July 13, 1978

Dear Mr Plant,

Now I owe 2 letters! The article from Melbourne was good to see; our local papers wouldn’t give space to chickens or bantams! There are few breeders of fancy ones around. At our Country Fair one sees hardly any, but plenty of the commercial breeds, shown by young people. California has never been for anything except the money-makers. I subscribe to Poultry Press which comes from East Coast, and it caters to nothing, but the fanciers, and seems to have plenty of ads, show reports, pictures of winners, so these do exist in the US but not in California! The last two winters there has been a Poultry Show in South San Francisco, and it has had good exhibits and good attendance, perhaps because it is a novelty. But most of the birds have been shipped in from goodly distances, and the people who promoted the show worked very hard.

Have you had any luck with the Japanese translation? I still think someone at the Embassy would do it for you, for not too much money, as a good will gesture. Or you could write your Australian Embassy in Japan. They would find you someone. You see, I’m a great one for writing on wild chances, and sometimes it has brought highly gratifying results. I am interested to note that you use the word states for the division of your country, not provinces or counties. The English people never seem to understand ones states, that these have different laws, different taxes, different customs, different ways of talking and of foods. They can’t picture their counties having different divorce laws for instance; why women flocked to Reno because the State of Nevada only required 6 weeks residence, just over an imaginary line from California, which requires a year. And that some states do not recognize a Nevada divorce! They think this very confusing, but it isn’t really. Do your states vary like this? We call it States’ Rights, and it has led to trouble in the past.

You spoke of my nice summer weather. It hasn’t been, so my corn and tomatoes aren’t ripe yet. If you have a map of California, you will see that it is a great central valley with mountains near the coast, and also to the east, what happens is that the valley gets very hot in summer, beat rises, so the cooler air rushes into the vacuum, giving us who live nearer the ocean a steady wind all summer.

If you’d like a good map of California, let me send you one. We can get them easily at gas (petrol) stations. Does Australia have to buy oil from Arabs? This gives us a very unfavorable trade balance. I heard a new story recently, how Brazil is manufacturing alcohol and already mixing it with gasoline, and going to keep at it until they will run all cars on alcohol, and be free of the oil-barons. We should be doing the same, but our President just keeps urging us to conserve, but we aren’t there is a national 55 miles an hour limit law, but few observe it, and few are penalized for not. This is all very far from bantams! I wish I could help you more on your quest, but I can’t think of any further leads, are you in touch with American Cochin Bantam Club? One is called US Cochin Bantam Club, in Waco, Texas, and the other which seems to be more active is World Cochin Family, in Perrysburg, Ohio, (both large and bantam).

Hope your winter not too bad.

Cordially,