The Coral Gables Times

Maturity—inspired one day by "liquid corn flakes," he decorated his pool. Service crew of seven, including cook, who were building a road in the Pike National Forest. They did it the hard way, with dynamite and two horses. One of the horses, Bill, was learned and thus slow in the head. It took our hero a generation to learn that locoweed was marijuana. The minute the new forester reported for work the crew boss said, "All right, kid, you're the dynamite man"—and from five yards tossed him a stick of dynamite. Never did Di Maggio make so desperate a catch. It took a while for him to get used to dynamite, which is like an eight-inch section of broomstick wrapped in oiled paper. But erelong he was carrying several sticks in his left hind pocket and several yards of fuse in the right one. No fool he, he carried a catch of fulminating caps in a front pocket where he couldn't accidentally sit down on them. He had remembered Mark Twain's story of the Virginia City miner who crimped a cap on a fuse with his teeth and blew his nose. Not until nearly the end of a backbreaking summer did this prehistoric Seabee learn that he was given the honor of carrying the dynamite and stuffing it into the holes drilled by hand in rock because Alfred Nobel's invention made all the others of the outfit sick. Just touching it or smelling it after it went off gave them monumental headaches. The young dynamite man didn't have enough brains in his head to ache. AT 17 he applied for a summer job at Estes Park in the Rockies. They asked him if he could drive, and he said sure, so they gave him a 13-passenger White bus with four monstrous cylinders and a four-gear shift, and for a trial run sent him up to the end of the Fall River Road at timber line with a load of barb wire. This was a new road being thrust over the continental divide—one lane clambering up a sheer canyon with hairpin turns often requiring switchbacks. When he delivered the wire and returned, they gave him a job driving tourists up there and elsewhere amid the Rockies. Little did they wot that their chauffeur had never sat behind the wheel of an automobile before he took the wire up the hill. He had learned to drive by reading a boys' instruction book. After he had had enough of college and considered himself a grownup, this spindly fellow we are talking about occupied several abodes in New York, and then he spent three years in Paris with his bride. The most fascinating thing about this period is that he never met Hemingway. In one of Chaucer's Tales is the apostrophe, "O belly, foul bag, full of corruption, what labor and cost to provide for thee!" The possessor of this character's belly always spoke to it kindly and gave it anything its little heart desired—as a reward for its once having saved him from death or severe injury. He was going to take the noon train from Paris to Calais to spend a few days at Cap Gris Nez with Gertrude Ederle, who was training for her first try at the Channel. But he always gets hungry at noon sharp, and he remembered that the restaurant in the railroad station was noted for its snails. So he stunk himself up with garlic during a fine two-hour lunch and got the 2:30 train. There was a long delay at Amiens, for the noon train had been wrecked there and burned from end to end. The casualties were scored by the hundred. This character took advantage of the delay by wandering into town and asking a man in a photo shop if he happened to have any souvenir postcards of the wreck. He did indeed, and he sold a set for a few francs. From Calais these pictures were sent on to the fellow's picture syndicate in London, where they made a clean beat on a sensational story. Foul bag indeed! Twenty-five years ago our subject bought a house in Westport, Conn., and began learning how to be a suburbanite. The process continues. There is the dog next door, for example. This bee eye double-itch continually barks at anything, anybody, or nothing at all. This character has cured her of barking at him by sneaking up on her a few times and barking at her first. HE HAS A SWIMMING POOL. One time, after he had painted it a nice, cool green, he was inspired by some liquid corn flakes that happened to be handy to spend an extra hour painting an enormous black octopus with baleful green eyes on the bottom of the pool. This octopus was preserved for years during many repaint jobs, for it scared the bejabers out of liddle children, and they didn't want to go swimming there. Liddle children don't belong in pools anyway. How did he get into the theatre? The late Burns Mantle, beloved dean of the critics, needed an assistant and asked him if he wanted the job—which he did, indeed. And why had Mantle picked on him? Because long ago Mantle had worked with his father and met the lad a few days after he was born. Perhaps the most remarkable, most inspiring thing about this unusual character is his complete, unswerving, unquestioning loyalty. He is his own best friend and least severe critic.

"It's no use—I still want to go to Paris." SUBURBIA TODAY

So delicious they're banned in Las Vegas

We're teasing about the town but not about the taste! Cordials by Cointreau are delightfully, deliciously, delectably different. Enjoy them in main dishes, in desserts, neat after dinner. And, in the drink that's fast becoming a summer sensation: Cafe Cointreau. Cafe Cointreau Sweeten iced black coffee with 1 1/2 oz. Cointreau Creme de Cacao. Stir, then top with whipped cream. Serve with a straw. (For gourmets at home, sweeten whipped cream, too, by adding Cointreau Creme de Cacao while beating.) Cafe Cointreau is only one of many cooling summer drinks made with Cordials by Cointreau—drinks such as Sloe Gin Fizz, Creme de Menthe Frappe and Orange Cup Punch. For these and many other food and drink recipes, write for your free copy of "Gourmet's Guide" to Dept. 3. Cointreau Ltd., Pennington, N. J. SPECIALTY COINTREAU LIQUEUR COINTREAU COINTREAU Cordials by Cointreau, 50 to 80 proof.

Suburbia Today, July 1961 15