Thompson 340607

Cliffside, June 6 – Granby Street, Norfolk, Va., at 6 A. M., is deserted and serene. Crossing the streets, which compare to the motion picture idea of a street scene, are a few sailors. There are no automobiles in sight. Only the distant “clop-clop” of the milkman’s horse in a slow walk is heard. A few minutes from the famous Granby Street of 1918, where admirals walked, is the waterfront—the Elizabeth River. For two hours I “covered the waterfront” and no one knows such **(?)gripping interest unless you have witnessed it. The “tough” boys who work on the boats plying from Norfolk to Baltimore, are sitting about pulling on their inevitable favorite pipe. An excursion boat is being turned by four tugs. Their chug-chug comes to life and then it quiets – first the stem and then the stern slide around until she gracefully floats into position, poised for the shove-off hour.

A glance back to Granby Street, after the interval of two hours, and all is alive. Office messengers hurry. Salesmen pull out with sample loaded sedans. Newsies yell headlines. Motor buses, motorcycles and delivery boys on bicycles flock through traffic as the day gets underway. A pan-handler ventures, “Buddy, slip me a quarter—I haven’t et in two days.” And that woman slyly enters a side-street shop; probably a shop-lifter to pick up some trivial. And goes the day.

Remembering: Gladys Rice singing in Cliffside . . . Silent Calvin Coolidge riding down Pennsylvania Avenue on the last day he was President of these United States . . . The home of Andrew Mellon . . . The Carlton Hotel, where the one and only Charles Lindbergh most usually stops in the District . . . That lady in Petersburg, Virginia, nearly backed over yours truly as she backed from a traffic signal . . . The dedication of the R. R. Haynes Memorial Building and the Cliffside Public school in the home-town. And that eloquent gentleman, Clyde R. Hoey, spoke . . .

When Broadus Wilson, Cliffside boy, appeared on the local screen with Joe E. Brown in a late picture. Wilson was in the scene of the finish of the swim marathon at Catalina Island, California . . . A first glimpse of Washington, D. C.—zero and brrrr-ing snow!

Charlotte, in the course of a few minutes: A racing, screaming fire truck . . . a bride in beautiful white paraphernalia . . . That 1934 Cadillic . . . Grady Cole with his left arm in plaster cast . . . A speeding car drops the spirits in the street and its occupants taken in by police. And the odor of whiskey for half-block around.

Ray Teal’s show is fair. Harvey Bell is another Morton Downey on the up-grade toward big time. Jean and Jeanette, dance team from the 1933 Ziegfield show, do their fandango number from that show and give a touch of “glamour”—I believe they “calls” it—to the Ray Teal show which appeared at the Charlotte Carolina three days of last week. Rogan and Romero, direct from Miami’s Villa Venice Club are the high-spots with the show. They offer something different at least —though of vulgar proportions—in their unconventional aerobatic-dance-wisecrack number.

With George Raft as a matador, “The Trumpet Blows,” at the Romina last week, was a picture of good and light amusement, although there was lots of “bull” to the story.

It was interest to this writer to talk with Dick Young, of the Charlotte News “City Hall” column—the city government opus. Dick has been in the business for 10 years and is going stronger these days. A light brown-haired fellow, who can pound his typewriter, is really older than his youthful appearance. Viva, Dick Young!

I hear of the wonders of the world—the Taj Mahal, beautiful shrine of India, the great Empire State Building in New York, the wonders of Hollywood trick photography but the smaller things are not recognized: Such beautiful simplified innocence of the 4-year-old miss who pulls her skirts high so she will not soil them and then who sits on those delicate pink unmentionables. The beauty of such innocence!