gertrude Haynes boarding house where many of your co-workers at the Star lived.
• By November 1917 you had enlisted  in the Missouri Home Guard
• In December of 1917 you moved into Carl Edgar's apartment
• In December of 1917 your first article appeared in the Star

Things are moving pretty fast for you right now, I imagine. I've also been reading the articles that you have been writing for the Star, as I want to get a feel for what was going on around you as well as what was going on in your life.

Ernest, it seems like the Star gave you a pretty challenging beat to report on, as you are covering crime, injuries, deaths. Up until the point of coming to the Star you'd lead a fairly bucolic life filled with hunting, camping, working on the farm and going to school. To go from that countrified existence to a (what must have seemed) chaotic, turbulent, and far less sheltered life in Kansas City must have been a shock.

A friend and co-worker of yours at the Star at the time writes of you,"My first impression of him was that of a big, handsome, kid, bubbling over with energy. And this energy was really remarkable. He could turn out more copy than any two reporters. he never seemed to be tired at the end of the day."

He goes on to share, "One Saturday night after we had finished work, Hemingway suggested that I spend the night with him. In those days reporters didn't have motor cars. So we boarded an owl car for the section of the city where Hemingway had what he called his "lodgings." These lodgings consisted of a tiny, dismal room in the attic of an old-fashioned frame house in an unfashionable part of the city. It was a long ride there and I was almost asleep when we got to his room." Hemingway suggested they,"read a little Browning out loud."

"Hemingway began to read in a clear, penetrating voice. He read well and I enjoyed it until I began to doze...a crick in my neck woke me. I looked at my watch. It was 4 o'clock. Hemingway was still reading."

What I see, in my minds eye, is a big, good looking kid with boundless energy and charisma who felt he had the world by the tail and was riding it for all it was worth. You chose to tackle the challenge your life was at that time head-on, with gusto and enthusiasm. I can't imagine that it was easy, but your desire to "grab life by the horns" was already shaping how you engaged and how you saw the world around you.

Very little if nothing of what you were experiencing in Kansas city was anything that you had experienced previously. You brought to what you were doing very little caution or care but a tremendous roll-up-your-sleeves and get 'er done work ethic. It obviously served you well because those around you made note that they were impressed as well as hard pressed to keep up.

Life as an adventure found root in Kansas City. You were no longer paddling the Illinois River, or hiking to Lake Zurich; but instead, becoming familiar with the underbelly of a booming city. Writing about the world of street fighters and organized boxing. Living and reporting in the midst of gun battles over drug peddling, and other violent newsworthy events.

At this point you were simply an observer, for the most part, a fly on the wall taking notes and writing about what you saw. It is easier to create art out of violence when it's not happening to you. It is much more difficult when it visits you where you live. As I read your stories I get that you are writing as an observer with no first hand personal experience. Still, the articles are well written and do foreshadow a talent for story telling that will evolve over time.

I'm looking forward to exploring these stories more and connecting to those early days. 

'Till next time.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, CUB REPORTER

Ernest Hemingway, cub reporter

Ernest, I am thrilled, as the copy of Ernest Hemingway, Cub Reporter arrived in the mail just yesterday! 

As I'm reading the first bits of the book I feel that I need to dialogue with you about the preface that you wrote in 1931 to A Bibliography of the Works of Ernest Hemingway (and which is quoted in this small volume), where you shared: 

" It is the height of silliness to go into newspaper stuff I have written, which has nothing to do with the other writing which is entirely apart and starts with the first In our Times. Have written thousands of columns in newspapers. Also sent much in condensed cable-ese to be rewritten in U.S. and Canada. This has nothing to do with signed and published writing in books or magazines and it is a hell of a trick on a man to dig it up and confuse the matter of judging the work he has published. If anyone wants to do that after a man is dead, he can't defend himself, but while he is alive, he can, at least, take no part in it and oppose it as far as possible. The first right that a man writing has is the choice of what he will publish. If you have made your living as a newspaperman, learning your trade, writing against deadlines, writing to make stuff timely rather than permanent, no one has the right to dig this stuff up and use it against the stuff you have written to write the best you can." Ernest Hemingway to Louis Henry Cohn

Of course, Ernest, I agree. However, I am not interested in your works as literary objects, although you have garnered a flood of recognition and acceptance in that world. In truth, who am I to comment on that? No, I would NEVER venture to be so presumptive as to step into that arena. It would be like a child stepping into the ring with one of your favorite fighters like Jack Dempsey - no that would certainly result in carnage. 

Our time together this summer is about you, and your life - your humanity. That's what I want to explore. Putting the writing aside, it's the stuff of your life as it played out in the world at large. As Shakespeare so aptly put it:

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts..."

It is the parts that you played and how they shaped who you were and what you became that I am interested in. 

"Damned invasive?"

Yes, I agree. When you have worked as hard as you have to create a series of vignettes around your life that build an image that is "bigger than life", I can understand that looking at the threads woven through that same life that may reveal the soft underbelly of humanity that we all posses can leave you feeling naked and exposed - vulnerable. 

I'm going to be honest with you Hem (if I may call you that?), I'm taking this journey with you because it allows me to explore that level of vulnerability in myself vicariously. If I were to write this of my own life - well, I couldn't write it. Like you, there are private, wounded, and scarred parts of my psyche that I just can't face head-on, so yeah, in shadowing you I have the opportunity to work through some of the things maybe you didn't. 

Hem, it's never to late to help yourself or help others, at least that's the way I see it. So I'm hoping you'll bear with me as we walk awhile together this summer, and allow me to befriend you for at least this brief period of time. There is so much of your story that resonates with me.

I love what you said of your time at the Star, "On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. That's useful to anyone." 

Yes, it is. So, it's time to explore your time at the Star and take a look at what you were focused on and what was going on in the world. It's fascinating to think that this single twelve month time period in your life was so densely packed with experiences and change. 

'Till next time!

KANSAS CITY STAR CUB REPORTER

Newsroom Linotype Machines

Dearest Ernest,

My apologies for not writing sooner. After reading your initial letters that you sent from Kansas City, as you engaged in your job as cub reporter for the Kansas City Star, I decided to order the collection of the articles that you wrote for the Star.

I have to first share with you, Ernest, that the post today has become much faster now, and there are times that I can even get a book immediately from a source called the Internet. You'd love it, as all of the great books of the world are at your fingertips, as well as all of the works of new and upcoming authors. I won't get into this in detail right now, but I promise to share with you as we go. You'd be amazed!

The last couple of weeks have been about waiting, waiting, waiting for the articles to arrive. They're suppose to be here this week - out of publication so I had to order them from a used book dealer.

You Ernest, on the other hand, are like a rolling stone that gathers no moss! Wow!  How wonderful that your father sent you a Line O' Type. Your life of immersion as a cub reporter was just made easier! 

Already you are involved in, and writing about the brewing war efforts. Your letter of Oct 25th 1917 mentions that you were in the same vicinity as Major General Leonard Wood and Lord Northcliffe. 

You couldn't have known, when you met them, that Major Wood would serve as the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Military Governor of Cuba, and Governor General of the Philippines. He began his military career as an army doctor on the frontier, where he received the Medal of Honor. He was bypassed for a major command in World War I, but then became a prominent Republican Party leader and a candidate for the 1920 presidential nomination. He served as civilian Governor General in the Philippines in the 1920s, where he quarreled with Filipinos who wanted home rule.

Lord Northcliffe, on the other hand, was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. He owned the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, among other publications. Northcliffe's ownership of major publications and newspapers meant that his editorials wielded great influence over both "the classes and the masses". In an era before TV, radio or internet, that meant that Northcliffe dominated the British press "as it never has been before or since by one man." He traveled the U.S. as head of the British War Mission placing pro-war articles in American newspapers.

Ernest, WOW, you are rubbing shoulders with some very influential and powerful people! I realize that it's just in passing, but how many people even get access! 

Love your moniker for your newspaper beat - "the short-stop run". The Star has sent you after all that is newsworthy at the Fifteenth Street Police station and the General Hospital. You've got your foot firmly in the door, my friend! 

I like that you continue to stay in touch with and seek out news about your friends and acquaintances back in Oak Park. You have a capacity for connectedness, via correspondence and shared news that is truly admirable. I would have dubbed you a successful precursor to the Internet when it comes to connectivity! Your capacity for connectedness certainly could have given Northcliffe a run for his money!

So I'l close with a warm "three cheers" for Hemingway the Cub Reporter and for the other members of your newsroom crew that you pal around with. Keep the news flowing and the coffee hot!

Till next time,
B