How to Get Something Done in Government, 1949

I am presently doing research at the Library of Congress. I just ran across this oddity. Ula Glen of Crestone, Colorado was a ranch wife. Somehow (this is not quite clear to me), she knew Leo Goodman, who was a housing and later nuclear expert for the CIO, who I am researching. The Rural Electrification Administration was supposed to hook her home up to the electrical lines. But they hadn’t. So she wrote this poem and sent it to Goodman:

O country life, o country life, how good you are for me…
The early rising, mornings, with the stars still to see.
The daily strolling down the lane, across the road and farther,
Packing, of all things, a couple of pails of water.
O country life!

Our lovely, useless bathroom–a symphony in rose,
The boiler on the cookhouse filled with water ‘stead of clothes.
The cans arrayed with loving care to hold the precious water
Stand South and kind of East of a gas refrigerator.
Icecubes, but no water!

The lamps they set around the room as pretty as a portrait.
But when will they dispel the gloom in this here little Orchard?
The wire from road to housetop–so near and yet so far–
Where or where are the men who doing the ironing are?
Whar?

The REA has gone away from weather below zero.
By kerosene we vent our spleen on them that have such fear-o
Come back, come back, REA, come back from Oklahoma.
It takes electricity to make a house into a homa.

O, REA!

Goodman then contacted a friend of his in the REA who quickly got the Glen’s home on the line.

I am doing research on a new book project for the next three weeks and it’s kind of lonely and boring sometimes. So I may continue updating you with tales from the archives from time to time.