Humorous epistolary stories by Ring Lardner, told through letters Fred Gross writes to his friend Charley. Fred and his wife Grace debate leaving their cramped city flat to buy or rent a house in the suburbs for the sake of their children. Worth listening for its comic American vernacular and the recognizable family worries it captures.
BǡLjǵƒŧǡ CƒĵǡƯŧΏ. I bet when you here what I & Grace has made up our minds you & Mary will wisht you was doing the same thing or may be you will follow our exampel & do the same thing & I hope you will because its the only way to live when you got childern.
Charley we made up our minds to buy a place some wheres out in the subburbs & build a house not a grate big house of corse but a house where a man can move a round in with out bumping in to the walls all the wile and have enough ground so the childern wont half to be cooped up all the day like in a flat but can run around & get some exxersise.
The other day the Walters come to see us & stayed all p.m. & little Ed & the baby both of them hollered all the wile they was there & when the Walters had went I says to Grace its a bout time you lerned them babys to shut there mouth when we got Co. & says
I can’t do nothing with them because there cooped up in the flat all day & dont never get out & how can you expect them to be nothing but cross & mean all the wile. She says you are makeing good money now & I dont see why is it we cant find a place out in the country some wheres & live there & it wouldent take you no longer to get to work then it does now with this rotten L servus.
So I says well when our lease runs out in Oct. I will look a round in some of them subburbs & see can we rent a house reasonible or may be we can buy a little 1 on payments. Then Grace says lets buy a lot some wheres & build our own house & I says what do you think I am rockefellow & she says no but you dont half to be rockefellow to build a house now days because you can borry the money & pay it back a little to a time & just like paying rent only your getting more for your money. Then she says and besides I got $500 in the bank that you can take & how much you got in the bank your
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