Signs of the Times

By W.F. Cramb First Published October 27, 1938 …We have looked and looked everywhere with our keen (formerly) reporter's eyes and have failed to discover the prevailing price of prairie hay. One farmer said $2 a ton and another 25 cents. Anyway, it's so cheap, common folks can keep warm this winter, like the old settlers, with one of those old-fashioned hay-burner stoves.…We have just discovered that, as an employer, if we give an employee a Christmas present, both of us have to pay a tax on it. Speaking broadly but plainly in the American language, what a hell of a social uplift where Christmas presents are taxed!…Nebraska has been having another drought and a blizzard is due now almost any day. But even that is better than the tidal waves they have in Florida and New England.…About the only thing we know of that can come down in price faster than wheat is these new-fangled electric razors. They started, you may recall, at $15 each and now they give them away with baking powder.…Flower lovers and young folks think this is about time of year to plant their two-lips.…You can buy a good, clean, warm pair of cloth gloves for ten cents these days. But even at that it takes two-thirds of a bushel of oats to pay for them.…The way things have been going over in Europe lately it looks like the time was fast approaching when we would no longer have any Christmas and we are sure there is no longer any excuse for celebrating Armistice Day.…One of the grotesque things in college is the professor of economics, who lectures on how to recover from the depression but who would have to go on relief if his salary were taken away from him.…The man who works hard all week don't need the exercise of going hunting on Sunday and the man who loafs all week is too soft to get any fun out of it. But both go when the season is on.…I’ve worns an earphone (hearing aid) for 20 years so it's nothing new to him, like it is to others listening over the radio and cutting off the conversation with a switch when it gets tiresome.…Looking back over the week's work we don't know what we have done but whatever it was, it's against the law. Or soon will be.…This new motor fuel, Agrol, seems to be gasoline mixed with farm products, so maybe, after all we can feed our 15 cent oats to the car.…Every sudden cold spell in the fall finds someone unprepared. Even a lot of house flies are on the wrong side of the screen.…If all the nations of the world would spend for peace what they do for war, how the world would bloom. Having written which the editor looked all the outside doors, unchained the dog and went to bed.

Donald Eugene Willcoxon II

That's Easy for You to Say

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