As a past newsletter publisher myself, and having experienced the timeless problem of finding writers for columns and articles, it made me smile to read how, Revello Petee, publisher of Double Talk, seemed to struggle with the same issue. Petee wrote:
"We take it that you readers do not want a contest for the best article of the year. You don't seem to be trying very hard for the figure which we are going to give away in Nov. Unless you show more interest the contest will be discontinued after Nov."
About his figures I spotted this comment by Petee: "Now offering a complete line of hand carved wood head figures. Our figures are carved from California Sugar Pine, which when kiln dried positively will not check or crack."
And it seems that there was another problem in 1938 that never changed over the decades that followed: Petee wrote: "There are two or three vents that send in each month for a sample copy of 'Double Talk'. These fellows always change their name each month but use the same address. They are not subscribers and we have not been able to sign them up. Several reports have come in stating that these fellow are writing to subscribers of D.T. asking to borrow their copies. The subscription cost is well within the reach of all, so tell them to go to grass. These fellows are chiselers and a disgrace to the profession of ventriloquism. You paid your dollar and they can do the same."
(And I do believe the subscription rate for the newsletter in 1938 was only one dollar per year...today just the postage cost to mail out this one single issue will be double that!)
I think that Petee, like Marshall, and those before and after them, glued smaller wood blocks rather than worked a single cambium centered block.
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