SEE THE SCRIPT (PART 1) (PART 2)
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While this is your typical "letter from Bess" fare, this one is different because this is the first time we get to hear Russell try to sit through an Aunt Bess letter and Uncle Fletcher hasn't been around in the previous letter readings either (at least not in the surviving epsiodes).Vic, on the other hand, is a trained veteran and can listen to the boring fare and knows where to fake a chuckle, otherwise, he'd get yelled at by Sade.
Trivia:
+ Uncle Fletcher speaks of Ray Feltcher, who invented the electric toothpick, which was a complete failure. He says people were apprehensive to use it because when you turned it on, it went "jab-jab-jab-jab." Feltcher passed away on February 14, 1902 before he could patent the device. Feltcher used to cut ice with Uncle Fletcher.
+ Bess says in the letter that Euncie is going around barefooted despite the fact that she's almost an adult.
+ In Carberry news, Bess says Fern Doonbelter got married (at last.) She married an older man who's been married previously.
+ Walter has promised Euncie that if she practices the piano for an hour everyday during the summer that he will give her five silver dollars when school starts back. She is trying to memorize the piano piece, The Great Colorado Train Robbery Scottish so that she can play it without the sheet music. Bess says the song is, "Full of sharps and flats and big notes and trash." [She began learning this piece in March of 1944].
+ Surprise! Euncie has a new piano teacher, Mis' Bahcol.
+ This episode does something only one of the surviving previous episodes do - it fades out.
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I am almost entirely sure this is the first time that Fletcher sits in on a reading. There is something just absolutely terrific about the slow boil of Bernadine Flynn's performance when it comes to Bess' letters -- you see the steel in her and her sharpness. She knows when the fellows are making fun of Bess, she may not know exactly why, but she won't brook it. By the end they are utterly cowed. It's brilliant. See my favorite, which is when Rush and Vic have to write letters to Walter.
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