Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1959-05-14, Page 3NAY SCUM EASY, TORO - Ever been the target for a 1,500-pound Angus bull? Photographer took this shot and then took to his heels. The big bull escaped from a truck and shook tip a few people before a cowpoke roped him. THE FARM FROM Mud Time On 'Country Roads There's been a tendency around here this spring to dredge up an old term-"mud time," This is tlhseeytiarnree nofowY-Italml Orsit% conditions Were neVer 'better than d file folks speaking glibly of mud time have no. notion of what it really was. There's a frost heave in the macadam, and an alert highway crew has dumped ih some cold-patch and put up a bump sign, but that is not what comes to mind when I hear "mud tinter t True mud time was back before the highway bond issue was invented; it means more than a crack in the pavement. When we first had an automo- bile here at the farm, we watched carefully for the cracking of mud time, for we didn't want to be caught with the automobile at home, We used to leave it a quar- ter of a mile up the road, by the .schoolhouse at the four corners, Then we'd walk, toting our gro- ceries, Because below us on the road was a bottomless morass, just off the lip of a statewide ledge. It was one of those things you could .stick a pole in and not touch bot- tom. And just above us on the road was a muskrat swamp which fed under the road through a plank culvert, The culvert would freeze up and heave about four feet into the air, creating a dam which denied the swamp access to the broad, .billowing sea, The muskrat swamp would then swell up, and the road would disappear. Nowadays anything like this would be regarded as a' public shame; and a salaried engineer would give it his attention and ask for an appropriation. But not then. These places never were "fixed." You waited them out. 'To get around the muskrat bog you came up by the other road, and to get around the slough of despond by the ledge you took. a bypass through Morrison's field. If you simply had to go, it was often better to walk than to try a horse, because some places had no bypasses. When we left the automobile up at the schoolhouse, we'd shoulder our purchases and cut through the woods, coming down STILL AT IT - Sad-faced circus clown Emmet Kelly amazes 6- year-old DaWn McGuire. Kelly, an old-timer in the business, was part of show for crippled children. CROSSWORD. PUZZLE ACRbSS 2. Cheer 1. Craft a. swirl 39. Roll it 37, Assignee 32. SOU thern Stet o 22, Renotit ton 23. T.)oViate 33. Seed etverlam-. Seetneke friend are Retiginne Sett 31. Sunburn' 25. Advertising 40. theater 42. Tninlitig to 26, Not bitek. 20.. Thailand 21. 91OV.6 eidetvh-i 28.. Myself 29, fly birth 19. Relief 12. feet 13. Fiskitrie but 14. RIver (Sp.) 15, Prickly plant 17,, Ilnieteretie 27. Audible ttihe 9. Lump ref 4. Warm . share w.earawny. The Ptrea hold phraada , Ob.) butter breatlii 4. Name 6. Cast eyes 6. Malt beverage 7, Therefore 46. Metal fasten ri 48. Nnthfrig" 40. Scotch taKe 50. A aSort 51. Mut fiti beeekee 1, sons le tv under the pines .and avoiding the"' flowage. Then, sometimes, the muskrat bog would subside with- out our knowing it, since we hadn't been coming that way, and we'd find we'd. beetei walking for days When we could have driven, We usually found this out when another automobile came down along, and then got stuck ' the bottomless morass, This one would still be catehing them arong in May and June. Some- body would then drive the old plank culvert back, into the ground, and we were la contact again, The bottomless pit would often dry out on top with a spring wind, but underneath it would remain soft ooze. Pity there are no records of its countless vic- tims. Grandfather used to keep a team harnessed in the stalls, to save time at night, end he'd pull out automobiles by the dozens all spring. We did it afterward with the tractor. We'd snake them out, and while the man fished for fifty cents, which we usually protested until he forced it on us, the auto- mobile would stand there and drip mud, sounding like a parcel of beavers slapping their tails on a dam. One time a man asked, "How much?" and as he seemed a little wary I said, "Oh, what- ever it's worth to you." "No," he said, with a big-shot attitude. "You say-a workman is worth his hire, and you just tell me!" So I told him it would be five dollars, and he wailed like a hog stuck in a rail fence. So I told him to move along, that it wouldn't cost him anything. and he gave me fifty cents. Mud time. We used to wash the horses. Modern motorists who lament the saline season, and hate to follow a splashing truck on a wet pavement, have no idea what a horse does while• he's being washed. Some like it; but none of ours ever did. We'd slop on water, and they'd kick and squeal. And sometimes we'd wash the buggy. There was a tendency to argue that the • buggy could wait until mud time was-over, when it could be washed all at once for summer, but we couldn't sell that to the women, If one of them had to be "car- ried out"' to a Ladies' Aid, per- .haps, she'd observe how the dooryard had dried up, and with a fair spring wind caressing the countryside she'd say, "I'm not riding out in a muddy buggy." We didn't have pressure hoses; we had pails and a pond to dip from. We'd scrape off mud with a stick, soften the rest with water, and scour it with a brush. The function of a dashboard was to catch mud, in those days. We'd have a half-yard of gooey doze under the buggy when we 'sot it clean, and I suppose our door- yard was built up that way over the years. Then we'd insert the washed horse in the washed buggy, and whoever was riding out would get in the seat, arrange the lap- robe, and in 200 yards of road- work the whole thing, including the lady, would be mud to the ears. When the laprobe came home, you had enough dirt on it to sprout a quart of peas.' There are still some unpaved back roads, but they have been fixed, Bad places are built up; they are machine patrolled. I drove on one the others evening, and it was far from impassable. It was nothing like the old-time roads swhen the frost was com- ing out of the ground and "mud time" really meant something.- By Sohn Gould in The Christian Science Monitor, CHANGE FROM FIGURE WORK When applying for a job in Philadelphia a woman applicant was given a form to coniplete, In the section headed previous employtnent and reasons for leaving she stated that her last job was at a nudist camp and the reason for leaving ", . a change of scenery." 30. V uteano . opening* 31. Loather orne ra oh t Ina sS. llecited 34. Anttnal euate 36. Papal scarf 37. Stato tha prloe 39, Chafe 40. Spring 41. Marble 42. (lifts n o ne 43. Coal end , 44. TrPe 17 Tho v,h1oor Man Married A Race Horse A "I)OniCOY'4" wedding took place in the remote Buropean village of Nuetten recently, the man and the woman wearing donkey's masks, The ceremony was aimed et a couple who had transgressed local traditions, and hencefor- ward they will be outlawed from the district. The bridegroom's of f e n e e? That he came from a village u few miles away and "stele'', a local girl, who might have been expected to marry a man from her own neighbourhood. Though he offered the young man of Huetten $35 compensation, this was indignantly refused as in- adequate, Since the mock marriage, the young couple may expect to be addressed as donkeys for the rest of their lives, and so may their children unless the bride- groom takes legal proceedings, which he has threatened to do. It he goes ahead, the villages will fight; with this in mind, they collected money from the 15,000 visitors who came to watch the ceremony in this vil- lage of only seventy inhabitants, The donkeys at this wedding, of course, weren't real, but there have been instances of people actually marrying ani- mals, The strange bride of a young American called Jerome Clegg was a racehorse. All his life Jerome had been considered ec- centric by his wealthy family. As a result they wouldn't let him handle his own money. Jerome didn't objecet to this until he bought a racehorse, THE STRANGEST - Enough to frighten any mother are the strange headgear and goggles worn by this boy In New York. They're for precocious space- age adventureri. Mabelle Belle, who romped home first in almost every race. All the winnings, of course, went into Jerome's lawyers' ac- counts instead of his own. Then he made two very use- ful discoveries. First, that his wife could lihndle his money, even though he himself could not; second, that under an ar- neje Arkansas law he could marry "any living being," So lie took, Mabelle Belle as his bride, and at hist the family were fooled, thinking he had married a girl of that name. But when the truth was known, his family successfully applied to have the marriage annullled. Not that Jerome minded. The judge decided that if he had the brains to work out this scheme, he had enough sense to control his own money. So Jerome continued to col- lect his winnings and later mar- ried a real girl, instead of the mare. some humans have actually married inanimate objjects. In 1939 a Roumanian peasant was joined in m'arirriony to the letter-box in which his dead fiancee had posted her last let- ter to him, When, a few months later, a builder applied to have the box moved as it was in his way, the postmaster refused, "The box is sacred," he main- tained, A Similar ceremony once took place in China. All the arrange- merits had been made for the wedding of a beautiful sixteen- year-old girl and her fiance,- Ven$rg Unhappily, he was killed in an aeeident on their wedding eve. The broken-hearted bride-to- be decided that she wanted to 'ether husband, arid was instead Married to a large red vase, the symbol of her 'dead lover. Every year in central India a fabulously expensive wedding takes place between 4 pebble end a shrub. The ceremony, sponsored by a wealthy Maha- rajah, is a religious one, the pebble Symbolizing the god Vishnu aud the shrub a woman celled Site. She hod preyed to become Vishnu• 's wife lifter her death. f8Stit ibNo. The Canadian fruit and vege- table industry has a new tariff e deal. * * Announcement to this effect was made in the House of Com- mons by the Hon. Donald M. Fleming, Minister of Finance, when he introduced the Budget in the House of Commons on April 9. The changes, which' became effective on April 10, contain ad- jiestments of rates and in periods, of duty on some 40 items of which 11 pertain to processed products. * * i. The announcement of the changes was the culmination of a long, persistent struggle on the part of the Canadian Horticul- tural Council. The demand for change was predicted upon the damage to markets by the ever increasing quantities of imported produce finding their way into Canada and the fact that inter- national trade was being con- ducted under rules established thirty yeais ago and without re- gard for changing conditions in production and distribution. * * * A study of the revisions estab- lishes the fact that the industry has gained most of what it asked in the Tariff Board hearings of 1957 and contained in the Board's recommendations to the govern- ment. This implies that the Ca- nadian negotiators did a bang-up job in their many conferences with the U.S. representatives. True, a few concessions were made but they were of a minor nature such as elimination of the 10% ad valorem rate on some items out-of-season. The expectation Was that the. Americans would use potatoes and apples as the lever in an attempt to hold the line but lit- tle evidence of this is apparent in the results. * * The results achieved are the result not only of continued de- mands for change but also be- cause the industry saw to it that the overall problem was inter- jected into the last two Federal election campaigns when definite promises of consideration were given. To the credit of the gov- ernment the election promises have been fulfilled, For years no subject has cre- ated more difficulty for the Ca- nadian Horticultural Council arid. the provincial bodice, such as the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association,- than the manner in which imported pro- duce was disrupting domestic markets when home-grown pro- duce was available. The Cana- dian industry was not too much concerned with the importation of fruits and vegetables of a like and kind not produced in Gee- acla. It was aroused, however, by the competition created by low- priced produce of k kind pro- duced in Canada. This competi- tion was mounting year by year creating ever-increasing pressure for action, * * * One great gain was recognition of the plea for epetial tat Pre-packaged produde. The in- dustry's contention that if the catitidiari p repaektiging industry was be eheouragecT it had to have some peotectiote Prom trot on green' beans, beets, 13ruesel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, corn-on-01f, lettuce, parsnips'- and green peas in packages whigh- ing five pounds or less will have to pay a special additional rate of 5% during the period of the application of the speeific duty on the particular product, * * One concession that was made may meet with objection. It is found in the reduction from 20% to 71/2 % in the rate on de- hydrated citrus fruit juices. Oth- erwise the impression is that a pretty solid job was done. Birds Are Friends Of Crocodiles Nearly 2,500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotus first put forward the idea that cer- tain animals went into partner- ship with others for their Mutual benefit. To prove his point lie described how an Egyptian bird called the courser, a member of the plover family, went to the assistance of the formidable Nile crocodiles. "Living in the river, the croc- odile gets its mouth full of leeches," he wrote, "and when it comes out and opens its mouth -to the westerly breezes, the cour- ser goes in and gobbles up the leeches, which so pleases the crocodile that it does the cour- ser no harm," This seemed such an incred- ibly tall story that it is not sur- prising no one believed it. After all, no living creature was safe within reac of a crocodile's jaws, Nevertheless, Herodotus was right, and it was eventually es- tablished that the little courser does walk fearlessly up to the crocodiles as they bask in the sunshine on the banks of the Nile, picking out and eating the leeches that have collected be- tween their teeth. Coursers, in fact, share these duties with another bird, the spur-winged lapwing. This bird walks right inside the crocodile's mouth, which has been seen to close for a minute or so while the bird goes on gobbling up the leeches. When it is opened again the lapwing calmly walks gout in- to the daylight. In both of these examples there is a genuine partnership from which all the animals con- cerned derive some behefit. The crocodile is rid of the irritating leeches which it cannot deal with itself, and the birds get a very satisfying meal. Clearly the crocodile must re- cognize the benefit that it derives front the partnership, because it makes no attempt to harm these tevo birds, but would kill and eat any ether specie that came close enough to be caught. Since Herodotus's time a good many other examples of partner- ship in the animal kingdom have been discovered, Birds seem to be Pertiettlarl y good as partners, for in quite a 'number of exam- ples one of the partners is a bird. One of the best known of these is the cattle egret, a small kind of heron that spends its life Wan. dering about the African plains Withherds of wild cattle and ether grazing animals. As these animals walk througb the gross they disturb innumer- able grasshoppers and other bl- eeds, which the egrets pounce On arid eat before they can settle agent. It is not, however, a one-sided partnership, While some of the birds are chasing the grOSshOP- pers, other; are perched On the backs of the cattle, busily pick- ing out and eating the ticks that but7 themselves in their coats and cause them intense irritation, Although they gain much ben- eat from their association with the cattle, the egrets could live independent lives if they wanted, .3$ut another bird, the oxpecker or tickbird, which also comes from South Africa, has become so dependent upon its partners that it could not live without them. Like the cattle egret, the tick- bird is found in association with many different kinds of grazing animals, but its favourite Partner• is the rhino. Originally the tiekbird prob- ably fed on insects disturbed by its partners' movements through the grass. To-day, however, it relies entirely upon the ticks from their skins, and the flies which also settle on them. It seldom descends to the ground and will generally fly up into the trees only when disturbed by man's approach, Otherwise it spends the whole of its time on its partners' backs, even con- ducting its courtship displays and mating there, The tiekbird not only renders a valuable service to its hosts by ridding them of ticks, also it acts as a sentinel to warn them of the approach of danger - and danger generally means man. The bird usually sees an intruder when he is still a long way off, and begins to utter warning cries which become louder and more insistent as he approaches. Tiekbirds were not popular with big game hunters because too often they would utter their warning cries just as he was get- ting within gun range. Warning cries are given only at the ap- proach of man. One of the most remarkable of all bird partners is the African honey-guide, a distant relative of the cuckoo. It is very fond of the grubs of wild bees, which build their enormous nests in the trees, but it is not able to open these nests for itself. It does not, however, sit around and wait on the off-chance that some other animal may come along and do so, but enters into partnership with the ratel, a kind of badger which' is very fond of honey. There are usually plenty of bees' nests in the forests where the honey-guide lives, and it us- ually knows where several of them are to be found. Whenever it sees a ratel an interesting ser- ies ' of events follows. The bird flies about just above and in front of the badger, call- ing all the time. The badger knows what it is all about, and willingly follows along the di- rection indicated until the tree containing the bees' nest is reached. Up climbs the badger, breaks open the nest and eats the honey- comb, while the honey-guide picks out the fattest grubs from the brood comb. For the two animals concerned it is an ideal arrangement. With its short legs the badger could not travel the enormous distances that would be necessary if it had to search for its own nests. Upsidedown to Prevent Peeking , 01 0E13n L. 0 -mmim- m 0 umed-olo NI UGICEr3 am, beE61111a 1E11 u, mmim cum umCusgm±.10am vIBETIO OCIMADIUM MEM '5-14---0A413 URI EiNvMErUUM _.:1121 I A mow (2 .. ms 0 00- man ltd Itvy tr.arelay Want eli 8,A,, ILO. Solomon's Reign langs 9;11 Memory Selection: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own tmderstanding, In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He awl direct they paths. Proverbs 3:5-6. Solomon's reign of forty years was the golden age of Hebrew history, the one period when a Hebrew kingdom became the greatest and wealthiest nation of the known world. Solomon began the building of the tem- ple in his fourth year and corn- pleted it seven years later, His father, David, had prepared much of the material. It was modelled after the Mosaic ta- bernacle with the measurements usually double those of -the tabernacle. For nearly four cen- turies this temple was to be the center of the religious life of the Hebrew people, The grandeur of the Hebrew kingdom during this period of unprecedented prosperity brought many visitors. Their amazement was well expressed by the Queen of Sheba. She said, "It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of they acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceed- eth the fame' which I heard." Much of Solomon's wisdom has been prseerved for us in the Book of Proverbs, We should read it once a year, It will save us from many pit- falls. Was Solomon's reign success- ful? Next week we shall see that after his death his king- dom divided. His son and his son's young friends who had known only luxury lacked sym- pathy and nnderstanding for the common people whose taxes had greatly increased.. Solomon, himself, expressed his disillu- sionment in the Book at Eccle- siastes. Knowledge, gaiety and wealth do not insure soul satis- faction, His conclusion concern- ing each is, "This is vanity and vexation of spirit." He exhorts, "Remember now thy Creator In the days of thy y o u t h." His conclusion of the whole matter Is, "Fear God, and keep His commandments." Solomon's great weakness was his desire for women. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. "And his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father." "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food con- venient for me: lest I be full, and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." Proverbs 30:3, 9. ROUGH FINISH Alva Ragan, a builder, worked for five months on the construc- tion of a new surgical wing to a hospital in Oklahoma, Tidying up at the conclusion of the construction work Ragan slipped off a ladder, broke his ankle and was the first patient to be admitted to the wing, itt'e evening 0, First 10. Sloths 11. Daily 16. slice bottom 18. Paddles 20, indications 21. Warbles 22, Iltonlari 23. Watch faces 24. Sting 25, operatic heroine 27 Mon tn IIIIIMIMIIIMIIIINI IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMIll 111115 1111111111111111111 iiE11111111111R1 2° MIN 111111111111N111111111111 25 1111111111111111111111112111111 IMMO 30 MN= fig III 111111011111111111111111 11111 11111111/11111111M1111101 railli11111111S1 REM IIIIIIIMINII II. II 1111111M1111111111M III BMW III 1111r NM Ahewet sewhtee on 'this page ANel Wenner-Oren WILDERNESS RICHES Axel Weeies-bren s wea lthy w di • leduetelallet, is cha rti ng ,e6Oielealc empire in Ceiritedee northern Woods. Wenner-Grele hat became so identified with the area that ef huge treitt tWitith Columbia (Added area Oft. N6ifiorhap) been, nail c"Wenner-OrdiVitind,'" Hd hat plane for a 150 ,m.p.h. iionorail railroad; pulp milts land tilitiets- agges.1 project would je`t monster hydro-electr• ie 'power pro Lett Peace` Alvet, 13 miles east of Hudson Hope (pop. 200, tent of 'Wenner-Grerildticr. A storage dam- oh the river Would ted14 the largest artificial take in. North Arnerito, 25#1' miles long,