Judge, 1914-01-17 · page 11 of 24
Judge — January 17, 1914 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous narrative essay with accompanying photograph, not a political cartoon. The story recounts a motorist's experience when his athletic friend attempts to move a stubborn calf blocking a narrow country road. The "joke" is situational comedy: the friend—confident in his boxing and wrestling skills—repeatedly fails to budge or control the small animal. Each strategy (boxing, wrestling) backfires; the calf proves surprisingly agile and strong. The climax occurs when both combatants tumble over a stone wall down a hillside. The satire targets masculine pride and overconfidence. An educated, physically capable urban man is humbled by a simple farm animal. The friend emerges "bedraggled, torn and sopping, contused and bloody," his dignity destroyed—hence he becomes "unfriendly" to the narrator. This reflects early-20th-century urban audiences' amusement at the gap between city sophistication and rural realities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HE MEEK countenance of a calf as it projects through the bars of a gate or a hole in the fence, with ap- pealing and innocent eyes, often empha- sizes to the unknowing traveler the How I Lost a Friend i By JA, WALDRON esesesesesesese es cososessall fair, began to hit out at the calf’s head in pugilistic fashion, keeping up a run- ning comment of the sort usual with boxers. This did not rattle the calf. fe ree. Gee ing that any plan of attack would be peace and placidity of bucolic life that other rural details forecast. But you never can tell anything surely from mere signs. I was touring recently in an auto with a friend, who at a stage of our journey got a wire which recalled him immediately totown. In order to reach the n st railway station, we en- tered an unfamiliar highway which was described by a native as a short cut, and set out to do the necessary ten miles in half an hour. The roadway was narrow, rutty, rocky, and had every other acteristic of a murderous turnpike, and in its worst part we overtook a bull calf. The calf declined to let us pa: He had the right of way and kept it. He was playful about it, dancing here and there, frisking his tail and enjoying himself. When I tried to speed up, he turned and met us more than half way, and in fear that he might jump through the hood into the works of my machine, I was fain to stop with a jerk. I tried to pass him, first on one side and then the other; but he was always there. Finally my friend proposed that he get out and catch the calf and hold him until I could get by. My friend was an amateur athlete and something of a wres- tler And he could box a bit, too. He got out of the machine and approached the calf guardedly, though his confidence was apparent. The calf danced about out of the way, while my friend fiddled for an opening. My friend would grab for the calf, but always the calf man- aged to get out of reach. My friend became angry, and, decid- It was amusing to me, and as the con- test waxed warmer I forgot the urgency of the journey. My friend tried again and again to land a blow on the calf‘s head, but was losing his wind in the fruitless effort. One can- not land on a calf’s bread basket or insinuate the solar plexus on a calf, on account of the calf’s peculiar build. And the agility of a calf is disconcerting. Abandoning pugilism as hardly the thing. my friend seized the calf about the neck and introduced wrestling. The calf seemed to know something about this game, although a calf can’t get a toe hold on a man or negotiate the half-nelson; and this calf had the better of it from the start Just as my friend got the calf on its back on the side of the road, near a low stone wall, and seemed to control the situation, they both went over the wall and down a steep hill My friend was on top one mo- ment and the calf the other as they rolled out of sight. My friend had discontinued the badinage associated with boxing when he started to wrestle with the calf, and there was no sound as they disappeared but that of an occasional stone dislodged and started after them. I jumped from the machine and searched for the combatants. I found a man I didn’t recog- nize at first, because of a strange flow of profanity, crawling out of a brook that babbled down the hillside. The preliminary, contest had been hard on my friend’s clothes, but he was now disreputable. Bedraggled, torn and sopping, contused and bloody, he was both wildly angry and strangely unfriendly. His moral character seemed to have undergone a complete change He grudgingly accepted my aid up the hill. comicbooks.com