Life — September 9, 1920 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

“SHE'S ONE OF THE NEWLY RICH, I TAKE IT.” “oH, No! WHY, HER PEOPLE HAVE HAD THEIR MONEY SINCE 1917.’ The New Olympic Games Every Nation, Great or Small, Must Have Its Chance to Win [ has been the custom in past Olympic games for the nation in charge of the program to insert a goodly number of local events with which none of the visiting teams would be familiar. Thus, if Switzerland were planning the schedule of events, yodling would count 25 points, goat-milking 25 points, and rst place in a race between local glaciers would register 100 tallies for the winner. In this way Switzerland might easily win the meet, although the other nations won the more generally prac- ticed events, such as the dashes, hurdles or pole vault. It seems only fair that this year at Antwerp each nation should be allowed to enter a team for some events in which it would be sure of winning first place. This would even things up, and when each nation had won its particular event, the games could proceed. France, for instance, might enter a team of Paris taxicab drivers in a juggernaut race. This would include a two-mile straightaway pedestrian hunt (turning eight successive corners on the right and left wheels alternately) with a score of ten Pedestrians necessary to qualify, and the telegraph-pole-vault. A team of American mail-truck drivers ought to give the boys from the Seine City a tough battle for stellar honors, but the truck drivers would be handicapped by having to use a lighter car than the ones they are accustomed to, and would find it more difficult to attain a convincing. degree of mo- mentum. An aggregation of Greek bootblacks from the shadow of the Acropolis could give all other nations cards and spades, not to mention big and little casino, and win in a walk; and the représentatives of Hawaii could easily achieve the coveted blue ribbon in the running broad hula-hula. Canada could be counted on to send a team of long-distance booze runners, for competition against teams of picked revenue officers from the United States or other countries, The race would be held from Antwerp to the stadium at Hoboken, and 10 points scored for every smuggled quart of whiskey, 9 points for rum, 8 >oints for cognac, 6 for gin, and for beer. A profiteering contest would give the Cuban athletes an op- portunity to chalk up a few points for the Pearl of the Antilles, and all propaganda records would be shattered when the Irish team went into action. Italy could enter her poets against all comers in forty-five-round bouts to a decision, and the lads from sunny Spain would romp hore in the onion, omelet and influenza events. Africa would hold first place in the League of Nations in the manipulation of the speckled ivory cubes, and Norway would take nobody’s dust when it came to sardine packing. Any group of athletes who could succeed in inserting more pins into one shirt than the record established by the Chinese team, would have a clear title to the laundry championship. Perhaps it would be better not to have any Olympic games at all, but let the athletes of all nations stay home and fight it out among themselves. A Lawn HAT is the patch of hard, bare ground? It is a lawn, What grows there? Anything but grass. Will not grass live there? No; but it will die there. Is there not any way to make a good lawn? Oh, yes. Plant a garden, and all the grass in the neighborhood will grow there. comicbooks.com