Does explain why she had those teaching certifications, though, even if it was only as a substitute.

I think it was a combination gas station and barngrill

Gas station and bar....no funny ideas about no drinking and driving back then

If you search in Google Books for "RA Heinlein", you come across a recipe submission to Sunset Magazine by Mrs. R. A. Heinlein, of Hollywood CA. It's a snippet view, so you can't see the whole page or article, and Google Books metadata S*U*C*K*S (but is getting better), so it's difficult to figure out what issue it is so you can go to the library and get a dead tree version. It's probably from the spring of 1936 (there is reference to St. Patrick's Day).

The quote, as best I can reproduce it:


Note that this is right in the middle of the time that Robert says he and his wife were influencing local politics with a pot of tea and cookies on Sunday afternoon get-togethers. Apparently Leslyn was quite the hostess . . .

If you search for "Heinlein" in that volume, you get a little more of the story:

and the last half of a poem by "Leslyn M. Heinlein"

Search for "Leslyn", and you get a biographical note:

Arrgh! You and Robert have GOT to get together and get these things written up for the Journal.

I bet the watercress canape was a cream-cheese spread. What we now know as California cuisine was just getting started in the 1930's. (nowadays it would be more likely to be a variation of pesto) ISTR this is also about the time Erma Rombauer was putting together the first version of The Joy of Cooking (but she was very midwestern)

Yo, Bill. I just put this material (crediting you) into an extended footnote in the Biography. It's a good thing (words I never thought Id see coming out of my fingers...) that the copyedit is happening now.

thanks very much!

Wait a minute.

Mrs. R.A. Heinlein???

Don't understand the double-take. This was 1935 or 1936, remember: married woman are never referred to by their personal names in public. It would have been considered demeaning.

It wasn't until some time in the 1970's that married women were routinely referred to by personal names in newspapers (and then often by the solecism: Mrs. Leslyn Heinlein is just wrong.)

The history of "Mrs." is one of the most peculiar stories in English and sociology.

Oops... I was thrown by the fact that apparently the same magazine referred to her two different ways. But maybe "volume" here spans multiple issues.