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House take three spaces.” I said, “Your Eminence, we own thirty-five per cent of that courtyard. How do you figure that out?" He said, rather testily, “We can't break a space up in half.” I said, “Why not? We'll put in two Volkswagens.” He said, “Oh, come on. We'll take seven and you take three.” I said, “No. That's not fair. I tell you what I'll do with you, Your Eminence. I'll toss you whether we get three spaces or four spaces.” So he looked at me for a long minute and he said, “Will you give me your word of honor you won't print this story?" I said that I would. So we tossed a coin and I won. Of course I said, “This will show you whose side whose God is on.” In the end, however, mine was a pyrrhic victory because the priests get up much earlier than our editors and they never observed the six and four division. By the time that any of us arrived in the morning, they've usually usurped all ten places! But we do have the chain up and we do keep most of the strangers out!

One other thing that might come in now...you started on your books on war humor and on Try and Stop Me and you also started “The Tradewinds” column in 1942.

Yes. “The Weekly Tradewinds” column was a direct result of Try and Stop Me. One day, just about the time that my book came out, Norman Cousins and Henry Canby of the Saturday Review came to me on their round of all the