Post #31

[Because there is discussion in this letter about the exorbitant
price of tickets for a college football game and related items, here are some
statistics to put the amounts in perspective:

Cost
of Living 1952
Average wages per year $3,850.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas 20 cents
Average Cost of a new car $1,700.00
Average Cost of Rent $80.00 per month
LB of Hamburger Meat 53 cents
Average House Price 2,028]

November 19, 1952

Dear Linda;

Listen you foul
little beast, how’s about a letter? 
Hm?  Postcard?  Bit of a message scribbled in blood on
an old petticoat and smuggled out in a loaf of pumpernickel?  Or don’t you export pumpernickel from
old Quarter Circle V Bar?  No
letter Monday, no letter Tuesday, what’s the deal? 

Your voice Satirday
sounded healthy, but a little frustrated. 
Hope it gets de-frustrated soon. 
Any break?  How do you like
the word ‘Satirday’?  How about
‘Satireday’, the day we satirize things? 
Brilliant wit, eh?  Yes,
indeed.

The big game for Los
Angles this weekend to end all big games. 
UCLA and USC meeting for the first time with both teams undefeated,
untied, winner to go to the Rose Bowl with a fair chance to be judged national
champs.  Thank goodness they’re
going to televise it, otherwise there would be rioting at the gates of the Coliseum.  Even at five bucks per seat, plus two
or three bucks for parking (can you imagine that?) thirty-five cents for hot
dogs and twenty cents for cokes, seventy-five cents for programs and God knows
what else.  Scalpers, of course,
are running rife.  I imagine by
game time a brace of tickets between the goal posts, that is on the flat side,
will sell for sixty to a hundred dollars. 
If that sounds impossible, well, last weekend at the Michigan/Notre Dame
game two seats brought seventy-five dollars.  Just what prompts people to want to see a game that badly I
do not know, but they do.  I can’t
remember a game ever meaning that much to me, even though I used to get almost
sick with excitement when a really big game came along.

Heigh-ho or rather
ho-hum.  I’m a little sleepy.  Been slamming through another Coyote
and Roadrunner, as I may have mentioned. 
These are sort of money-in-the-bank type pictures.  We don’t have to worry about
establishing a premise or continuity or character development much or trick
backgrounds.  Everything’s pretty
open.  Just sit down and start
drawing and when all the gags are roughed out, arrange them according to pace,
so’s the picture will build in tempo, find myself a strong gag to end on and
I’m in business.  Timing is a snap
because no dialogue and there’s no worry about making it too long, because I
can time the gags as I go along and use just as many as I need.  All in all, life could be very simple
and maybe a little bit dull if all I had to do was direct coyote and r.r.s.

Not that I want to
be a slobby old father, but ‘twould be nice to hear from you, if you haven’t written
already.  If so, write again.

Love LOVE LOVE loooooooooooooooooove…….XXXX

s/Daddy