Judge — March 1937 — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

CROSS CURRENTS We know a superintendent of schools, and we grilled the following informa. tion out of him. He makes occasional tours of inspec- tion, winding up at a night school for negro adults. A year ago, he was called upon to congratulate an old negro lady. She had enrolled at the start of the course with a single, avowed intent: to learn to write her name. She had succeeded, the course was at an end, and so she left. This year our superintendent repeated his tour. The old lady had enrolled again, they told him with awe. “Why?” they had asked her. “Ah’s goin’ to learn to write mah name,” she said . “But you learned. You learned last year.” “Yas'm. Ah knows it. But now——” her bosom swelled with pride “——now ah done got married.” Like a voice from out of the past comes the news that the textile mills of New England are once again turning out red flannels. We welcome this news as indi- cation of the fact that the moral texture of the Republic is still sound and able to defend itself from shorts, black shorts, brown shorts or any other decadent ves- tiges of the totalitarian state. Democracy in red flannels may not be very petite, but at least she’s well protected from fascist onslaughts. We got in on some underground stuff recently. We visited an airport on Long Island where a man is crating planes for Spain, illegally; he says if we print his name we get rubbed out. Here's the cps on crating planes: it’s a a big job, you have to take the apart first; it costs two thousan lars per. So while we were talking a workman came in. He grinned broadly and lit a cigarette “OK, boss,” he said; “we got that Lockheed all boxed up.” The boss’ face fell like a cheese souf- flé. He gripped the workman's shoulder lanes dol. March 1937 and spoke, in a low, tense voice: "What did you say? Did you say, ‘Lockheed’?” “Sure . . . that white Lockheed. All wrapped up an’ ready to go.” The boss fell back in his chair, beating the flat of his hand rhythmically against his forehead. “The Lockheed!” he moaned. “A private plane. Crated! Ohmygod!” The workman withdrew, as a bullet withdraws from a gun. But the boss was staring heavenward, transfixed. An idea had hit him. While we watched, stupefied, he snatched the hone from its cradle and demanded long distance. He asked for a hotel in California. Briskly the call went through. “Hello! Hello, Mr. Smith?” The boss relaxed and started talking. “Mr. Smith, this is the airport—Long Island. Look, I was won. ering . . . maybe, would you want us to crate your plane, maybe?” The phone muttered, “Yes? Oh, no, Mr. Smith. Oh no, of course not. I just thought you might. What? Well, I just thought . . . OK! Ok, Mr. Smith. Yes, Mr. Smith. She'll be all ready when you get back.” The boss hung up. He looked heaven. ward again, but his eyes were moist and injured. “He doesn’t want her crated,” he said slowly, in a voice pregnant with reproach, We didn’t find out what it costs to uncrate planes. That science never ceases its wonders to perform is verified in the announcement made by Peter Schultz of Buffalo that his perpetual motion machine is just about perfected. According to Mr. Schultz, he has it down to a point now where it can run for several consecutive hours without stopping. It is a matter of historical record that Shakespeare once ate a beetle, on a bet. America’s bad men have sadly deterior- ated since the days when rustlers rode the range swiping longhorns, with a manila muffler the penalty for their first tactical mistake. Times have changed. The New Jersey Bee Keepers Association has discovered that thousands of their charges wander from home and never return. While: they don’t say outright that this is the work of a gang of bee- rustlers, the inference is pretty plain. In any event, they propose tattooing their bees as a remedy. If we were a bee we'd feel mighty, mighty queer buzzing around with a Lazy Bar X tattooed on our ham, The comfortablest job in the world is the volunteer's. He has an almost divine sense of power. We were a volunteer usher at a play once, and we felt this. An old gentleman, purpling, bawled us out; we smiled down on him benevolently, conscious that we could reach out at will and tweak his swollen nose. We couldn't be fired; we had nothing to lose; he was in our power, and we forbore. It was wonderful. We mention these facts to shed light on the following curious circumstances, concerning a volunteer fire department. A man who lives in a Connecticut village went sleepily down to fix the furnace, one icy morning this winter. He opened the cellar door and his eyes popped; flames licked wildly up the wooden walls. He tore upstairs, yanked his wife and baby out of bed and out of the house. Lest they freeze in the snow, he hurried them down the block to a friend’s; then back he ran, Another quick look at the cellar showed the fire still raging, so our man phoned the fire department—the volun. teer fire department. “We'll be there be- fore you hang up,” a voice assured him. He started moving out valuables, working feverishly; the furnace room was a mass of flames and he didn’t dare open the door again. But after five min- utes or so of this, a curious thought struck him: contrary to all experience, this fire wasn’t raising any smoke. Timid as a mouse, our man opened the cellar door. Nothing happened, and he saw the flames still about the same. He walked down the stairs a ways. Right then he saw: the furnace door gaped open; he had been watching the furnace fire, reflected on the wall. Our man felt like a chronic idiot, and comicbooks.com