The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-22

from
Indiana
ERNIE PYLE

EDITORS N0TE-This rowing reporter
for The Times goes where he pleases.
when he plesses. In search Of odd stories
about this and that.
TAxCO, Mexico. April 22.-Nata-
l. lie Scott grew up to be afraid
of everything. Her mother was
afraid, so fear grew in Natalie,
too. She wasn't afraid of anything
specific: it was more a fear of
everything in general. A sort Of
phobia. \N
She got over it all right. She got
over it plenty. I'd hate to see any,
thing she's afraid of now, for it
would certainly be an awful thing.
Natalie SCOTS childhood was
spent at Pas Christian, on the Mis-
sissippi coast, the garden spot of
the New Orleans territory. I Judge
that she was a daughter of consid-
cradle means. She has a culture
that comes usually only from an
early start along paths of velvet.
She learned English and French
simultaneously, as New Orleans
daughters do. She started riding a
horse when she was 5. But she was
afraid. She was also afraid to make
her debut.
I FORGOT just how Natalie Scott
4 got into the war. 1t had some
thing to do with her ability to speak
French. She served through the
whole thing in French hospitals.
When she went in, she would faint
at the sight of blood.
When she came out she had the
Croix de Guerre, and no fear for
anything that walks, flies, crawls or
sinks through the night.
NATALIE SCOTT probably knows
l Y Mexico better than any of the
$4,000 Americans who live in Mexico.
In two years she has ridden on
horseback, mostly alone, over a good
many thousand miles of Mexico.
She has ridden from Texas to
Taxco-took six weeks.
She has ridden all over primitive
Oaxaca in the south-two months.
She has ridden west to the coast,
and down to Acapulco - three
months.
She travels light. She wears rid
ing pants and boots, but takes one
dress to put on in the evening if
she's in a village. Mexican women
don't like women who dress as men.
She carries serape (heavy
blankeD to wrap around her when
she has to sleep on the ground.
She carries canteen of water,
and one change of underclothes,
and a small toilet kit, and that is
all. It's all on her saddle.
CHE'S had some weird times. Once,
~ down South, she was met out
side village and taken before the
town council-aSsembled barefooted
on a dirt-floor hut. One by one the
councilmen rose and made speeches
in the Mixtec Indian dialect. She
couldn't underStand-but she sus-
pected.
Finally the town Secretary" who
always knows Spanish, got up and
said they had got along all right
without any outsiders, and what was
she doing there, but it didn't matter
anyhow for she wasn't welcome, and
to GET OUT.
She had to think fast. She
thought of crops, the key to any
Indians heart. 1t worked. She said:
'See, you don't know what they
raise in Michoacan, and they don't
know what you raise here. That's
what 1 came up for, to see your
crops"
The first thing she knew they
were producing special dishes of
food for her. She stayed and talked
all day and all night. They begged
her to stay longer, but she had to go.
HER house stands behind maze
l. L of foliage, way UP on the
mountain. You can sit on her cool
stone veranda and look down on
Taxco. The rooms are full of weird
Indian fiesta masks, and French
books, and native art, and old, old
furniture on bare stone floor.
Natalie Scott came to Mexico six
years ago, because her yearly trip
to Europe was too much for a de-
preston income. She came to Taxco,
and she stayed here because it was
the first place for years where she
could sleep at night.
She is a handsome woman, nei-
Their young nor middle aged. Her
bobbed hair is grazing. A New York
literary tea or Paris drawing room
would be land has BEEN graced
by her presence.
"Are you going to make book
of your experiences?" I asked.
I'D like to, but I'm too busy now"
She said.
BUSY doing what?'
She laughed. Busy walking up
and down these hills" she said