Well I walked around a wile and run in to some of the other boys Artie Hofman and Charley O’Leary and Jim Archer and Joe Benz but not a 1 of them mentioned about the war or me being over there and I finely figured it out that it was a kind of a sore subject with them so I walked away from them and all of a sudden I seen Rowland the mgr. and I thought sure he would ask me about signing up but I guess Bobby or somebody must of tipped him off about me going in to business so he didn’t want to take a chance of me turning him down or maybe he thought he would have a better chance of landing me if he didn’t say nothing at this time but just sent me a big fat contract when the time comes. Any way we didn’t talk contract but he had heard about me getting shot in the left arm and he mentioned about it and smiled and said it was lucky I wasn’t a left hander so you see he has got me on his mind and I suppose the contract will come along in a few days and then I will half to send it back to them and tell them I am through even if the contract meets my figure which is $5,000.00 because I wouldn’t go back and pitch baseball even for that amt. when I can go in to business and maybe not do that well right at the start but work myself up in to something worth wile.
Well after I left Rowland I bumped in to Hy Pond that I was with him down in the Central League and he asked me to come in and have a drink so I went with him and histed a couple beers but it was a mad house and besides wile we was over there takeing the fight out of the Germans the people that stayed home done the same thing to the beer and the way they have got it fixed now you could drink all they have got left without feeling like shock troops so finely I told Hy to make my excuses to the boys and I come along home.
Well I have had 2 or 3 pretty good chances so far to break in to some line of business and 1 of them was an ad I seen in the paper today where they wanted a young man of good appearances to represent them in Detroit with $5,000.00 per annum to start out but they didn’t say what line of business it was and besides I don’t feel like moveing to Detroit so I decided to not answer the ad but wait till something showed up where I could stay here in Chi as they’s no use of a man rushing in to something blind folded you might say when all as I half to do is play the waiting game and let them come to me with all their offers and then pick out the one that suits me best. Get them bidding against each other for you is the system Al.
Chi, Dec. 23.
Friend Al: Well Al I just come back from down town where I and Florrie has been all p.m. buying xmas presents and she has been saying ever since I come back from France how lonesome she was all the wile I was away but from the number of xmas presents she had to buy for people I never seen or heard of they couldn’t of been more than a couple hours of the time I was over there when she wasn’t busy saying please to meet you. But whenever I would raise a holler about the jack she was spending she would swell up and tell me she would pay for it out of her own money so of course I couldn’t say nothing though when the bills comes in they will be addressed to me and her check book will of probably got halled away with the garbage.
Well when we got through buying for the city directory she said she was through except for the baby as she had fixed up for little Al last time she was down so she asked me what could I suggest for little Florrie so I said why get her a new rattle as what else is they for a 6 mos. old baby so she said the baby wasn’t going to be 6 mos. old all her life. How is that for a bright remark Al but of course a woman can’t expect to have the looks and everything else with it, but any way she said she had a idear that she heard about a friend of hers doing it that had a little baby girl and that was to start a pearl necklace for her and 1st buy the chain and a few pearls and then add a couple pearls every yr. so as when she got old enough to wear it she would have something.
Well I said why not wait till some xmas when we have got a little more jack say in 7 or 8 yrs. and then get enough pearls to make up for the yrs. we passed up and then give them to the little girl and tell her we started buying them before she was a yr. old and she wouldn’t know the differents and in the mean wile we could get her something that if
