Life, 1928-09-14 · page 21 of 40
Life — September 14, 1928 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a comic strip titled "Father Knows Best" (visible at bottom) depicting domestic scenes of parents and children at play and leisure activities—swimming, surfing, playing with barrels, and jump rope. The accompanying text is a diary entry dated August 21, written in a humorous, gossipy tone about mundane daily life: lunch menus, depression remedies (buying hats), card games, and reading fiction. The writer mentions a husband named Sam who observes that her hat collection suggests she lives in "doldrums," and notes his skepticism about a card game where the Ace of Hearts can sit on the floor unnoticed. **For modern readers:** This satirizes upper-middle-class leisure anxieties and domestic routines of early 20th-century America—the obsession with shopping, sweepstakes fantasies, and marital dynamics where husbands gently mock their wives' spending habits. The diary format creates gentle satire of women's concerns and consumer culture rather than sharp political commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
she was Seeing Things because of the fumerous mystery stories she had been reading. So home to a fine luncheon of eggs in aspic, Irish stew, corn on the cob, and aches and cream, during which I did repeat my formula for shaking off depression, which is the purchase of a new hat, causing Sam to remark that from the number in my wardrobe the casual observer might infer that I spent my life in the doldrums. This night to a great dinner, and after- wards to cards, but Sam quit his table as Father Knows Best early as he diplomatically could, and, when I asked him the wherefore, quoth, “They play the kind of game wherein the Ace of Hearts can be on the floor for three hands without being missed from the pack.” Awake betimes, reading over my breakfast. in a book led “Vanity Under the Sun,” the second tale I have read in a fortnight wherein the leading character is enriched by winning a sweepstake, and August 21 I do wish that such good fortune could be mine, but I do fear it never will, for had I but played this past week three Saratoga tips which Nowell gave me, I should be considerably more solvent at the bank than I am. To Oneonta by motor to purchase some boudoir slippers, and on the way I did notice a ginger ale ad- vertisement asking all beholders if the would think of eating a green peach, fol- lowed by the suggestion that it were equally unwise to drink ginger ale until it had been aged for six months. And comicbooks.com