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| September, 1949 Hi, gang! Time to sing our September Song-and for you youngsters I know it’s the back-to-school blues. I really feel sorry for some of you who are ready to turn back to the world of books and blackboards because I know that you are the ones who are the most picked on, the ones who suffer the greatest emotional shocks, the ones who have the most difficulties with lessons. You’re the type that really gets punished if you’re late for school, the sort who are always under the electric eye of the principal. Yes, I feel most sorry for you, the least enviable of all school-goers—the teachers. I remember that back home in New Jersey along about this time of year, when the leaves were just getting ready to turn red and brown, our young bodies were slowly turning to black and blue. The summer vacation in our neighborhood was really a School of Hard Knocks—and the knocks were usually around the head. We used to sit around and match bruises along about this time of year, the lumps on our foreheads from diving off docks into too shallow water; the friction burns from sliding into second base over a baseline made of street cement, the knots on our noggins from not being able to run as fast as some of the older boys in the neighborhood. But we wore our wounds with pride—for even in our boyish minds we somehow knew that it took a certain kind of champion to survive a city summer. I can see us now, sitting close to the wall behind the cookie factory, a quart of milk between our legs, munching on a nickel’s worth of broken biscuits, recalling and recounting the adventures of those wonderful blistering vacation months which we had squandered in a youthful spree of reckless adventure. Those vacation months we owned ourselves—they were ours to spend and during June, July and August we weren’t expected to study a lesson or learn a thing. Looking back across the years, I think maybe that’s when I learned most of the things I really knew well—how much it counts to be a decent human being—to feel the greatness of a no-questions-asked kind of brotherhood-how much it means to play the game fair and square. Those were the lessons we learned as we fought our way through our safaris into the cement and steel jungles of deepest New Jersey. Names From My Autograph Book: The guy who ran a nodule in his throat into a million in the bank served as my chief and only source of inspiration to become a professional singer. He made it sound so easy. I guess maybe that’s the reason everybody first learned to love him. I don’t think there’s a male in the nation who doesn’t fancy that he, personally, does a pretty fair imitation of Bing’s singing. When I first came to Hollywood and they were giving me the "boy wonder" treatment, this boy wondered whether he’d be able to get out a clever “Hello” the first time he was introduced to Mr. C. About two seconds after we were introduced he had me feeling like one of his family-a fact I hope he’ll remember when he makes out his will. Bing has a great sense of humor. Professionally, this asset is supported by top-notch set of writers—but I feel sorry for those gentlemen when the show is over and they have to suffer thru the great pain of listening to Bing ad-lib lines they wish they had written. Crosby is a good sport and a great sportsman. We’re both pretty busy fellows so we don’t see each other as much as we’d like to—but when we do get to spend a few moments together, I always come away feeling that I’ve been in exception- ally good luck having had a good laugh with a good guy. Happy report cards, gang! See you next month! Yours, 
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