Life, 1925-10-22 · page 35 of 74
Life — October 22, 1925 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks how completely a college football game disrupts small-town commerce and life. A traveling salesman complains that all his customers have shut down their businesses from Thursday through Tuesday to attend or prepare for a game between Jonesville and Rolling Prairie College. The humor lies in the exaggeration of football's grip on the community: the game now takes three days instead of the old three hours; hotel rooms are completely sold out; businessmen abandon their offices entirely. The nostalgic reference to when the "Smith House never knew there was a game in town" emphasizes how dramatically priorities have shifted. The accompanying cartoon shows men in what appears to be a hotel room drinking "synthetic gin" and singing—depicting the excess and distraction of game week. The satire suggests that American small towns have become dangerously obsessed with college sports, to the detriment of actual business and productivity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Crucial Week in Jonesville | expectep to do a lot of business » Jonesville this week but all my cus- tomers are laying off from Thurs- day till next Tuesday on account of the football game,” said the gray- haired traveling salesman to the head barber in the Hotel New Trianon, esville, When this hotel was called the hh House and Jonesville University a freshwater college a football game took three hours; now it takes « days, and if a Jonesville Rota- doesn’t have a box seat on the y-yard line he goes into a decline. { remember when the Jonesville vers wore flowing mustaches and neck sweaters and it is hard for to figure suspending business in the thern end of the State the week of titanic struggle with Rolling Prairie lege. “The old Smith House never knew © was a game in town, but the Trianon’s been sold out for a uth and I'm sleeping on a cot in | Watch your gums — | bleeding a sign of trouble | AS sappers mine the enemy’ defenses, so gum-de- cay tunnels through the normal gum line and produces tooth decay in its most positively prevents Pyorrhea if used in “fl a what a whale of a diflerence just afew Sample Room E with the Class of '99, full of synthetic gin and close harmony. “T'll be glad when the season is over and the business men look in on their offices for a couple of hours.” McC. H. Acknowledged with Thanks We acknowledge with many thanks the receipt at Lire’s Fresh Air Camps of the following donations: Twenty dozen silver table spoons from the International Silver Company, Water- bury, Conn. Candy, twenty boxes of twenty pack- ages cach, from Beech Nut Packing Co., Canajoharie, N. Y. Box colored papers, crayons, pencils, ete, from Federal Printing Co, Des Moines, Ia. Excellent eating apples (one barrel to each Camp) from E. O. Dorman, River- ville, N. Y. In a Bad Way Lavy: Why are you crying, child? Tue Curio: Ma's a golf-widow and Pa’s a bridge-widower and it looks as if I'm going to be a divorce-orphan. ‘The positive relief for SEA, TRAIN A CAR Sickness. {ij Stops the nausea at once. 25 || years in use, . 8 $1. s 736,031.30 0¢ Dra Sores | ¢ Mothersill Remedy Co., New York comicbooks.com