But that was not the best of it. Requests for lots began to come in by
mail. Not only people in Westcote wrote for prices, but people away over
in New Jersey and up in Westchester Country, and even from as far away
as Poughkeepsie and Delaware. We had twice as many requests for lots as
there were lots to sell, and we decided we would have an auction and let
them go to the highest bidders. You see Remington Solander's Talking
Tomb was becoming nationally famous. We began to negotiate with the
owners of six farms adjacent to our cemetery; we figured on buying them
and making more new additions to the cemetery. And then we found we
could not use three of the farms.
The reason was that the loud speaker in Remington Solander's tomb would
not carry that far; it was not strong enough. So we went to the
executors of his estate and ran up against another snag--nothing in the
radio outfit in the tomb could be altered in any way whatever. That was
in the will. The same loud speaker had to be maintained, the same
wave-length had to be kept, the same makes of batteries had to be used,
the same style of tubes had to be used. Remington Solander had thought
of all that. So we decided to let well enough alone--it was all we could
do anyway. We bought the farms that were reached by the loud speaker and
had them surveyed and laid out in lots--and then the thing happened!
* * * * *
Yes, sir, I'll sell my cemetery stock for two cents on the dollar, if
anybody will bid that much for it. For what do you think happened? Along
came the Government of the United States, regulating this radio thing,
and assigned new wave-lengths to all the broadcasting stations. It gave
Remington Solander's endowed broadcasting station WZZZ an 855-meter
wave-length, and it gave that station at Dodwood--station PKX--the
327-meter wave-length, and the next day poor old Remington Solander's
tomb poured fourth "Yes, We Ain't Got No Bananas" and the "Hot Dog"
jazz and "If You Don't See Mama Every Night, You Can't See Mama At All,"
and Hink Tubbs in his funny stories, like "Well, one day an Irishman and
a Swede were walking down Broadway and they see a flapper coming towards
them. And she had on one of them short skirts they was wearing, see? So
Mike he says 'Gee be jabbers, Ole, I see a peach.' So the Swede he says
lookin' at the silk stockings, 'Mebby you ban see a peach, Mike, but I
ban see one mighty nice pair.' Well, the other day I went to see my
mother-in-law--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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