“GIMME A MATCH |
By FRED M. KIEFER —
This is a story of a broomstick.
The Doctor had met and been entertained by a famous big-game
hunter who, in displaying his outdoor equipment, came across a home-
made gun rest. : : !
When first I saw the thing it was while packing our duffle at my
companion’s home preparatory to expressing our stuff to Alberta. Pri-
marily it appeared to be nothing more than a handle from any ordinary
broom but upon closer inspection I saw that it was, albeit, a true broom-
stick, evenly split up the center and loosely bolted about eight inches
from the top.
ally asked.
~ hibited, in pantomime, how a gun
- opened up.
| “T ain’t goin’ 3,000 miles, spend
It does no earthly good to open an
train riding and three additional
ing.
carefully stood the “crutch” against
" hunting.”
7,500 feet and so placed ourselves
sin spread out below us, had to take
one of three courses when the In-
“What's this business?” I natur-
“That's my sighting rest,” the
Doctor explained, and proudly ex-
should be lain across the vertex of
the upper V when the thing was
$1000 an’ have a grizzly step up in
front of me when I'm all out of
wind an’ shakin’ and miss him. Yo’
damn right I aint’! I open this, set
’er on the ground, put my rifle
through here and pop that bar!”
He demonstrated accordingly.
As I remember I made no reply.
argument of any kind with the Doc-
tor. What he lacks in factual evi-
dence he more than overcomes with
vocal ponderosity. In easy lan-
guage, he shouts you down.
So I let it go and forgot about it
entirely until, after several days of
days in the saddle, we found our-
selves sufficiently deep into the
mountains to do some heavy hunt-
—O0—
NEEDLESS TO SAY, no matter
how heavily burdened by necessi-
ties, the broomstick ever accom-
panied the Doctor. Rifle slung over
shoulder, binoculars, cartridge case
and moving picture camera dang-
ling at belt he moved off in the
morning. Returning by starlight in
heavy, sweat-soaked woolens he
the tent wall before removing his
high and weighty boots.
' Occasionally I wondered would he
ever become discouraged? The
puzzle held the added incentive that
the Doctor had already killed a
mule deer, a bull caribou and a
bull moose and, to the best of my
knowledge, without resorting to the
use of the broomstick.
It must be, I finally muttered to
myself, “specifically for grizzly bear
Came the day of the goat con-
fusion. A
We had, with our guides, climb-
ed to an estimated elevation of
that the mountaineers, visible on
the steep northern slope of the ba-
dians moved them. One, low and
to our facing left, led to the valley
we had crossed that morning and
the chances of the animals going
that way were highly improbable.
Two, also to our left, was a passage
about 60 feet wide and not over 70
yards from our perch though some-
what below us. There was a deep,
wide gorge to our right, where the
best range afforded would exceed
200 yards.
——
AFTER THE GUIDES had moved
to the rear of the goats by travel-
ling unseen behind the northern
rim and had startled them by roll-
ing rocks, the white climbers split
up into several groups and one of
these, consisting of eight animals,
approached quickly, surely and un-
swervingly to the pass on our im-
ediate left, thereby offering the
easiest shooting available.
The Doctor fired, killing the large
Billy leading the group, while the
second in line fell to my shot.
The broomstick somewhere about
‘#the Doctor’s person, or not far out
of reach, was definitely not brought
into action in this instance. Now
entered confusion.
One guide standing on the emi-
nence behind us shouted, “Shut!
Shut agin’, Doctor!”
As the hunter raised his gun to
sight one of the remaining and un-
decided goats the voice of the oth-
er Indian, somewhere out of view
below the ledge, rang out, ‘Bigger
one down here—bigger one down|.
~ I~
THE LOW DOWN FROM
HICKORY GROVE
Susie and I are getting
ready to build a house.
Two people in a big house
rattle around like in a
barn, so we decided om
one that is kinda small—
along simple lines. But
our idea of simple archi-
tecture got us into diffi-
culty. You can’t find a
simple design—you only
find them chrome plated
and wory trimmed.
But we wanted some-
thing with less glare—so
we had to skirmish. And
also we had to scare up
more coin. And that 1s
what I want to tell you
about.
Down on the rolling Po-
tomac they been saying
that a banker is mot such
a hot citizen, but I drop-
ped in at our bank any-
way. And I sidled ower
and I says to the feller
there, I am building a
house and meed 12 hun-
dred dollars. And Mr.
Paxton—he is the banker
—he says, Come right in,
and couldn't you use, he
says 24 hundred versus 12
hundred? It almost floor-
ed me. And also, he says,
do you know anybody
else, wanting money?
This talk about bankers
being hard citizens is ba-
loney—and mot so. Any-
way it is not so with Joe
Paxton, here at our bank.
Yours with the low down,
JO SERRA.
a
THE SAFETY
VALVE
This column is open to
everyone. Letters should be
plainly written and signed.
One Way To Save
Editor: :
Everybody is anxious to save tax-
es, yet nobody does anything about
it. I notice a lot of school boards in
this area are now paying their
treasurers 2% of all expenditures
for keeping their check book bal-
ances in order. Now there is a
tough job for you. For years Dallas
National Bank has done this work
for nothing. Now school directors
have got the brilliant idea that it’s
worth $700 to do a job the bank
did for nothing. They call it
“spreading the gravy around”. This
year John Doe has the job; next
year Richard Doe will have it and
so on until each one of the directors
will have had a chance to lick his
chops on some of the gravy Direc-
tors know that theirs are non-pay-
ing jobs. If the jobs take too much
of their time—let them quit.
Don’t misunderstand me. This
procedure is legal. My point is that
here is a way to save money for
the schools if the directors really
want to save for the schools and
not for themselves.
Taxpayer
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By EDITH BLEZ —
(Occasionally, Mrs. Blez, no grandmother, writes letters to
her non-existent grandchildren, that they may, years from now, :
know what really was happening in 1940.)
August 17, 1940.
My Dear Grandchildren:
The war is still very much in evidence and it is this week that Hitler
promised to take over England, but so far England has been holding her
own against terrific air raids. For days German planes have been bomb-
ing the British Isles and to date there has been no real attempt really to
invade the shores of Hitler's worst enemy. All we know is what we read
in our newspapers and we have become quite skeptical about war dis-
[THE SENTIMENTAL SIDE|
HOUGHTS
patches.
reached London!
I really do not take much stock
in the newspapers or the voices we
! hear so constantly over the radio.
All the news is highly censored and
the more I listen the more I am
convinced that we know nothing
whatsoever about the real condi-
tions abroad. We do know that
Hitler is aiming to destroy the Eng-
lish Empire. He has taken over
most of the small countries sur-
rounding Germany -and France is
now completely Nazi, which is still
difficult to believe. Paris was not
bombed because it was declared an
open city and the Germans were
permitted to march in and take it
over. The general opinion here is
that France was sold out to Ger-
many by her own people but the
truth will not be known in my time
I feel sure. Perhaps you will be able
to see the entire situation more
clearly than those of us who are so
close to it.
Right now in this country we are
{in the midst of a great political
campaign. Roosevelt has declared
| himself a candidate for a third term
| and Wendell Willkie is the .Repub-
lican nominee. Yesterday, Willkie
by
javie aiche
It was a nice flight out to El-
wood, Indiana, in Tommy Richard-
son’s Taylor Cub plane, and your
correspondent is duly grateful to
Cy Slapnicka of the Cleveland In-
dians for. having arranged standing
room forninst the platform. If our
knees had buckled under the weight
of the speeches we should have sat
down plump on the base drum of
the Elwood High School Boys’ Band.
The parachute drop was something
new and exciting, but next time we
go to an acceptance ceremony we
shall go the night before and take
along a sleeping-bag. We are that
much assured that Uncle Sam isn’t
going to do as he should do. He
isn’t going to take the old men
first, so we are in no need of para-
chute practice. And the speeches
were, indeed, soporific.
This far away from last Saturday
it is difficult to remember that the
objective of the flight was conver-
sion to the wisdom of Willkie. That
is because we were subjected in-
stead to a conviction that George
Gwilliam isn’t the only man in pub-
lic life who murders the King’s
English. There really was no need
that Senator Jim Davis was import-
ed from Pennsylvania to commit
that kind of butchery in his pud-
dler’s way. Joe Martin did a fine
job of it, and so did the presidential
candidate. For a time it seemed
that we understood how he came
to be christened Lewis Wendell
Willkie and then turned up as Wen-
dell Lewis Willkie. He distorted
many of his sentences that way—
and all of his platitudes.
Chairman Joe Martin told us how
we were going to ‘‘perpetcherate”
something or other, but Mr. Willkie
said “simmer” for similar, “enemy”
for enmity, ‘“disengration” for disin-
tegration, “peaches” for teaches and
insisted on throwing in the super-
numerary indefinite article by prom-
ising that he is going to change
matters so that we shall no longer
live in “that kind of ‘A’ America.”
Imagine him, then, daring to offer
debate from the same platform with
the mellifluous Franklin Roosevelt,
with him whose voice and purity of
diction impinge on the senses with
the soft approach of frankincense
and the downy caress of myrrh!
In a detached kind of way your
correspondent is glad of having
heard Willkie, but far more glad
that he isn’t the fatuous gentleman
who thought our left ear was a mi-
crophone and bellowed into it his
Republican loyalty with a mouth
=
FREEDOM
The columnists and con-
tributors on this page are
allowed great latitude in
expressing their own opin-
ons, even when their
opinions are at variance
with those of The Post
a
a
as big as Joe Brown's and a tonal
quality as profound as the patience
of our friend Sam Jones, who for
eight years has been awaiting ap-
pointment under a Republican ad-
ministration.
Three times the annointed hero
recently borrowed from the Demo-
cratic party pronounced as ‘‘sacri-
fiss’ the willingness of his newly
found partisans to get back on the
payroll. We liked that. But what's
this office he’s running for? Our
notebook shows that once at the
beginning, once in the middle and
once near the close of his perora-
tion his aspirations were for what
he called elevation to the honored
place of ‘‘Prezzident of the United
States.” He said, too, that some-
thing ought to be done about preser-
vation of the ‘British feet” in the
Atlantic. We didn’t know our over-
seas cousins had started to wade
out yet.
Scanning our notebook, which we
had fondly hoped would finally read
us back into the Republican Party,
there is discoverable little of argu-
ment vouchsafed from the Hoosier
apostle of bad enunciation and
worse rhetoric. He is for conscrip-
tion—vaguely. We're for it strong,
but we want it backwards, begin-
ing at 65 years. The war needs
brains, and old men can drive tanks
as well as half-baked boys. Willkie
is for aid to England, but that aid
must not involve us in war. Hell's
bells, how can you take part in a
fight without expecting a poke in
the nose? And he capped that
absurdity by denouncing Roosevelt's
policy as a meddling with “inflam-
matory’ consequences. No wonder,
then, that when he tried to quote
a current aphorism about toil and
sweat and blood and tears he got so
mixed up as to say we'll take the
tears and sweat but omit the blood
and tears. Sure, he meant we'd
take the toil, but he didn’t say it.
And what about condemning F.
| . . . -
{ accepted the nomination in his own
home town surrounded by the usual
D. R. for holding out hope to E
g Pp urope shouting and circus-like procedure
when we can’t back it up with!
deeds? Isn't England living on | which always accompanies affairs of
hope? Winston Churchill said it is, | this sort in this country. I didn’t
’ {listen to the speech, in fact, I
and if he isn’t the hope of England,
who is? How do you fit that nega-
tion into Mr. Willkie’s following
statement that “we are facing a ter-
rible and brutal fact” and his other
haven't gotten around to reading it
i because all candidates for office
| seem to say more or less the same
thing. The only thing he did say
declaration: that Americans “don’t | Which interested me was his chal-
|lenge to Roosevelt to enter into a
kid themselves” when they are! * :
“spectators to a great trage dy?" Series of debates before America
We noticed that the crowd, whose |goes to the polls in November.
applause had cyclonic beginnings, | Sounds like the Lincoln-Douglas
piped down when Wendell joined | debates, doesn’t it?
his ideals to Teddy Roosevelt! I wouldnt be at all surprised if
Woodrow Wilson and the senior | Roosevelt accepted that challenge.
Lafollette. They're all dead ones. | Willkie, in fact, any man, is labor-
Nor was exaltation impelled by his ing under a handicap who must
promise of a peace in which the | compete with Roosevelt in debate.
housewife would have to learn to Roosevelt, no matter what one's
plan more carefully and every man | politics, is acknowledged to be a
must needs lay himself open to the | Silver-tonguer orator and I think
“sacrifiss” of increased taxation, | Willkie is making a great mistake
Pennsylvania's deputation, noting ! Whenihe Challenges our NunhrOns
the absence of Governor James, was | radio orator to a series of debates.
acutely conscious of the presidential Dds Snow how muchiyou mew
candidate’s repeated reference to a about the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
| Douglas was a great orator, but
Republican Party th.
D Ye inat henceforward | tinosin possessed a homeliness of
is unalterably opposed to the “I! s :
poss” doctrine. The breaker-boy | 2XPression which appealed more to
must have had advance copy on the | the people thar great oratory but
acceptance. It’s no wonder he stored] doubt very mech Villsie Tas
ed away. How did Jim Davis an gq, that or even a substitute to offer.
the other boys have the courage tol Tooke like. 2 ‘big business “han
be there to listen-in on that rebuke p70 me fond because of conditions
to the Keystone blunder of the | 2Proad the voting public is going
Philadelphia convention ? SITLL .
Your correspondent sums matters | Of ‘course Willkie will ay, very
up after this fashion: Willkie is a | pard to tell the people that Roose.
Liberal in the party of Joe Grundy | velt is trying to get us into the war
and "Joe Pew. He's for more produc. | 274 that Roosevelt "is running the
|country into ruin and a million
tion in a nation hogfat with ma- | hi hich hi :
chine-power and surplus. He would other things whic is campaign
| managers will insist on his saying.
if his challenge is met, lure Presi- 2 : 3 ¥
dent Roosevelt from Washington | 18 will promise this and promise
and take him on a stump tour of | that but I doubt if any of you will
America at a time when hell is| hear very much about Wendell
popping at the very threshold of | Willkie and perhaps, when you read
this letter you will wonder why
government. He would substitute!
politics for preparedness while YoU grandimotheridevetod. so much
World Democracy trembles on the | space to a man you never heard of.
Sv
to try to be satisfied with Roosevelt. |
For instance, one morning this week the German dispatches
insisted that London had been bombed and great damage done.
English dispatches on the same day said that no bomb whatsoever had
The
RICOCHETS
— By Rives Matthews —
A SURVEY of Harvard graduates
just completed shows that members
of the Class of 1915 averaged 2.3
children.
*
- THE N. Y. TIMES holds this is
encouraging because ‘we have been
hearing so much about the high
reproductive rate of the incompe-
tent and the feeble minded.”
* ¥ %
WE HOLD the Times is too san-
guine. First of all, we hardly be-
lieve a Harvard degree, or for that
matter, any other collegiate de-
gree these days, can be fairly used
as a measure of ability and as a
yardstick to the elite from an eu-
genic point of view.
* ¥ ¥
RIGHT NOW some of us are be-
ginning to see some of the evils for
which the colleges are in part re-
sponsible. . From what we can
gather, American youths consider
themselves the Number One Prob-
lem before the country. Maybe so!
* Fk
BUT IT’S WRONG for a Problem
Child to know he’s a Problem Child.
Every child is a problem to its
parents, but when he knows it, then
he pretty generally becomes a prob-
lem his parents will never solve,
and he'll never solve it himself.
He'll either become a genius, and
make laws to suit himself or a mis-
fit and one of society's failures.
* *
* ¥ ¥
ON ONE HAND we have U. S.
youth clamoring for sympathy and
better prospects than those with
which they are presently faced.
And on the other, we have many of
these same young men loudly pro-
testing against any sort of national
conscription, although twelve or
eighteen months of Army discipline
and training probably wouldn’t hurt
many of them, and might teach a
few the value of discipline, the value
of a well ordered and well regulated
life.
/ *
IN SHORT today’s crop of youths
wants the country for which they
don’t want to fight, or which they
don’t wish to defend, to hand them
* k
| jobs, better pay, more security and
more of a say-so in the conduct of
national affairs.
*
tk *
FROM A READING of history, it
would seem it has been ever thus,
at least as far as what youth wants.
But never before, it seems to us,
have youths "been so unwilling to
give anything in return: to their
faculties, to their employers or po-
tential employers, to the commun-
ity, to their nation.
edge of chaos.
Well, the crowd kept yelling “We
want Willkie,” but what we sub-
consciously heard from a quarter
million Grand Old Partisan throats
was a paraphrase. ‘“We want milk-
ing” is what they really meant.
And they'd like to go honeying too.
So, it was most appropriate when
the Elwood High School Band broke
into the din with the musical trans-
cription of what, in the final pur-
view, you had to tell yourself. What
the band played was:
“Hail, hail, the gang's all here.”
And HOW they were there!
‘and
here!”
The Doctor quickly switched his zbout 1,000 feet Wigher on a con-
tinuation of our mountain.
tactics and rushed towards the lat-
ter voice but the first guide again
bellowed, “Shut, Shut!” and Doc
swung about to continue what he
had originally planned.
~ Then a gorgeous crescendo of
blistering = swearing, - intermingled
with the wail, ‘Bigger one here!”,
settled things as far as the Doctor
was concerned. Without further
ado he left, unmolested, the re-
maining animals that were. a sure
thing and plunged down the shale
slide on a pure gamble for the ‘big-
ger ones.”
I distinctly recall seeing the
broomstick not far away on the
ledge at this time.
i
IT MAY BE of interest to note
that my enjoyment of this sky-high
waltz was one of the most hilari-
ous (while sober) moments of my
entire career.
Of course the “bigger ones” were
not there when the Doctor arrived
beneath the overhang nor, of
course, were our first batch of goats
when he had pantingly returned to
my side. However, five minutes had
not passed until we saw the game
Since I had killed my first goat
the evening before I had now reach-
ed my legal limit but the Doctor,
not to be outdone and I must say,
undiscouraged, took up his broom-
stick and rifle, followed his guide
and soon passed from sight on the
trail of the lofty targets.
‘After dark, when my Indian and
myself had been in camp for hours,
the two men dragged in with the
second goat and a wondrous tale
of long-distance shooting.
Being tired we zipped into our
sleeping bags and so it was not un-
til after breakfast the following
morning, while preparing for the
trip to the base camp, that I be-
came aware of the absence of the
broomstick.
In exceedingly polite tones and
in my softest manner I timidly men-
tioned the fact.
“Say, Doc,” I asked, “Where the
hell is that crutch you've been lug-
ging around since we left New
York ?”
The Doctor rose to his full and
dignified six feet and cast upon me
a glance of mingled scorn and dis-
once more, united now, and this
time contentedly grazing rock moss
gust. - Growled he: ‘“Hoddam, son,
THE OLD
SCRAPBOOK
——By "Bob" Sutton —
Are you easily disturbed? Or
are you the type who can sit snug-
ly through any ordeal, any experi-
ence, and take it al with common-
place attitudes? You know, this
business of being disturbed is an
art. The Apostle Paul said, “To be
zealously disturbed in a good thing
is good. ¢
tis
Sir Thomas Moore and his wife
lived in London. It happened that
he must leave, and go without his
beloved companion. While away,
he received a telegram that she had
contracted smallpox and did not
wish him to see her. She only ask-
ed him to come and say goodbye
in a dark room without seeing her
face, once so beautiful. While on
the train, he composed the following
world-famous lines:
Believe me, if all those endearing
“More than a newspaper,
a community institution”
THE DALLAS POST
ESTABLISHED 1889
A non-partisan liberal
progressive newspaper pub-
lished every Friday morning
at its plant on Lehman Ave-
nue, Dallas, Penna., by the
Dallas Post, Inc.
Entered as second-class matter
at the post office at Dallas, Pa.,
under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscriptions, $2 a year, payable
in advance.
Howard W. Risley...
Howell E. Rees..............._. Editor
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow and
flee from my arms
Like fairy gifts fading away;
Thou woulds’t still be adored, as
this moment thou art,
el
less refrigerator space
And around the dear ruins each
wish of my heart
Will entwine itself verdantly still.
BEE Ei
NI Eee [AS ENE C18 Teds le]
is quite"so welcome as a glagssiof Steg-
aier's Gold Medal Beersery
- ;
Try'some tonight. it,
Example is always better than
precept.
The greatest fault is to be con-
scious of none.
What loneliness is lonelier than
distrust ?
me (eet
soul
said
Music washes away from the
the dust of everyday life. So
d'with food.
{HD el td]
$
S
S
™>
S
S
£
=
Auerbach. Did you ever try mu-
sic to rest your tired body and
weary mind? It's better than med-
icine. In fact, many people are be-
ing healed of serious illnesses by
use of music. Well, well; radios in-
stead of radium; music instead of
morphine; songs instead of stitches.
It’s a great world.
——
Oh, it’s easy to smile and be happy
When life’s like a beautiful rose;
But the man worth while is the
man who can smile f
While coiling
Harvey's L
a garden hose.
in
ake Bottl
CALL HARVEY’S LAKE 3092
Seay
ing Works
A BEVERAGE
OF MODERATION
Remember: Live with the wolves,
1 trun it a fur piece!”
young charms
Let the loveliness fade as it will;
LINERS
OMPANY . ... WILKES-BARRE, PENNSYLVANIA
and you will soon learn to howl.