Confidential File

So Wyatt Outdrawed Him With a Potater

Stay a moment and consider with me the potato. Or, if you prefer, Solanum tuberosum, a perennial plant of the nightshade family.

(You
can be damn sure I didn't put all that dough into a set of
encyclopedias just to impress my neighbors with the size of my library.)

The potato is a vegetable with a stormy past and an uncertain future.

Since its earliest cultivation, it has been plagued by the Colorado beetle and, for a brief period in history, by a band of 18th
century food faddists called the SPUDS (Society for the Prevention of
Unclean Diet), who were convinced that potatoes contained a drug that
weakened the will.

They claimed it was being foisted on an unsuspecting public by subversives who were plotting to take over the nation.

In fact, though, the potato has served us well. We owe it much.

Without it, for example, Laura Scudder
would have been just another housewife. And Pat O'Brien would be just
another next-to-closing clog dancer at the County Down Fair, if his
ancestors hadn't lammed to escape the Great Potato Famine of '46.

This
vegetable has also made a deep impact on my life. As a child, I was
force-fed it almost every meal by a doting mother who believed that
without this daily staple I would fall dead of beriberi. Or, at least,
run a high fever from la grippe.

When the sure signs of nausea
would warn me that one more gulp of milk-soaked mashed potato would
result in catastrophe, my mother would invariably admonish:

"Look at what you left on your plate. Think of the poor, starving Chinese. What wouldn't they give for that!"

Consequently, I cannot shake the vague feeling that somehow I, and not Mao Tsetung, am responsible for the poor, starving Chinese. I also came to manhood with an almost irrational respect for the potato.

That's why I was shocked recently when a lovely lady from the Cossman Toy Co. stopped by with a couple of samples of her firm's newest product-the Spud Gun.

"You just dig the barrel into a potato, pull it out and fire," she explained. "It shoots little potato pellets up to 50 feet.

 "It's not just a toy, either. It's a public service. There's a very serious surplus this year.

"We've
already sold almost a million guns," she went on happily. "We estimate
that if every child shoots up to 12 pounds, it'll move 12 million
pounds out of the surplus warehouses and get the economy back in shape.

Fraught With Economicalties

There's
another purpose," she concluded. "Potato consumption is down 50% under
last year. There's a desperate need to make America potato conscious
again. We feel the Spud Gun will do it."

And I feel she's right. You can hardly be unconscious of the potato when some kid is firing one at you from ambush.

Anyway, I dutifully took the Spud Guns home to my youngsters.

They're having a ball with them. But I'm not happy.

Every
time they take careful aim and shoot each other right between the eyes,
I find myself thinking, with the same old guilty feeling, about the
poor, starving Chinese.

Confidential File

Nice Heart-Warming Variety of Larceny

I have, in rare moments of self-examination, confessed to filching stories from fellow newspapermen.

Consequently, I am not in a position to be outraged when someone lifts one of my pieces.

Sometimes, I'm even delighted.

Today is one of those times.

Last
month I told you about a rather remarkable woman. A woman who, by all
the rules of life and death, should have been dead 10 years ago.

She is Lucille Warnecke. And she's very much alive.

But in 1949, shortly after she and her son, Mike, then 4, contracted polio, doctors held out no hope for Mrs. Warnecke.

A priest was summoned to the hospital to administer last rites.

But Mrs. Warnecke,
possessing an indomitable will to live, survived. She went on to
recover from the major effects of the paralysis and continue her life
as an energetic, almost unbelievably active housewife.

With the aid of leg brace and wheelchair, Mrs. Warnecke
ran an efficient, loving home for hubby Dwight, son Mike and two
daughters, adopted from a Japanese orphanage after her bout with polio.

American institutions had refused to permit adoption.

But Mrs. Warnecke got her kids. Then, pressed by Mike for a brother (the family was getting lopsided on the distaff side), Mr. and Mrs. Warnecke adopted a boy from the same orphanage in Tokyo which had supplied Mary, then 7, and Patty, then 5.

When I recounted the story for you, I said that Mrs. Warnecke was faced with another problem.

Seemingly insurmountable, but the kind she apparently handles best.

She
and her husband had adopted the Japanese boy, all right, but airline
regulations forbade John Joseph, their new son, to fly the Pacific
without an adult to supervise.

After all, John Joseph is only a year old.

Furthermore, airline officials were forced to give a firm, but sympathetic "no" answer when Mrs. Warnecke asked if they would contact a Los Angeles-bound passenger in Japan for help.

So I printed the story, hoping someone would come up with an answer to Mrs. Warnecke's problem.

And somebody stole the story.

He's Ralph Edwards of "This Is Your Life" fame. He's also a guy who perpetrates minor miracles.

I was caught up in a conspiracy.

Ralph's office asked me to pretend that I could present Mrs. Warnecke's appeal on nationwide TV if she'd come to Los Angeles. I was to lure her here from her new home in Kansas City.

Pretty sneaky, but all for a good cause.

In the meantime, Ralph's staff arranged a lot of nice things. A new car for Mrs. Warnecke. Nine months of free rent for the family in Kansas City. And a reunion between Mrs. Warnecke and a bunch of wonderful people who helped her when she was close to death.

But most important, they put John Joseph in his new mother's arms.

You are very welcome, Ralph. Come back and steal again sometime.