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Show THE BULLETINBINHHAM. UTAH . ADVENTURERS' CLUB Vis ' It HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES v'b OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELFI "27e FZJ Iwfo the Bottomlm Wei ' HELLO EVERYBODY: you imagine falling into a well and never re ing bottom? That's what happened to William J. Sternll of Long Island City, N. Y., who tells today's yarn. 1 In the spring of 1885, Bill Sternberg, then a lad of 19, waj rj In panes of glass along the side of a building in Long Island city since burned down. A steep slope fell away almost vertically fro'i building, and below this slope was an old well, whose rotting ti,4 had been removed preparatory to making a new cover. Now watcJ see what happened. I Bill Sails Off Into Space. Along the far end of the building, the ground fell away so J that Bill had to go look for the ladder he had left against the one! extension. To make sure the ladder was still where he had left I took a step backward to look over the edge of the roof. Sudden left foot went completely into space! j Bill says, "I knew In a flash rhere I was about to go. It J too late to scramble forward, ao I braced my foot, and with if my might I threw my body back ..." I And right below lay you guessed It the open well! I Bill's quick thinking may have saved his life, but it didn't keep! from going through a bad experience. His shoulders struck the far , of the well and his feet scraped the near edge so that he lay cros top opening like a stiff stick. Only he wasn't so stiff, worse luck, by bit he started to slip down the sides of the well, the weight body held in space only by the fierce pressure of his braced fee shoulders against the rough brick sides of the well. And Then He Started to Slip! Had that well been an Inch wider in diameter, boys and girls wouldn't be telling this story. As it was, he had all he could do, p lng with all his strength, to keep his body out straight, to keep pre on his toes and his shoulders and neck. AND THEN HE STARTED TO SLIPl Picture for yourself what he was up against. If either ti head or his feet started slipping faster than the other end, h might drop so much on one end that his body would no lonii meet the wall on both sides. The minute his legs or his thou ders slipped enough to fall away from the wall HE WOEL TLUNGE TO THE DEPTHS BELOW! But worse was still to come. Working with Bill on the job man by the name of Franz. When the first terror at his predica And right below lay the open well. lifted, Bill thought of Franz and yelled for help. Picture his horror he got no answer. All along he had been hoping that before he lost control, r would arrive. Now his voice rang mockingly in the dark depths I Franz did not answer. Bill Sees a Dim Ray of Hope. Lower, lower slipped Bill. The rough bricks scraped hii ihoi raw. Blood ran from his tortured flesh, soaked his shirt. The prf was agony, yet he dar j not ease up. To let up meant dropping. Bill wormed around till his eyes could examine the depths the well below. And for a moment hope returned to him. Direct below, about seven and a half feet down, he saw the ribs of f orm for the brickwork projecting on the inside, about two or thn inches beyond the brickwork. The masons had left the form m the ribs and built around them. "Now," Bill told himself, "if those ribs will hold my weight, Tm! But could he reach them? Seven and a half feet! Seven and a half feet of creeping, of toi shoulders, of risky probing with one foot when an instant's let-u- p pressure meant Bill Sternberg tried not to think what it meant he groped with one foot for a hold, wormed his raw shoulders the bricks that were like sandpaper on his raw shoulders. New Danger Worse Than the Old. Just as he reached the ribs a new danger presented itself. His ders started to go lower than his feet! . Bad enough to plunge feet first But head first! And Dae at that! It took all the flagging nerve jf "Bill Sternberg to grind 'ME , raw shoulders into that wall and work his feet down t0"yes' ! I rib. Bill made it. And what's more, the ribs held him. and shoulders. j But how long was he to remain here like this? Franticaf his voice in a hoarse shout. And now to his ears cam,tlto-- A sound of Franz's hammer. Franz, hammering 1 work, had perhaps not heard. Bill summoned all his streng f bellowed: "Franz, FRANZ!" j This time Franz came, and with one unconcerned tug JA ? companion. Bill landed hard on the safe ground. It than his shoulders. But worst of all, he says, was trying himself with his mother for ripping his shirt, when he got no i j Copyright. WNU Service. I ZOOMS BOOM! MusicMad America 'Eats Up' Mew Tunes Faster Than Composers Can Write Them The Song You Mum Today Will Be a Headache Next Week! '' 1 ' ' V t ' t. z X : y ' '' :yiK - f N. s j II jjl By JOSEPH W. LaBINE It's not so many years since you heard a good phonograph record at your neighbor's house, thereupon rushing right down to the music store to buy a copy for your own gramophone. Maybe it was one of Gene Austin's remark-ably successful songs re-member? In those days, a composer could write "Yes, We Have No Bananas" or "Margie" and settle back to watch the profits roll in from sheet music, recordings and dance orchestras. For a year or more, "Carolina Moon" swept the nation and nobody tired of it; in-deed, we haven't tired of it yet. But that was long ago maybe 10 years in the dim, halcyon days be-fore home was not the same without a radio, before music became a high-spee- d industry instead of a lei-surely profession. Nowadays you get shivers up the back one week from and the following week you scream when-ever anyone hums it. The first time you hear "Flat Foot Floogie" it has a novel catch; but after it's been smashed all over your living room by every band from Benny Goodman to the Hot Shot Six, "Flat Foot Floogie" really falls fiat. In other words, if you've any ideas about making a million by writing a popular song, get rid of them. The tide has changed so rapidly, so completely, that the modern com-poser starves to death unler.s he can grind out several new tunes a year. Zoom Tp Boom Down. Take "The Merry-Go-Roun- d Broke Down" it actually did, in three months, simply through too much radiocasting. Overnight it zoomed to nation-wid- e popularity; almost as fast it fell with a thud and a boom that resounded up and down New York's Tin Pan Alley. Looking at incidents like this, the American So-ciety of Composers, Authors and Publishers ("Ascap" to the trade) is trying to promulgate fair trade practice rules to stop carrying a good tune too far. In common practice, a publish-er's representative approaches a na-tionally broadcast dance orchestra leader like Guy Lombardo or Rudy Vallee and begs him to give every new tune a trial. It's really quite an honor, they say. to offer a num-ber over the air fur the first time. If the public likes it, the song be-comes a national favorite overnight, and is thereby ruined. What Ascap wants is control over the number of performances a new song gets over the airwaves. And though some may cry "Monopoly!" and "Unfair!" it still isn't a bad idea. Ascap is composed of most major song writers, who complain they must now write 10 times as many songs as in pre-radi- o days, and even then their sheet music and record-ing profits are smaller. The best index to this trend of public acceptance is found in the radio program which asks its listeners to vote on their favorite numbers each week. No tune has ever stayed in first place more than a few weeks; seldom do they stay in the running more than two months. Billy Hill's Experienre. Ascap, which pools all musical copyrights of its members, collects royalties and distributes them, has won some success in its campaign. In Nebraska, where Ascap was held an unconstitutional restraint of trade, an appeal brought a tempo-rary injunction against the decision. The organization claims it simply protects its members, which could hardly be called "racketeering." Gene Buck, Ascap president, likes to tell what happened to Billy Hill, who found himself broke while his "Home on the Range" was being hummed all over the nation. Since the public eats up new tunes so fast, composers and or-chestra leaders are getting gray hair trying to meet the demand. The result has been some ingenious devices. One method is to take an old tune and rearrange it, change it from waltz to foxtrot time and back again. "What," asked Benny Good-man recently, "can you do with a semg like 'My Gal Sal' after you've played it 4,000 times? You've got to kick it around!" Another method, which ties up with Goodman's idea, is to go back into history. Ella Fitzgerald, Negro vocalist, completely abandoned modern tunes when she saw how fast they wear out. Instead she combed through the files and revived old numbers like "S'wanee River," final-ly reaching the nursery rhymes. As a result, t, was brought into the limelight. Schubert to Swing. Some months ago an opera lover was amazed at the familiarity of a tune he heard being played by a jazz orchestra. The melody kept running through his mind at its fast tempo, exasperatingly, until he slowed it down and discovered the truth: An adept arranger had sim-ply lifted an aria from the opera, "Martha." Since then, such classi-cal composers as Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann and Grieg have been turned over in their graves and changed to swing time. This, say some, is plain "rob-bery," yet it's very seldom that a brand new tune comes out of Tin Pan Alley. The June-moo- love-dov- e, blue-yo- u idea runs through so many modern lyrics that it some-times becomes disgusting. What's more, many a long-dea- d composer has furnished the inspiration for a Frankie Masters, well-know- n ra-dio orchestra leader, leads his band in rehearsing a brand new tune or is it just an old one revamped with a few notes and another set of lyr-ics? modern song writer. A good musi-cian can take most popular numbers apart and show what makes them run. Copyright Troubles. "The Merry-Go-Roun- d Broke Down" had its start in a Manhattan niyht club where Eddie Riley and Mike Farley pulled a verse from the Ford joke book and wrote a tune to go with it. Soon a New York radio station began broadcasting from the club and overnight the song was a national favorite. The interesting sidelight here is that the Ford joke book was not copyrighted, other-wise its publisher could have col-lected $250 from every radio sta-tion, cafe and restaurant that used it. Copyrights or lack of them have given many a composer finan-cial trouble. Take Shelton Brooks, now pounding piano in a New York cafe. Back in 1910, while doing the same thing in Chicago, he wrote the famous "Some of These Days." No publisher would touch it, so Mr. Brooks and a friend handled it them-selves. Their net profit at 10 cents a copy was $62.!50. But a few months later a vaudeville trio picked it up and started it on the road to fame. Mr. Brooks sold out to Will Rossiter for $.r00. That's all he got out of it, though "Some of These Days" went on to make a cool million dollars. Since good song writers are few these days, publishers have grasped at a new method of protecting them-selves and keeping the public happy. They're keeping in mind the fact that copyrights on the tunes that thrilled grandfather are now run-ning out, and that it's often possible to buy renewal rights from the com-posers or their heirs. With new tunes so few, orchestra leaders oft-en find it convenient and pleasing to insert a medley of oldtimers in their programs. Reviving the Nineties. One of the leaders in this old tune business is Jerry Vogel, a New York publisher who got a break several years ago when George M. Cohen turned over his entire portfolio with-out charge. Thus, Vogel found him-self sitting with full rights on such one-tim- e hit tunes as "Forty-fiv- e Minutes From Broadway," "George Washington Jr." and "Over There." Sometime later a woman from near Boston dropped in and offered to sell renewal rights on the num-ber her uncle had written, Henry J. Sayers' "Ta Ra Ra Boom Der E." Vogel snatched it up and showed it to Fred Waring, then play-ing on the Ford hour. Waring tried it out and Mr. Ford a lover of old tunes liked it so well he had the orchestra write special lyrics. They used the tune more than a year, which was a nice piece of business for Mr. Vogel on a tune which a few months before had been dead and forgotten. But at best the revival business is only a stop-ga- p proposition, a matter of securing tunes that will fill in until Tin Pan Alley can turn out more "new" songs. Publishers often get pretty disgusted about the whole thing. Although they receive vast amounts of script from ama-teurs, the bulk of it is sent back unopened because there's seldom anything of value. An was the exception song, "Springtime in the' Rockies," which a San Francisco publisher bought from an amateur several years ago. It was a terrific smash. Again, publishers are often the victims of their own disgust or smugness, call it what you will Hoagy Carmichael wrote "Star Dust" quite a few years ago but it gathered dust in the drawer until someone tried it out, having noth-ing else to do on a rainy afternoon ou know what happened. Similar! ly. another publisher tossed "If l Could Be With You One Hour To-night" on the shelf until it was for. gotten. Finally somebody wrote a new arrangement of it and a hiKhlv successful recording was made Western Newspaper Union. rw - v i Radio's growing army of enter-tainers helps devour the new songs, so much that the average tune lasts only a few weeks before the public tires of it. At left, Rudy Vallee of "Stein Song" fame. Below, Phil Cook, song pluggcr extraordinary. xs S j " ' ; x x x .j, s I , :f c - tt h I S ,'S'T " x N t V f w 2 " , t. xV I x V ' ' 'x ,V ' , - I I Speaking of Sports Comeback of Di Mag Makes Yanks Happy By GEORGE A. BARCLAY AS THE New 1'ork Yankees have thundered down the home stretch In the American league pen-nant race, piling- up a lead that could not be challenged, the dcnl-irn- s of Gotham's "Little Italy" have been happy. For Joe 1)1 Maggio was hitting and his bat was winning ball games. Joe's batting average Is a barometer of Joy or despair In the east side neighborhood where the sons of Italy have settled and raised their bambino. In the early days of the season when Joe was in the dog-hous- e with the Yankee ownership and his bat was feeble, there was consterna-tion In "Little Italy." But as the sea-son wore on and the Yanks began pulling away from the Cleveland In-dians, there were smiles, for Joe had found his batting eye again. If "Little Italy" was happy over Di Magglo's revival, so was Joe Mc- - V :tv r t V 1 ri rr-- .WWimmI Softball School '"THE axiom that England's battles of tomorrow are being won today on the playing fields of Harrow and Eton might be paraphrased for baseball as follows: Major league games of tomorrow are being won on Softball fields of today. For the outstanding baseball finds of the past several years got their start playing softball. Joe Di Maggio was a softball play-er before he Jumped to baseball and started toward the hall of fame as a member of the New York Yan-kees. His sensational young team-mate, Tom Henrich, broke into the game via the softball diamond. Ken Keltner, who has made a name for himself this year as third baseman for the Cleveland Indians, was a member of a Milwaukee softball team that played In the world's championship meet two years ago-l- ong before he thought of profession-al baseball as a career. Baseball men who watched the world's championship softball tour-nament In Chicago which drew teams from 44 states of the Union, agreed that a player who can at-tain a respectable batting average against competent moundsmen in the fast ball pitching events, should be able to hit a baseball without ex-ceeding difficulty. The softball pitcher stands only 40 feet away from the batter at home plate, whereas the baseball pitcher stands 60 feet away. The ball he uses is not much larger than a reg-ulation baseball 12 inches In cir-cumference compared to 9V. It Is nearly as hard. It comes to the batter with almost blinding speed when thrown by a star softball pitch-er. Cumera tests have Indicated that the pitching speed of a fast softball is about the same as that of a fast baseball. But the soft-ba- ll batter has one-thir- d less dis-tance in which to get ready to swing. Far from scoffing at softball as a sissy game, thoughtful baseball men frankly agree that It may be effec-tive In preparing a youngster for baseball later on. Says Joe Cronin, manager of the Boston Red Sox: Here and There GREATEST fullback in the this fall will be Howie Weiss, of the University of Wiscon-sin, according to Coach Harry Stuhl-dreh- er . . . The Longwood Cricket club of Chestnut Hills, Mass., has the first tennis racket it ever pur-chased. It was bought April 24, 1878, or 50 years ago . . . Among Temple university's football oppo-nents this year are three with whom the Owls played scoreless ties last year. They are Bucknell, Holy Cross and Boston college . . . With the signing of Cecil Isbell of Purdue and Andy Uram of Minnesota, stars of the recent All-Sta- r football game in Chicago, the Green Bay Packers have made themselves a formidable threat in the National Professional Football league this fall. Sliakc-U- p Time VIT'IIEN the winter baseball meet-- ' Ings are held several months hence, It Is the prophecy of informed baseball men that there will be more trades between big league teams than the national game has experienced In a long time. "Shake-up- " talk is in the air as baseball gives way to football in seasonal sports interest and teams that promised wjII but fared indif-ferently are preparing to strengthen themselves for the 1939 race. It Is conceded that three teams the New York Giants, and the Chi-cago Cubs in the National league JOE DI MAGGIO Carthy, for once again this astute manager's faith In a ball player was vindicated. McCarthy Is noted for aticking with a player when the av-erages are throwing him down. He demonstrated that long ago with Fitcher Pat Malone when Joe was manager of the Chicago Cubs. In Malone's first year as a Cub, he lost his first five starts. Joe Is Game That might have discouraged the average manager, but not Joe Mc- Carthy. He sent Malone back for his sixth start Pat justified this confidence by winning that game and going on to become one of the most effective pitchers in the National league. Later when trou-ble dogged Malone and he was waived out of the league, McCarthy, , now manager of the Yankees, signed him as a relief pitcher and he con-tinued with good results for the Yanks until the close of last season. You could cite other examples of this tenacious McCarthy faith. There's the case of Pitcher Lefty Gomez, who ran Into a discouraging series of defeats and finally worked his way back into the winner's es-tate. Or you might mention Lou Gehrig, who was a bust in the early days of this season. Joe didn't give up on Lou when the fans and critics were panning him. And so Joe Di Maggio is the lat-est reward of McCarthy's loyalty. Joe's troubles this year started with his holdout demand for $40,000, after a brilliant 1937 season. Joe's hold-out was a failure and he finally compromised for $25,000 a year aft-- er missing the training trip entirely. Obviously out of condition because of missing the training trip, he missed the first ten days of the sea-son and one of the disciplinary measures adopted by Col. Jacob Ruppert, owner of the club, for this recalcitrant holdout was to dock Joe at the rate of $162 for each game be missed, or a total of $1,620. Once Joe got into the lineup, however, be was careful not to miss another game. Informed baseball followers are giving odds that Colonel Rup-pert will refund DI Magglo's lost salary when the 1938 season goes into history. Joe Gets Going The going wasn't easy for Joe in th early stages of the season. The hits didn't blast into the outfield as they had in his two previous years and a home run was something of a curiosity. But McCarthy stuck with him. As a matter of fact he tried to drop Di Maggio into the lineup as a pinch-hitte- r on opening day, but was overruled by Business Manager Ed Barrow. That gesture, as well as McCarthy's serene confidence in him when Joe apparently couldn't get going, was a convincing evi-dence that his manager believed the slump was only temporary. Joe's performance in the home stretch of the pennant race proved how right McCarthy was. Finishing his third year in the big leagues, Joe Di Maggio can rest and invite his soul. His batting average, and also bis record for runs bat-ted in and runs scored mark him as one of baseball's greats. Those who know this young Italian say Di Maggio if a misunderstood player. He has a reputation for aloofness that borders on the snooty. This is shyness, say his friends. i 17 1 V t- Tiiawirmilinltt'aiiifliirfr CONNIE MACK and the Cleveland Indians In the American league are most In need of overhauling if they are to be pennant contenders again next year. How to do it? Few managers would be prepared to take the drastic steps used by Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics on two occasions years ago when he decided his teams had passed their peak of baseball use-fulness to him and could still bring a handsome profit Old-time- will remember that after the world's se-ries of 1914 which the Athletics lost to the Boston Braves, Mack disposed of his "$100,000 infield" consisting of Stuffy Mclnnes, Eddie Collins, Jack Barry and Frank Baker, as well as sundry pitchers and outfielders. He used the same procedure after the 1931 world's series. But Managers Terry, Ilartnctt, and Vitt, respectively, will be un-usually receptive to trades that will replace fading or disgruntled play-ers with fresh performers. Western Newioaper Unios- - Making Wallpaper h 4 ) continuous row , Paper in Lu ' R vented by Nicholas and the . Essones in 1799, patents "to make obptaapinoed I ;, seam or Join" were J don in 1801 by .SL Didot St. Leger. in continuous lengths 'I ever, permitted in BagJJ 1830, because of e . W I enue derived from the on the small sheets Fran while, made use of the new it j after 1810. Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin Between Fond du Lac and She-boygan, Wis., is an area known to geologists as the kettle moraine, says a survey of Wisconsin's nat-ural wonders by the American Chemical society. The region re-sembles the deserted kettle holes of Paul Bunyan's lumberjacks. The kettles appear like the interior of volcanic cones, except that they are only a few hundred feet across, are from 50 to 200 feet deep, and have their steep slopes covered with trees. Be Good. Not Too ;j "Be gd anfdCh1n i1 Ho, the sage t don t be i the same time fact that rascal has 4 that some not keep the ramoffo Leading Producer of Silver Mexico is the leading world pro-ducer of silver and in the last five centuries has yielded about 5,500,-000,0- ounces of silver, more than 33 per cent of world production dur-- ing that period. Some Birds kinds of Au Three ? nests so an make clay in form that if the j J tached to a WPP0 crude nun be told from pottery. I Florida Talk Pity the poor trainman who calls stations out of Orlando, Fla. Some of the line's tongue twisters are Ko-lop- Chuluota, Bithlo, Pocotaw, Saldka, Tohopee, Holopaw, Illahaw nd Apoxsee. |