I sat down and did some figuring. Not counting the time we both put into the project, it cost us $5 each to send those pledges to the President. Our backfire had failed, and we never heard a word from President Elsenhower.
The President then signed an executive order suspending all testing without requiring mutual inspection.
Robert had been working on The Man from Mars [Stranger in a Strange Land]. He set that aside and started a new book-Starship Troopers. Both books were directly affected by this try at political action-Starship Troopers most directly, and The Man from Mars somewhat less directly. The two were written in succession; they are quite different stones from what Robert might have written otherwise.
(Robert's version of this can be found on pages 386 to 396 of Expanded Universe.)
April 26, 1958: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I don't know when I'll get any more fiction written -- maybe never. This effort is taking up all of our time. On the other hand, we are spending money on it even faster than we spend money in traveling, so I may be flat broke soon and forced to go back to cash work.
But I refuse to worry about personal aspects of the future. I am convinced in my own mind that the United States is washed up and we will cease to exist inside of five to fifteen years -- unless we quickly and drastically pull up our socks, both at home and in foreign policy. This opinion has been growing in my mind for years: I was simply triggered into doing something about it by this pacifist-internationalist-cum-clandestine Communist drive to have us treat atomics and disarmament in exactly the fashion the Kremlin has tried to get us to do for the past twelve years.
I wish some of those starry-eyed internationalists would go take a look at the illiterate, unwashed uncivilized billions whose noses they want to count in a "world state"! And also explain to me how you get a world state of "peace with justice" while dictators, both Red and garden variety, control the "votes" of a billion and a half out of two and a half. Somebody ought to tell them that "politics is the art of the practical." Me, maybe.
Enough, too much-but it is much on my mind. The Patrick Henry League has been getting more response than I expected, much less than is enough to be effective. But we shall persevere.
MISCELLANEOUS
May 15, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Thanks for that full house of checks. Ginny took 'em all. You will be pleased to hear that I bought her another emerald ring, a quite expensive one, which will insure that I go back to work again before too long.
Ginny is about the same and is so beat down from hand-watering her [Colorado Springs house] garden that she doesn't really know whether she is sick or exhausted. After every bath the bucket brigade starts, Ginny bailing, me toting. I have placed four barrels around the garden and there every bit of wash water goes-hands, baths, dishes-and from these she waters with an old-fashioned watering can. In the meantime, I am digging a drainage ditch all around the house to carry all rainwater (if it ever rains!) from the driveway and the roof to my reservoir pond. I am lining it with concrete tile to keep silt out, so that it will not clog my pump. After that I am going to work out a (very expensive!) underground tank and immersion pump deal to use septic tank water for irrigation. This is no temporary emergency here; this county has doubled in population in ten years-and the area is semi-arid. (Remember mat range on which you hunted antelope.) Things will get worse, not better, and I intend to make us as nearly independent of the water company as possible. No other news. We don't do a damn thing but haul water.
July 5, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
...and it has slowed up my letter writing; I owe letters to everybody and am just barely managing to answer urgent business mail and send off checks for bills. Yesterday I celebrated the Fourth of July by bringing Ginny home from the hospital. Nothing to do with the mysterious ailment which has plagued her for so very long (which is as bad or worse than ever); this was an operation on her right wrist, orthopedic surgery to correct damage she did to it by endless toting of a heavy watering can when she was trying to save her garden. Yes, she saved the garden and, sure, I have now built a water works which makes us independent of the water company and permits her to water with a pump and a hose-but the damage was done during the month when every drop of water was applied by hand. It got so bad that she could not even sign her name with that hand, so they opened up her wrist and corrected it.
Since she is right-handed to the point that she can hardly hold a fork with her left hand, since her right hand is useless until it heals, and since I am a slow and inefficient housewife, not too much is getting done around here that does not simply have to be done at once-especially as I continue to try to get in as many hours of mechanical work as possible. The Heinlein Water Works is finished to the point where it operates, but I still have endless masonry and carpentry jobs to do before it will be utterly safe from flash floods and landscaped so that it does not look like an abandoned slum-clearance project.
September 3, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Peggy Blassingame
I won't send him [Lurton] flowers; his doctor has almost certainly forbidden roughage. I would like to mail him a blonde, but there is some silly regulation about livestock. I suppose the best thing for him to do is to get out of that ulcer-making business. (I would go crazy in it.) But when Count does retire, I, and almost certainly a lot of others, will perforce retire, too.
It might do him some good to come out here and fish for a month-there aren't enough fish in Colorado streams to bother anybody.
In the meantime, he should avoid newspapers, authors, publishers, and editors.
August 23, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
[Concerning the arrival of a letter addressed to ' 'Robert A. Heinlein, United States of America."]
The empty envelope herein is for your amusement...It was delivered with no delay at all, being postmarked the 9th and reaching me on the llth, via surface mail. It need not be returned.
POLITICS
June 15, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I am still getting no professional writing done and our household continues to be stirred up night and day by politics. I had intended to take no real part in this campaign other than donation of money, while Ginny devoted practically full time to it. But I find myself in the situation of the old retired fire horse downgraded to pulling a milk wagon-a school bell rings...and milk gets scattered all over the street! Last week I found myself, for the first time in a quarter of a century, presiding at a political rally-co-opted without warning at the last minute. I must admit that I rather enjoyed it. And I find myself pulled in on many other political chores and devoting perhaps half as much time to it as Ginny does.
EDITOR'S NOTE The preceding fall I had become much taken with politics-a group of us had started a "Gold for Gold-water " campaign. We set up a Colorado Springs headquarters in a donated storefront, and gathered together campaign literature, buttons, and all the trappings.
Six of us agreed to take one day a week at the headquarters, and there were all sorts of meetings and speeches to be given. Robert gave his blessing to my endeavors and I was allowed to spend as much money as I thought we could afford.
He accompanied me to political dinner parties and other doings, and presently he could no longer stand the political inactivity, so he joined me. His activities were a revelation to me. Instead of simply charging the price for a book, he set up a goldfish bowl, and asked for contributions, getting more out of each customer. He set up a dinner party, at $50 a head, and sold it out. Some bought tickets, and returned those to him to sell again, and he sold them, sometimes two or three times each, garnering a lot of "Gold" for the campaign.