August 1938

ACROSS THE Editor's DESK

The Picture on the Cover is of the home of Dr. Dennis Kelly, child specialist frequently consulted by Better Homes & Gardens. It's a study in harmonizing grays, blues, and greens against a background of soft white shingled walls, illustrating what color can do for the exterior of a house. Notice that the predominating color note is in the variegated natural-slate shingles of the roof and is effectively recalled in the shutters. In the graceful metal canopy over the doorway, which is supported on delicate latticed supports, the contrasting color is again carried toward the ground.

THE Diary OF A PLAIN DIRT GARDENER

Aug. 1 When this Sunday morning dawned, Maggie, the boys, and I were located in a cottage at the Bay Shore Motel ("motel" is the term used for de luxe tourist cabins out here) in the city of Santa Monica, which is in California and at the ocean end of those wide boulevards which lead out westward from Los Angeles to the Pacific. I'm here on business and the family on vacation.

HOW TO BUILD OR REMODEL WITHOUT A Divorce

A CORPORATION executive confessed recently as he left town on a fishing trip to get away from it all, "Since my wife and I started building our house, we've had every sort of rumpus in the family except a divorce-- and we're looking forward to that now!"

A Way With Bouquets

WHEN I was a girl very few really nice people openly used lipstick and rouge. The style in bouquets was different then, too, with huge combinations of roses, daisies, and iris-- anything at all-- jumbled together in some nondescript container.

CUT THE Apron Strings

TWO women-- a Stout One and a Thin One-- sat next to me in the subway. They had plenty to talk about. The Stout One, it appeared, had gone to the pier to see Marjorie off to South Africa, where she was going to marry Jim Harris. Jim had taken a job down there with a mining company and was making good.

I don't want your husband!

THE bane of the non-predatory spinster's spinsterhood is the woman (and her name is legion) who thinks every unmarried woman is out to "get" her husband. I should know!

Gardener's Cure-all

CAN you eat supper or kiss your wife on your porch without the whole neighborhood taking it in?

Invisible Values

FURNITURE-BUYING has a thrill all its own. A chair that's to outlast scores of new dresses is just that many times more exciting to buy-- more demanding of thoughtful shopping.

CINEMA'S Culinary Cut-Up

AFTER reading much about the swift Hollywood pace, amorous escapades of fame-drunk New-riches, and the awesome 4-butler-7-maid homes of motion-picture stars, it was refreshing to drop in at Hugh Herbert's little ranchhouse in the wilds of North Hollywood, where pigs are pigs, and the modest man of the house can talk intelligently about really significant things like spaghetti, stews, piecrust, the cost of cabbage, how to make a pool, and how a person could make a living if our so-called civilization should blow up with a pale green bang.

THE SCOTCH HAVE A PLAID FOR IT

LAST week my attic was just a blank-- all floor and eaves. Today it's singing a gay plaid theme song and offering me the charming comfort of a combination sleeping and sewing room!

Lady, Be Cool!

IT''S a smart refrigerator that can brave the demands of today's snack-snitchers, thirsty beveragites, and hustling meal-makers and come up smiling. It's an even smarter home manager who turns this same sleek and silent servant into a time-, pep-, and money-saver for herself.

One for Your Money

THIS house was designed for George, who has a wife and a youngster and who's someday going to have another youngster or two. George is a nice young guy. He's a lot like yourself, maybe. He wants the right sort of home to bring his family up in, a well-built, good-looking home in the right part of town. It must have three bedrooms.

Farewell TO FURNACE FIXING

CONSIDER the strange case of John Doakes. He's never been up before an insanity commission. Nobody has ever called him queer, even. But you judge for yourself.

THE MAN NEXT

The folks next door invited their niece to spend the summer, sorta expecting she might help out around the house, and now they're serving her breakfast in bed.

News ABOUT Infantile Paralysis

INFANTILE paralysis-- the very name sends a yearly shudder of fear thru the nation. What is it? How is it contracted? What can be done to halt its cruel assault on the health and life of our children? As its season comes fatefully closer-- August and September are its peak months, tho it may begin in early summer-- members of the staff of the University of Michigan Medical School are exerting every effort to find a means for combating this untamed disease foe of childhood.

Back Talk!

Editor: How about an article on Canadian homes and gardens? We can equal or surpass anything I have yet seen in your magazine.-- R. O. Bedford, Toronto, Canada.

WHIMS & HOBBIES

Bob Burns, Van Buren, Arkansas' gift to national good humor, built a cabin retreat near his home for those times when he feels like getting away from it all. The enormous fireplace in the cabin cost more than all the rest of the structure.

This Is Sanctuary

ALONG THE Garden Path

WITH a poet's intuitive perception, Frances Frost has touched upon the deep and simple gratification to be derived from lawn mowing: