Life — June 14, 1928 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Explanation of This Life Magazine Page This page contains three separate satirical pieces: 1. **"Open Letter on Olive Bottle Traffic"**: A humorous complaint about San Francisco's traffic congestion caused by olive bottles stuck in the street. The writer calculates wasted time annually and proposes absurd solutions (stop/go signals for olives, lead weights in bottles). It's satire mocking both traffic problems and the tendency to over-engineer trivial issues. 2. **Top cartoon**: Shows a man arriving home late, with his nurse telling him his wife (a telephone operator) will excuse the delay. The joke satirizes the modern phenomenon of wives working in new industries like telephone operation, creating domestic complications. 3. **Bottom cartoon**: Depicts an Egyptian king inspecting his tomb, finding it in poor condition—satirizing ancient Egypt's grand ambitions versus actual decay.