Ring Lardner

The Times/October 5, 1922

Well, friends, you imagine my surprise and horror when I found out tonight that the impression had got around some way another that as soon as this serious was over I was planning to buy a expensive fur coat for my Mrs, and put a lot of money into same and buy a coat that would probably run up into hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Well I did not mean to give no such kind of a impression and I certainly hope that my little article was not read that way by everybody a specially around my little home because in the first place I am not a sucker enough to invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars in a garment which the chance are that the Mrs. will not wear it more than a couple times all winter as the way it looks now we are libel to have the most openest winter in history and if women folks should walk along the street in expensive fur coats in the kind of weather which it looks like we are going to have why they would only be laughed at and any way I believe a couple can have a whole lot better time in winter staying home and reading a good book or maybe have few friends in to play bridge.

Man Would Be Sucker

Further and more I met a man at supper last night that has been in the fur business all his life and ain’t did nothing you might say only deal in furs and this man says that they are great many furs in this world which is reasonable priced that has got as much warmth in them as high price furs and looks a great deal better. For inst, he says that a man is a sucker to invest thousands and thousands of dollar in expensive furs like ermine, muleskin, squirrel skin and kerensky when for a hundred dollars or not even that much, why a man can buy a owl skin or horse skin or weasel skin garment that looks like big dough and practically prostrates people with the heat when they wear them. 

So I hope my readers will put a quietus on the silly rumor that I am planning to plunge in the fur market. I will see that my Mrs. is dressed in as warm a style as she has been accustomed to, but neither her or l is the Kind that likes to make a big show and go up and down 5^th Ave, sweltering in a $700 hog skin garment in order so as people will turn around and gape at us. Live and let live is my slocum.

Fur Forgot, Furious Flight

So much for the fur coat episode and let us hear no more about it and will now go on with my article which I must apologize for it not being very good and the reason is on account of being very nervous after our little ride from the Polo Grounds to Park Row. It was my intentions to make this trip in the subway, but while walking across the field after the game I run into Izzy Kaplan, the photographer, and he says would I like to ride down in a car which him and his friends had hired so I and Grantland Rice got in and we hadn’t no sooner than started when one of our fellow passengers says that we ought to been with them coming up, “We made the trip from Park Row in 24 minutes,” he says, “and our driver said he was going to beat that record on the return trip.” 

So we asked what had held them back comeing up and one of them said that the driver had kept peeling and eating bananas all the way and that he did not drive so good when both his hands was off the wheal. Besides that, they had ran into a guy and had to wait till the ambulance come and picked him up. 

Well, ‘friends. I will not try and describe our flight only to say that we did not beat the record, but tied it and the lack of bananas didn’t prevent our hero from driving with his hands off the wheel as he used the last named to shake his fists at pedestrians and other riff raff that don’t know enough to keep off the public highways during the rush hour.

Most of the things I was to mention in this article was scared out of me during our little jaunts. One of them however was the man from Toronto that stood in line with his wife from 8 p. m. Tuesday night till the gates opened Wednesday morning so as to be sure of good seats. According to officials of the club, they could of got the same seats if they had not showed up till a couple hours before the game, but if they had of done that, why the lady would not of had no chance to brag when she got back home. The way it is, why she can say to her friends: “Charley may not be much for looks, but he certainly showed me the night life of New York.” 

Dividing interest with this couple was a couple of heel and toe pedestrians that done their base circling stunt just before the start of the game. One of them was the same guy that done it before the first game last fall, but this time he was accompanied by a lady hoofer and it is not too much to say that the lady was dressed practally as though for her bath. Casey Stengel expressed the general sentiment in the following words: “If that is just her walking costume, I would hate to see her made up for tennis.”