The Camas Hot Springs Exchange

An Old St. Christopher Medal
And a Bashed-in Pullman Car

By BILLY ROSE

Ordinarily, knowing what editors expect of me, I don't devote much space in this column to stories of faith, devotion and other such unhep subjects. However, I bumped into a yarn the other night that did nice things to my spine, and here 'tis, even though it's as corny as a chorus of "Hearts and Flowers."

Some years ago, a dancer named Jean Armstrong (note to Ed.-that's her square monicker and she's given me permission to use it) came down with a ruptured appendix, and by the time they got her to the hospital, peritonitis had set in and the doctors didn't give her much chance.

The following day, the nurse handed her a string of rosary beads. "A little girl tried to get in to see you this morning," she said. "Her name was Sylvia, and she said her mother was a friend of yours. When I told her you couldn't be disturbed, she asked me to give you this. It has a St. Christopher medal on it, and the kid thought it might bring you luck."

The dancer wasn't a Catholic, but she was touched by the present anyhow. And six weeks later, thanks to faith or the new sulfa drugs, she was out of the hospital.

FROM THEN ON, she kept the rosary in her make-up box, but a couple of years later, after a succession of cheap variety houses and even cheaper hotels, the beads no longer seemed very important. And one day, when one of the girls in her vaudeville unit asked about the St. Christopher medal, Jean said, "It's nothing at all. Just a piece of old junk. I don't know why I keep on carrying it."

That Sunday, when the troupe checked into a Baltimore hotel, Jean put the make-up case on top of her valise and signed the register. But when she reached for her luggage the case was gone.

She notified the desk and, when that didn't produce results, reported the loss to the police. But when the unit pulled out of Baltimore on Saturday night, neither case nor beads had been found.

In Pittsburgh the next week, the show got bad notices and folded, and as if that weren't enough, the manager skipped with the salaries.

A few days later, down to her last three bucks, Jean considered herself plenty lucky when a local agent offered her a job in a Miami nightclub. She was given a ticket-car 16, berth No. 1-on the 7:22 out of Pittsburgh.

At 7 o'clock the dancer left the hotel, but a couple of blocks from the depot she noticed something on the sidewalk and picked it up. It was a string of rosary beads and attached to it, a medallion of St. Christopher.

JEAN DIDN'T KNOW then, and she doesn't know now, whether it was the same rosary. She did know, however, that it looked exactly like the one the little girl had sent her, except for one thing-the chain had been broken. As she continued onto the station, she got to thinking of the beads-how sick she had been when she first got them, and how her troupe had been stranded when she had referred to the medallion as a piece of old junk. And suddenly it seemed to her that the only decent thing to do was have the chain repaired.

Up the street there was a combination book shop-jewelry store and, forgetting the 7:22, she walked in. The jeweler worked as fast as he could, but when he handed the rosary back to her the clock said 7:30, and the dancer knew she was out of a job again.

With less than a dollar in her purse, she went back to the hotel, and a few minutes later the phone rang. It was the stage manager of "The Student Prince" which, for the umpteenth time, was playing the Nixon theater. "Heard your troupe was stranded," he said. "One of our dancers is getting married tomorrow, and if you want to fill in for a few weeks—"

And now for as corny a finish as ever found its way into a so-called hep column. When Jean picked up a newspaper the next morning, she read that the 7:22 out of Pittsburgh had been side-swiped by a freight car. It wasn't much of a wreck-nobody had been hurt because the two berths which were bashed in happened to be empty. One of them, of course, was berth No. 1, car 16.