Letters
Sailing on the Tugboat
Thank you so much for printing the “Tugboat Annie and the Cheapskate” story [May/June 2001]. I enjoyed it so much and have been wishing you would someday run another “Tugboat Annie” story.
Back in the 1950s and ’60s, I read every one you published with much pleasure.
It would be much appreciated if you could print more in the future. Of course, I enjoy the other stories and articles you print. Again, thank you.
Charles E. Rudd
High Point, North Carolina
Cheers for Botts
Please, please continue Alexander Botts stories in every issue, even if you have to raise the price of the magazine! They are worth it. His books now retail for $60 and up, and since they don’t last long at those prices, you will be filling a real need in the American psyche.
Betsy Williams
Shingle Springs, California
I stopped subscribing to the Post several years ago when the Alexander Botts articles seemed to have discontinued. I even wrote to you about it. I finally missed the Post too much and resubscribed a year or two ago.
I just received my new issue of the Post and there was another Alexander Botts adventure.
G. M. Thompson
Rochester, Minnesota
“Biblical Bloopers” Disgusting
We have appreciated getting your magazine for several years. My dad read the Post faithfully as I was growing up. There are many great articles that are very helpful.
I am a World War II veteran who returned from service to go into the ministry and have served as a pastor for over 40 years. The Word of God is very precious to me and my wife.
In your July/August edition, you had a page of “Biblical Bloopers,” which I feel makes light of God’s Word and puts it on the level of a common book. It offended my wife and me, and we want to register our disgust with such humor.
Rev. and Mrs. Donald Coddington Santa Clarita, California
Old-Timers at the SatEvePost
Many of the devoted workers at The Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia will never get the ink and the camaraderie out of their blood. Myself, a Curtis worker for 29 years, I was luckier than most, as I was called back to teach graphic arts at a local trade school, the very one that a Curtis personnel person hired me from in 1941.
Thirty-two years later, many of us older employees are still proud to have been employed by Curtis and carry on our friendship and camaraderie. We meet twice a year to talk over old happenings and talk of old friends who are no longer here or able to attend the luncheons at a local eatery in Westmont, New Jersey.
Normally there would be about 30 men at this gathering, but this last one on April 14, due to the Easter weekend, kept many away but the daring dozen in the enclosed photo.
I extol the pleasure I have had to visit The Saturday Evening Post Museum in Indianapolis, and I always remind the men that should they ever get to Indianapolis to make a visit to your establishment number one on their things to see and do there.
I thought you might like to hear from those who will never forget The Curtis Publishing Company or the Post, Jack & Jill, and the other magazines we helped print by the millions.
William J. Monahan
Westmont, New Jersey
Doing Something for the Veterans
I’m a former Marine that saw action in the Korean War and a life member of four veterans organizations. When I moved up north to Lake City, Michigan, we had a problem getting enough men for an Honor Guard for funerals. So what I did was go to all the groups–VFW, Amvets, American Legion, DAV, Korean War Veterans–and recruited some veterans from each group to start a Cadillac Area Honor Guard.
I went around to businesses for donations to buy uniforms. We wear black blazers, gray pants, white belts, white shirts, black ties, and black shoes. A four-inch patch, for whatever branch of service they were in, is sewn on the breast pocket. Each man wears his medals (mini-size) over his left breast pocket. The men range in age from World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, and Desert Storm veterans. The hat would be their origination cover.
Almost forgot to mention that we also went to the high school, and with the cooperation of the music teacher and students, we have two trumpet players for Taps at each funeral. The students volunteer to do this, even on weekends.
I then wrote the government to get some M1 rifles with blank adapters. This took awhile but finally happened. Some paperwork is involved, but working with government, that’s what it takes.
So now we have enough for two teams. In case there happens to be two funerals on one day, we can cover them both. We average about ten men for each funeral. We will cover about a 30-mile radius.
No veteran is turned down even if he doesn’t belong to a veterans organization. There is no charge for this; donations are accepted. We have also been invited to cover other functions, which we do.
Every veteran is entitled to a military funeral, and that’s what we are accomplishing in our area.
Charles R. Batherson
Commander, Cadillac
Area Honor Guard
Lake City, Michigan
First Job
The other day, when my subscription arrived, I began thinking about the job I had of selling The Saturday Evening Post door to door in Trenton, New Jersey. It was one of the first regular jobs that I had as a youth, and I took it seriously.
At the time, in 1918 and 1919, the Post sold for five cents a copy. The Curtis Publishing Company also owned Ladies’ Home Journal and The Country Gentleman, and I carried all three. The Post was such a good seller that I soon built up a profitable route.
But alas, when my family moved from Conrad Street to Fairmount Avenue, I had to leave my route behind. However, I didn’t have to abandon my route. It was considered so desirable that I was able to sell it to another boy, for the then-princely sum of $5! In 1918, the SatEvePost was my favorite magazine, and it’s still my favorite today.
Dr. David L. Reid
Knoxville, Tennessee
The Name Game
Upon reading Norm Rockwell’s essay, “I Am Not Norman Rockwell” (July/August 2001), I’ve an inkling of what the fellow’s up against. For no better reason than my surname, I’m sometimes labeled decidedly “Teutonic” howbeit only my father’s father came from Germany. (And that was land contested by France for centuries.)
Things could be worse if one’s family name sounded like an entirely fictional person’s tag. I’m thinking of cartoonist H. T. Webster’s extremely bashful Caspar Milquetoast and James Thurber’s forever daydreaming Walter Mitty.
As for that guy named Gay who lost it because “gay” has a modern politically correct connotation, he should have taken pride in that name. He could be descended from the notable English dramatist John Gay (1685-1732), who gave the English-speaking world The Beggar’s Opera in 1728.
William
Dauenhauer
Wickliffe, Ohio
Prized Falter Cover
In November of 1973 in Northfield, Massachusetts, I was late getting dressed for the bridge game scheduled in my living room. My husband greeted the three women and was visiting with them when I came down the stairs. One of the women was Sue Harvey, and I heard her say that her brother, an artist who had done many Saturday Evening Post covers, was coming to visit her and her husband in New Hampshire that weekend. I asked at once: “You don’t mean John Falter?” And she said yes. I said I remembered a cover from the Post in the mid-’40s and loved it. It was Gramercy Park in Spring.
My husband secretly talked with Sue about the possibility of his buying a copy of that cover for me for Christmas that year. He did buy it from John Falter, and it proudly hangs in my living room today. It is one of 20 artist’s prints made in Italy.
For some time I had thought I had lost the letter that came to my husband from John Falter. (My husband, Dr. Gilligan, died and I moved to Maine in 1996.) Today, going through some letters and other papers, I found the letter addressed to Dr. Gilligan. The letter is signed by J. Falter, and on its back is information about some of the characters in the picture (20 in all), including Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt and Falter’s wife, who was shown watering plants on a balcony. He said that the cover was the fourth of 185 that he did for the Post, and it appeared on the March 25, 1944, issue. By chance I was a journalist in New Jersey who lived in a woman’s club near Gramercy Park at that time.
Sometime last year I subscribed to the Post, thinking that someday I would write to find out the details I thought I had lost, but even after finding the letter kept in a plastic envelope today, I decided to write to find out if John Falter is alive and well and living in Philadelphia. I’ve often thought that he did such detailed work and was so good that he would have become as famous as Norman Rockwell, but he didn’t. In the history of the Post, there was a reference to one of Falter’s covers that he gave to President Harry S. Truman. It was one of the joint sessions of Congress and showed Mrs. Truman and his daughter, Margaret, clearly in the balcony.
I’m very proud of my husband’s Christmas gift in 1973 that was reframed recently and hangs over a bookcase in my living room. I consider it a prize possession to be passed on to my son and his son.
The Post was one of the first magazines I read as a child. We lived on our family home place in Wheeler County, Texas, where I was born, and I still own half of the property. My father was a pioneer cattleman, and we were poor and far from neighbors and a small town; so the mail that was delivered was very important to us, and that included magazines like The Saturday Evening Post.
Ora Gilligan Rooney
Lewiston, Maine
Editor’s note: You will be happy to know that John Falter visited our Indianapolis Saturday Evening Post offices on two occasions. He admired his paintings which hang in the Saturday Evening Post Museum and told us the whereabouts of many missing Post covers, the original art belonging to The Curtis Publishing Company. Our archive is helping us prepare a memorial issue for the late John Falter, as we, too, feel his contributions to The Saturday Evening Post are worthy of much wider acclaim.
Remember the Children
In the July/August “Medical Mailbox” you mentioned “our children’s magazines” in connection with an essay contest prior to the Tulip Time Scholarship Games.
I did not know you also have children’s magazines. How and where can I find out about them? I had subscribed to two very good magazines (Contact Kids and Kid City) for my grandchildren. The kids loved them and learned a lot. Unfortunately, I just received notice they are no longer being published, so I’m searching for some replacements.
Also, where can I find information on the Tulip Time Scholarship Games?
Thank you so much for The Saturday Evening Post. I subscribe to quite a few magazines, but the Post is the only one I’d really hate to give up. The mix of your magazine is just right.
Bea Olson
Footville, Wisconsin
Editor’s note: If you like the mix of the Post, you will like the mix of the seven children’s magazines published by the SatEvePost Society under the banner of the Children’s Better Health Institute.
We want to teach your grandchildren good health habits and moral values early, so that they will do you proud later. We hope you’ll choose the age-appropriate magazine for each grandchild.
We thank you for reminding Post readers about our children’s publications, which are all available online at our Web site (www.cbhi.org), our toll-free number (800-829-5579), by e-mail to cservaasmd@aol.com, or by mail (Children’s Better Health Institute, 1100 Waterway Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46202).
All the information about next year’s 12th Anniversary Tulip Time Scholarship Games appears in each issue of the magazines shown on this page, as well as on their Web sites.
Thank you for your good letter.
It Worked for Claude
To quit smoking, try the following: Mix two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar in eight ounces of water. Use a small spray bottle, small enough you can carry in purse or pocket. Each time you want a cigarette, spray about two sprays in your mouth and swish around, then swallow. This changes the taste so that you can go without a smoke. Do this as often as you want a cigarette. Continue for approximately three weeks. By then you should lose your taste for cigarettes. It is also a good idea to keep a small object, such as pen or pencil, handy and each time you want a cigarette, pick up the pen or object you select to carry.
Worked for me–you can do this in seconds as you work.
P.S.: I only take The Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest. They are the best!
Claude Runnels
Cordova, Tennessee
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
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COPYRIGHT 2001 Saturday Evening Post Society
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group