Edna Ferber: Long Distance: Romance is often closer than we think

Written by Edna Ferber

Narrated by philip chenevert

Telephone lineman in the early 1900s were known for their very vocal appreciation of any and all female beauty as it walked below on the street. From their lofty perch they felt safe to whistle and shout their thanks to the lovely ladies who passed anywhere within their visual range. The women thus admired often expressed distain and dislike of this outward expression by the men but they usually walked away with their complexions a bit rosier than before. This, as we now know of course, was very inappropriate and something to be sternly discouraged but at the time all parties involved somehow to managed survive and even thrive. This story is about such an encounter. But the lady involved did not just blush and walk away, she stopped and invited the man on the pole to come down and get his face slapped for his impudence. She was of Irish descent and did not put up with uppity and distasteful men.

Well, the man did come down and did indeed get a resounding slap from her. What happened after this I will let the listener discover in this delightful tale of men and women and their mysterious doings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Chenevert
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798868633324

Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was an American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Jewish parents, Ferber was raised in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Economic hardship and antisemitism made their family a tight knit one as they moved constantly throughout Edna’s youth. At 17, she gave up her dream of studying to be an actor to support her family, finding work at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal as a reporter. In 1911, while recovering from anemia, Ferber published her debut novel, Dawn O’Hara: The Girl Who Laughed, earning a reputation as a rising star in American literature. In 1925, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big, which follows a young woman from a suburb of Chicago who takes a job as a teacher in a rural town. She followed up her critically acclaimed bestseller with the novel Show Boat (1926), which was adapted into a popular musical by Oscar Hammerstein and P. G. Wodehouse the year after its release. Several of her books became successful film and theater productions—So Big served as source material for a 1932 movie starring Barbara Stanwick, George Brent, and Bette Davis, which was remade in 1953 with Jane Wyman in the lead role. Ferber spent most of her life in New York City, where she became a member of the influential Algonquin Round Table group. In the leadup to the Second World War, Ferber supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was a fierce critic of Hitler and antisemitism around the world.