Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

tumbles, was having a gay time trailing his father about on his trieycle, a new factor in his young life, and the operation of which he had not yet quite mastered. Pal-o'-Mine was at the other end of the garden transplanting phloxes. You don't ask people whether they're happy. You don't need to ask the genuinely happy ones, and the unhappy ones usually tell you beautiful but unconvincing lies. And so I didn't ask Uncle John and Pal-o'-Mine whether they were happy and whether their December-May romance had been a success. It was written in large letters in every room of their house, in the garden, in their every gesture toward one another, and in Little John. Theirs is a happy union of two kindred souls. Both have a keen interest in nature and a profound respect for its wonders. That spirit of joy-in-living, that idealism and genuineness which comes with knowing nature — that which made Uncle John the friend of thousands of little children and of equally as many thousands of grownups as well — that spirit permeates the characters of both Uncle John and Pal-o'-Mine. They are idealistically happy because, through their common understanding of nature, they understand each other. £. "Somehow I never think of John being much older than I," Pal-o'Mine told me when we were alone in the house. "I think it is his sheer joy of being alive in this beautiful world of ours that is always erasing from my mind the thought of the vast difference in our ages. "'He is always busy," she told me. "When he isn't editing the radio department of the Times or broadcasting news items or conducting his Forum for KHJ, he is tramping the hills with Baby John, teaching him bird calls and telling him fanciful stories about robbers' caves and all that sort of thing. And when he isn't with Baby John or at work, he is always entertaining some one of his old friends — those sweet youngsters, and even grown-ups, too, who knew and loved and worked with him in the old KHJ days. The house sometimes is literally overflowing with them. But most of his free time he spends with Baby John. And Baby John is madly devoted to him " Just then Uncle John came into the house followed by Baby John, puffing and chugging along on his tricycle. "Well, young man," I asked him a little later when he had got his breath, "what is that thing you've got there?" "It's a twike," he said. His father beamed and laughed one of those engaging and contagious laughs of his. "He has almost forgotten we're his father and mother and that we exist at all," Uncle John said, "so engrossed is he in this new tricycle. You'd think it was some sort of miraculous invention. It is, in his mind. More often than not it is a horse and not a 'twike." You see he fights robbers and runs down huge, fire-eating dragons with it, too. And I dare say he takes better care of this 'horse-twike' than most people do of real horses." "So you like your tricycle," I said to Baby John. He nodded his head emphatically, peddling the tricycle forward and backward in short lengths across the rug. "What do you like best in all the world?" I asked him. "My twike," he said. "You like your twike even better than your mother and father?" I questioned. "Oh, I like daddy," he said running over and climbing up Uncle John's knees. "Well, now, and just where do I come in?" asked Pal-o'-Mine. "Well, I like Mother, too," Baby John said as he climbed down from Uncle John's knees and ran up to embrace Pal-o'Mine. "And am I and the tricycle here to be discarded so soon?" Uncle John said with an unsuccessful effort to control his delight. "No," said Baby John. "Not you, daddy. Just twike." And the three of us, led by Uncle John, broke forth into peals of laughter which perplexed Baby John, delighted Uncle John and Pal-o'-Mine and told me that here certainly was happiness. ^ The West's first radio manager, announcer, artist, entertainer; discoverer of many of the best known west-coast radio stars; still one of the most able and inspiring of radio announcers, John Stuart Daggett is perhaps best known and will be remembered longest for his inimitable and spontaneous manner of dealing with children. His bedtime stories and children's hours were the delight of thousands of wee little tots from all parts of the land — and from not so wee grown-up tots as well. At its zenith, he often received as many as 500 fan letters a day — letters from enthralled children and oldsters from New Zealand and Hawaii, to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and Phoenix and Victoria. Although the bedtime stories and children's hours were discontinued in 1927 because over five years of strenuous activity in managing KHJ broadcasts had begun to leave their mark on ( 7\jext Page I The Christmas party of 1926 when Uncle John was host to the stars of his "Bed-time story hour" RADIO DOINGS Page Thirteen