R.A. Lamb's Take on Life in Quaker Town, Feb. 8, 1935

“Pick-Ups From Quaker Town” by R.A. Lamb, from The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Feb. 8, 1935

Of all the fair young creatures that toil and spin hereabouts, none are more lovely than the charming group of maidens employed as elevator operators by a large department store. Methinks they have the beauty of face and figure that Hollywood is crying for; that Earl Carroll is dying for. Their smiles are like the sparkle of sunbeams on snow. Their voices are the lovecooing of the nightingale, the hushed notes of a flute, and the far-off ringing of old bells. They have the height, the hair, the dimples, the dress—everything in fact that it takes to make a man love shopping.

Kinda funny about those local braves, some of the town’s 300 full-blooded Indians, gathering without war paint to hear a paleface from the West lecture on the habits and customs of the red man.

Sign outside a dingy flophouse on Eighth Street: “An individual room, 25-pound mattress, springy bed, clean linen and heavy wool blankets. Including hotel service and choice of tub or shower bath—30 cents a night or $2.00 weekly.” Yeah, but what about those little fellows that bite like the devil? And, pray tell me, why do guests sleep in their clothes, including hat, shoes and overcoat?

Rather sporting of those 15,000 Roosevelt admirers, who gathered at Convention Hall to celebrate the President’s 53rd birthday, not to eat the massive birthday cake themselves, but to send it to a large hospital instead.

There oughta be a law to prohibit those up-to-the-minute specialty shops from displaying men’s straw hats—against a tantalizing background of green palms and blue sea—during the Winter months, especially at a time when all such shops are half-buried in snow. And most of us window shoppers have no more chance of getting into a Palm Beach hotel than a moth-eaten donkey has of getting into Lady Astorgilt’s scented boodwah.

That overgrown, apple-cheeked STOP-GO policeman at Twelfth & Market better wake up and get rid of those heavy leather mittens which he wears strapped tightly around his wrists, ‘cause in an emergency he wouldn’t be able to fire his gat without first removing his right-hand mitten and by that time it would be jest too bad for his dependents, these gangsters up here being what they are.

Mighty nice of the young man in the pet shop on Market Street to allow that threadbare old lady, with the worn carpetbag and high-top button shoes, to come in and talk for an hour with the canaries most every afternoon late.

Strange that the majority of wealthy men are eccentric in one way or another. Take A. Atwater Kent, the millionaire radio manufacturer, ‘tis said he owns no less than 58 private automobiles. . . none of which were new when purchased.

But stranger still that a number of those present in a movie audience should loudly applaud a news-reel statement by Edward J. Reilly, in which he said the defense was positive that Hauptmann did not write the ransom notes.

A bed that is also a cedar chest and bookcase is one of the new ideas in furniture. Two large storage drawers are built into the foot of the bed near the floor, while the head is provided with narrow shelves for books, a lamp, radio, or whatever else is desired.

It will be impossible for more than 20 motorists to park their cars in Convention Hall lot this evening, Inspector Rankin warned today because the parking ground, normally able to accommodate 60 cars, is snowed under.