Judge — May 1938 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

“I TELL you I'M FED UP—MAKING BEDS ALL DAY!” CARNIVAL IN FLUSHING By Al Graham VER since the New York World's Fair of 1939 was first announced, I have been almost impossible to live with. Perhaps I would have been impos- sible to live with anyway; but I like to think that my current tantrum started with the Fair's announced theme: “Building the World of Tomorrow.” Now it so happens that Building the World of Tomorrow has been my hobby for years. True, I haven't done any actual construction work; but I have thought a lot about it, and I have talked at great lengths about how it should be done. So when the Fair, Inc., came out with its promised glimpse of the future, I immediately developed a carnival com. plex, a madness the equal of any World's Fair—except, of course, that J wasn’t covered with bunting. At first this madness took the form of telling everyone I met that Whee! soon 16 we would have a preview of an acousti- cized, air-conditioned city—the Manhat. tan of Tomorrow—a noiseless, smoke- less, El-less town in which nerves would no longer be jangled by rattletrap trucks, nor lungs poisoned by reeking: bus exhausts. That soon there would rise on—of all places—Flushing Meadow a wonderful Dreamland: a city of glass brick and soft music; a metropolis filled with gay, happy, Socially-Secure neo- trists, whose Vitamin-D laughter would be heard along the shores of super-sun- kissed lagoons landscaped with real Palm Beach palms produced in ‘multi- plane technicolor. So wild was my enthusiasm for such a World of Tomorrow that I tried to have the clocks set ahead to 1939—but I was balked by the Anti-Daylight Sav- ing lobby. Then came the announcement that the Fair was to have a Trylon, an Aqualon, and a Perisphere; and ever since, these words have been ringing in my ears, running through my head, and playing havoc with my basal metabolism. Try. lon, Aqualon, and Perisphere! To me, it is almost as though Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had suddenly replaced DiMaggio, Gehrig, and Dickey in the Yankees’ batting order. Recently, I have seen quite a few pic. tures showing what the Trylon, Aqua. lon, and Perisphere are to look like; and these pictures have inspired me to create a graceful, poetic Something (sce Fig. I), which I hereby submit to the Fair authorities as my personal contribution to their world of Tomorrow. Just exactly what this Something of mine is, I am not sure; but the mus- tache (A) leads me to believe that I have created the one thing which the Fair's executives have apparently overlooked: the Barker. Certainly no fair would be complete without a goodly number of barkers. Hence, I have de- cided to call my architectural Spirit of °39 a “Barkalon.” And in keeping with my ideas of what a World of Tomorrow should be, I am specifying that this Barkalon must operate noiselessly, and wholly in pantomime. There is very little else I can do about this World's Fair madness of mine ex- cept to wait until Tomorrow comes along. That, as I figure it, should be about 1968; and I suggest that you look me up in the autumn of that year, when we can sit down together in some quiet Aqualon or Perisphere and check up on this World of Tomorrow that is being envisaged in the World of Today. Fic. I Take a Letter Attentively she sits beside him, Writes his words in arc and hook— Filling with her hieroglyphics Pages of her shorthand book. Lucky that her boss can’t read them, Lucky that he cannot tell That she punctuates her markings With the scrawl for -r < ~. —E. B. The Judge comicbooks.com