Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

And not only in Chicago, but in Amarillo and Broken Bow, in Muncie and Memphis — in fact wherever that exuberant Mitchell voice reaches, it's a beautiful day! By EVERETT MITCHELL Just as surely as I know the sun will rise in the morning, I can tell you exactly how it will happen. Millie — my wife — and I will be sitting in the deep chairs of the upstairs room which is study, office, trophy museum and general loafing place. Millie will have a dish of chocolates beside her and a bit of sewing in her hands. I'll be trying to catch up on my reading. We will have agreed that since a storm is raging and I have to start for the studio at 4:30 A.M., it's a good night to get to bed early. The reading will be important — a bulletin from the Department of Agriculture containing information Farm and Home Hour listeners will want, or perhaps a new book on animal husbandry — but I won't get very far with it. I'll have a memo pad and pencil, but soon, instead of making notes, I'll catch myself drawing a big rectangle shaped like our land. Inside it, at one end, with light strokes, I'll sketch a smaller block the same proportions as our house. Then in the open space at the side and back of the house. I'll swing a series of lazy curves which somehow nip deeper and deeper into what is left of the clear space. I'll have dropped all pretense of reading, by now to mark in symbols meaningless to anyone but me. A star shows the spot the Christmas poinsettia will be set out; a circle indicates a clump of chrysanthemums; an x is a rose bush, and a sprinkle of dots are the tulips. As the picture comes clear in my mind, my pencil moves faster and faster. I'm as out of the world as a bebopper listening to Dizzie Gillespie until I hear Millie's voice, "Ev, you'll just have to leave a little room around the house for grass." Startled out of my complete concentration, I'll jump, and I'll look up sheepishly into Millie's grayblue eyes. She'll laugh then, for she knows what to expect. After twenty-eight years, I still have my original wife, my original fervor for gardening, and my original enthusiasm for radio, all so intermingled I no longer try to separate my feelings about them into emotional compartments. Together, they are the things I love and which make life worth living. Together, too, they dictated the outcome of the most decisive day in my life. Millie understands this, and because she does, she has anticipated this moment when our Springtime begins. She brings out the new seed catalogs which arrived during my last swing around the country and sets the stack down on the maple desk. She pulls a chair close, and together we pore over them. It may be a wild night outdoors, but from then on Spring gardening is in full swing at the Mitchells'. Instead of going to bed early, we're so engrossed in that most alluring of dream books, a seed catalog, that when at last we go to bed I darned near meet myself starting out to do my 6:30 A.M. Town and Farm show on WMAQ. Gardening has been vital to me ever since I was a small boy growing up in a neighborhood of wide open spaces on the fringe of Chicago. The other kids envied me because my father was a railroad engineer, and I envied them because their fathers were farmers. TURN PAGE FOR GARDEN CONTEST YOU CAN ENTER 48 The Farm and Home Hour, with Everett Mitchell, is heard Saturdays, 1:00 P.M., EST, NBC. Sponsored by Allis-Chalmera Farm Machinery. Mr. Mitchell is also on the Town and Farm Show, Mon.-Sat. at 6:15 A.M. CST, WMAQ. Sponsored M., W., F. by Armour.