Jeanette Hardage was very busy with child rearing in her young adult years, as you can see from this 1965 photo of her with four of her five daughters. She nonetheless found a few spare moments to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Long Beach (California) State College in 1962. She began to submit her work to various publications in the late 1950s, with an early emphasis on very short pieces and on the gentle, family-friendly type of humor popularized by Reader’s Digest.
She made her first submission to a magazine in November 1958, sending the story below to Reader’s Digest. After multiple publisher rejections and two cross-country household moves (due to her husband’s U.S. Navy assignments), it was finally accepted by The Christian Science Monitor in 1965. It brought what was quite literally her first dollar from her writing–apparently $1 was the going rate for submissions to that publication. (Her other work in the 1960s fetched prices from $0.25 to $25.) I hope this anecdote will accomplish what Jeanette was after: bringing a smile to your face!
Rabbitry
A group of college students were expected for a visit at a California ranch. They were long overdue when the manager received a phone call. The young lady on the line explained that they were lost. The manager’s careful directions included following a sharp turn in the road around a rabbitry.
After some time the phone rang again, and the same young lady explained that they were still lost. Very apologetically she said, “You see, I’m new in California and I don’t know what a rabbit tree looks like.”
First sold to The Christian Science Monitor, June 1965
Mom also sent articles to Readers Digest and to Hallmark. One of her cards was used.