Judge — August 1932 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Nature Stuff OsT of my erstwhile drunken friends and pious companions have suddenly gone back to the soil with a dull thud. Things being quite hooverish in the asphalt spaces, they have grabbed an express back to Mother Nature crazy for a little homestead of their own, and the devil take the plumbing! Once snuggled therein, with the roses rambling round the front porch and the mort- gageers rambling round the rear, let Hoover be reelected, there's a living in the ground. I know it but it has me worried. You see, to get really back to fun- damentals, you've got to have a little hay in your soul. Among other things, you ought to be able to re- move picnickers from your bulls’ horns, swing a brush hook without carving your initials on. your shins, make cut down trees miss your weak- end as they fall, distinguish poison ivy from spinach, shear sheep for your wife’s Fall patou without get- ting any lamp chop into the wool and get up at the hour you were once wont to crawl in. I can’t say my salad day cronies shine at these matters. Here are things they do well. They play ping pong, freeze ice cubes, get advances from publishers for books they never quite start, listen to the radio, do jig- saw puzzles, open ginger ale bottles, make a fair hollandaise, and sleep till noon. Here’s how a typical chum goes native. First, he seeks a high hill, puts his nose into the wind, picks up the scent he wants and climbs into a car, Once satisfied that he’s found an oasis in the apple jack belt, he knocks out an old fireplace and in- stalls a bar. He establishes a ping pong room, and a place to throw pass- ing out guests. Then he invites everyone he knows to come see his new place and help him stave off the country jitters. Somewhere in here he tries to plant a vegetable yarden. This proves to be work so a real native native finishes the job for him. Eventually he has his own vegetables. He and the woodchucks. In other words, you can’t havc Park Avenue in your soul and yo truly rural overnight. It takes tim: and then where's the sense. Nobody wants to be a farmer let alone a synthetic farmer. Farmers them- selves, everybody knows, want to be osteopaths or Congressmen. WE my friends will find out When the January wind starts whistling and nobody calls but the man with the coal bill, they'll sud denly remember how snug and warm it is in the art wing at Frank & Jack’s. They'll remember that dawns are pretty nice over the Titicus but they’re much nicer over the East River taxi-ing home after a hard night at the Fakir’s Ball. They'll look vainly up and down the Con- necticut roads but won't see the cuties that pass by the dozens ever minute along 48th St. from Fifth to Madison They'll appreciate the sheep bedded down in the barn but they'll remem- ber how much cosier the sheep on th: Central Park meadows look. They'll suddenly want the clank of celebrities as they whang into each other at a Ziegfeld opening and what if the show is poor. They'll want egg bene- dictine at the Parisien at 11 rather than pie for breakfast at 6.30. They'll long for the electric signs of Times Square, the Newsreel Theatre, th: new book display in Scribner’s win dow, Breast of Chicken Eugéne Longchamps, the counter princesses at Saks 5th Avenue, the Union Leaguers, the snooker and cheese sandwiches at Doyle's, a touch of anagram at a Mr. Woollcott’s Sun- day morning and o! for the sight of a Roxy usher! I know. I’ve stuck Bellyacres a win- ter or so and I've learned I'm a cliff dweller by nature. Of course, I’ve had better luck with my living than most. I plant by throwing seeds out of a window and a lot of berry bushes comicbooks.com