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We Won Our Future
(Continued from page 25)
Our walls weren't even finished — just the bare boards with the studding showing. We had a nice davenport and bed, but linoleum and wallpaper and curtains— not to mention stoves and such — were all things in the future when we could squeeze them out of our checks.
Just the week before we had had a celebration. We finally had our own well! — instead of having to bring water out our rural route from the center of Lebanon, nearly a mile away.
Sixteen feet by twenty feet, our house was. You can certainly understand why I was so haunted, night and day, by the wonderful prizes offered to the winner of the People Are Funny contest!
When I had sent in my letter I had, of course, hit on an answer. But was it the right one?
Big Chief Windbag — that could mean the "air" in Cairo. And Cairo was a city built upon the ruins of others, so that could answer the second line "I'm one over others that lie in decay." Then I had looked up Cairo in the World Almanac (everyone in a small town or on a rural route is familiar with the pages of the World Almanac) and found the city was one of the lowest in the world, according to sea level. That would be the "upon low ground." But the recurring phrase "that's all . . . that's all I will say" had me worried, until I remembered that air corps pilots, when they wanted to stop their inter-plane conversations signed off by saying "thirty-thirty." And "thirty-thirty" meant the same as "that's all . . . that's all." Sure enough, the latitude and longitude of Cairo, Egypt was 30-30.
(I found out, afterwards, that my memory hadn't been so good. It was true that 30-30 was a sign-off, but not for aircorps pilots. It's an old newspaper phrase, that I had heard but confused with the other.)
Suddenly, someone banged on my door. Someone was calling my name.
"Mrs. George! You're wanted down at the store. It's a long-distance telephone call — from Los Angeles!"
I raced the three blocks to the store.
People stopped their store-buying to listen, shamelessly. They knew about the contest — and that I was being called by the radio program. Mr. Myler kindly turned off his refrigerating system, so the humming noise it made wouldn't keep me from hearing over the phone. My hands were shaking.
It was a man's voice. He introduced himself as John Guedal, producer of the show. He told me my letter had been picked as the best, the most genuinely sympathetic, for the week — by none other than contest judge Secretary of Agriculture Anderson, himself. I was to be flown down Thursday to Los Angeles by TWA plane and there would be a hotel room reserved for me right in the heart of Hollywood. After the show on Friday I would be flown home.
All this was wonderful. Then — first, cautiously reminding me that he didn't know the answer, himself — Mr. Guedal wanted to know what my answer was to the riddle.
I told him. His "Oh. I see" was absolutely noncommittal. We might have been talking about the weather. (But afterwards I found out they were making a wire recording of our telephone conversation, so that they could prove there had been no funny business, and that I had guessed the answer cor
rectly while I was still a thousand miles away, and not after I arrived in Hollywood where it might be conceivable that I could be tipped off. In contests such as this they spare no pains nor expense to make sure that everything is on the level.)
Then he hung up.
When I told everyone in the store, they were as excited as I was. Poor Mr. Myler even forgot to turn on his refrigeration again, and all his frozen food for that day was spoiled!
Ward, my husband, was a little worried when he came home that night to hear the news. He was thrilled I was going to have the trip and the days in Hollywood — but he was afraid I was building my hopes up way too high. After all, having a winning letter for the week was only the first step. That only enabled me to get on the program. It didn't mean I would guess the correct answer next Friday night and actually win the Bright Future that the People Are Funny show was promising.
We looked around our little box of a home that night, Ward and I, and thought how wonderful it would be if I would actually win. But we had learned, through tough experience, that dreams are not easy to realize.
When we had met first, around 1941, on the campus of the Oregon State Agricultural College, everything good had seemed possible. We were young and in love and we had a lovely future planned, together. I was majoring in Science and Ward in Education — to become a teacher. But we hadn't counted on Pearl Harbor.
During the war we still dreamed our dreams, through our letters. I had a job with the Civil Service Air Corps in Eugene, Oregon, and Ward was with the Infantry in far-off New Guinea. We could still hope.
But after the war it was much harder to hope or even to dream. Ward was a disabled veteran, starting all over again in the best profession that the Veterans' Administration could recommend for his malaria and his battle-fatigued condition. Instead of becoming a teacher, Ward was learning about shrubs and plants in a Lebanon nursery where the VA had placed him. The housing shortage had driven us to our mail order house. I did part-time work to help out. Our windows were curtainless and cheerless; our walls and floors were bare boards. We had practically nothing to spend for fun.
It could hardly be called comfortable living.
And now all this is changed. Because of two words I spoke on the People Are Funny program, over the NBC airways. To Ward, sitting alone in our Lebanon house, listening to the program that night, and to me in the broadcast studio — it meant the same thing. A crazy, impossible, glorious dream come true.
I didn't go back right away. Ward flew down to Hollywood to join me. We spent a week, mostly just wandering through that prize home, feasting our eyes on all the things that are actually ours, now. Ward's job was arranged for — a good job in a Nursery close to our new home. We drove back to Oregon in our brand-new car. We said goodbye to our friends and settled up our affairs.
As I told Art Linkletter — "Maybe people are funny, but to me, people are kind. To me, you have been Santa Claus."
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