The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-10-12

the hot spot by inviting an urnn.
 HERE IS BOB ALLEN, red- headed, thick-set, muscular, never wears a vest, clothes some what untidy, feels best when he needs a shave, but shoes shining spotlessly. Looks and acts like 8 Cupid with grouch.
 AND HERE IS DREW PEAR SON, long, lean, 1.-the, wears an English guardSman'S mouStache, sports beautifully tailored clothes, but his shoes are disgrace.
 This tandem has become THE HENRY MENCKEN AND GEORGE NATHAN OF MOD- ERIN JOURNALISM. It is 8 for midable combination. It doubles the punch while halving the re- sponsibility, and the Pearson Allen team has developed it to a highly successful degree.
 Exact OppOsites
 Success is due to their own unique personalities. They are exact opposites, yet they work to- gether perfectly. For each sup plies exactly what the other lacks.
 Pearson has a soft silky voice full of dialectic snares for recall citrsnt interviewers. Allen roars his questions in a truculent mix ture of sarcasm, gruntS and pro- fame asides. Drew drives a Lir1- coin, Bob rides in street cars. Bob works in a musty basement under an electric light, Drew pounds his typewriter in garret, hotter in the summer than the tropics. And to give an illusion of cool ness-it is only an illusion-he keeps a sprinkler wetting down the tin roof.
 Bob works in an old army shirt, worn khaki pants, a pair of moccasins. Drew wears 8 brilliant pair of pajamas, touched of by moth-eaten but gaudy sash, picked up in Albania.
 There are just two things which this remarkable pair seem to have in common. One is d passion for digging out and writing the truth. The other is for gardening. This is their chief recreation.
 They Weed and Dig
 Both are terrific workers, sel- dom finish before one or two in the morning. But despite that they are up before an eight o'clock breakfast on summer mornings to weed and dig.
 Bob Aliens favorites are gladi- oli and gardenias. All last summer he scrubbed the stalks of his gardenia plants with soap and water to banish insects, with the tenderness of 8 mother bathing her babe. Once he told @ cabinet member, with pride in his voice, that he had three blossoms on his peach tree. The only time Bob ever really rowed with his wife was when he trimmed his poplar trees so that nothing was left but tuft like the end of a poodle dogs tail.
 Pearson goes in ior mint beds, climbing roses and zinniaS, though the latter, he says, make him nervous.
 Allen is married to Ruth Finney, one of the most brilliant news paperwomen in Washington. n.-~.. o,ann S,,oe ,,a a ,.,.;ad r., kt,a Countess Gizycka, and one of his closest friendships remains that with his ex-mother-in-law, Mrs. Cissie Patterson.
 Bob Allen seldom drinks, but chews the most foul-tasting gum every known to man. He takes only prune juice for breakfast, eats no lunch, continues the fast until ten D. m., when he eats his one and only meal. Then he gorges.
 Drew eats regularly aud boun- tifully, but manages to stay thin. When writing books, which he does about once year, he drinks strong South American brew, verba mate, around midnight to keep awake two hours longer. When Bob is book-writing, his wife sometimes finds him in the morning asleep on his study floor, fully clothed, the light still burn- ing.
 Background
 Pearson has lived about five years abroad, worked as a sailor on the Pacific, did newspaper work in the Far East, 1ectured in Australia, directed postwar relief work in the Balkans, where a town is named Pearsonavatz in his honor.
 He still pounds out his news
 stories on a little typewriter
 that he has carried around the
 world twice, across the GObi Desert, up to Tibet, and through Siberia. He has written a good
 part of four books on it, and nT>F> TEyC DT>rnDn