The Leg & I

The breezy, 37-year-old, best-selling author of Party Line, a story of smalltown small talk, has used crutches since she was eight, when she lost her right leg in a bicycle accident. To Louise Baker life on crutches is not funny, but it can be fun. She argues her case persuasively in a witty autobiography: Out on a Limb (Whittlesey House; $2).

Mrs. Baker's book is a gold mine of hints to the legless (of whom there are some 128,000 in the U.S.). Samples: 1) watch out for dogs--they are liable to get a paw caught in your crutch; 2) the most efficient and attractive crutch position is dead vertical; 3) a legless person can always make a sucker of a carnival weight guesser; 4) a good way to relieve the boredom of answering nosybodies who want to know how it happened is to tell whoppers (a favorite Baker whopper: her leg got frozen stiff in skiing and was chipped off with an ice pick).*

Louise, finding an artificial leg cumbersome (her leg was cut off above the knee), grew up mostly on crutches, which became "almost anatomical." She permits herself "one immodest, extravagant vanity . . . the conviction that no one in the world can handle a pair of crutches better than I." On crutches, she learned to play tennis well enough to beat some of her boy friends and compete in junior tournaments. She also danced (on one crutch), skated, skied, hiked. At Pomona College, she became a skilled horsewoman, captained her class swimming team.

Mrs. Baker's handicap has not prevented her from marrying twice or making good as a newspaper reporter, pressagent (for Chicago's Century of Progress), teacher, editor. She observes cheerfully that, besides being an asset in making friends, one-leggedness has many minor compensations: e.g., a pair of nylons lasts twice as long.

Among the handicapped, there is a bond of ready friendship; they "flaunt their fraternity badges," fraternize wherever they meet. Some members of the fraternity: Actor Herbert Marshall, Playwright Laurence Stallings, Singer Connee Boswell, Planemaker Major Alexander de Seversky, American Veterans Committee's Charles Bolte.

*Another stopper: Said a one-armed man, after a long catechism, ''I'll answer one more question and that's all." The question: "How did you lose your arm?" His answer: "It was bitten off."

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