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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1959-07-16, Page 3MED IL©[]® RHO ummueLmunw uuum -month ma uun ©mon ooi000 O©o©oo mum.'coo ©oI N000;_DOME OtaNIE 9 L1 MOW ONME d5121 MUNE OBOE The $tory Of The Reh1100 t Drake They say this is a man's world, but I don't know, and the remainder of the time will be passed in considering the facts. This is my annual report on My foolish docks, and it is both. happy and sad.: Sad, because when I let the flock out of the palatial quar- ters I provide for their winter habitat, the time coincided nicely with the arrival at my neighbors, just up the road, of a jolly and active pup high- lighted with the name of Pansy. Pansy for some reason I have not to this late hour ascertained, Pansies are for thoughts, and If this alleged dog has a brain in his pumpkin head he has suc- ceeded handsomely in hiding said asset. Pansy came over and surreptitiously undertook, the systematic abolition of my ducks. Not with any animals, of course, but in a playful way intended to be only amusing. The ducks had come through the winter in tine shape, four hens and two drakes. The hens were heavy with eggs and all ready to go to work. The drakes were of brilliant hue, The mal- lard, drake still holds my ad- miration as one of the prettiest birds in nature. And with laud- able bravery the drakes stood up to Pansy while their hens scootedfor the drink and swans out on the billowing wave, quacking like all possessed. Pansy struck twice and my hens were widows, at which point I arrived and Pansy took off up the highway in great voice, pro- testing something I must have said to him. I do not recall what I said, but I am led. to believe it must have been good, for he hasn't been bask. Anyway, what had started as a happy forenoon in the spring- time of my ducks was now a hollow and forlorn occasion. My ducks are pets and pets only, and I donot look upon them as expendable. Upon the bosom of our barnyard lake the hen ducks swam in circles, protesting their grief, and asking who would now sit on the bank in the sun' and protect the property while they stole away to incubate the future. Some people think a hen does all the work, but they neglect to observe how the. rooster, or drake, bides his empty time and takes care of everything when nobody else is around. The mallard, of course, is a wild bird. Here in Maine they have been domesticated a long time, probably since the earli- est settlers found that they would forsake their natural NO STRINGS - Handsome and young (29), King Baudoin flashes the charm that has charmed other than Belgian hearts alone. 0 r flyaways and become pets, Other waterfowl may appear tame, but come tall they will. wing away if they ean. The mal- lard is different in this respect. So in the spring of the year with the wild flocks of water- fowl coursing our sky, it is pos- Bible to obtain replacements )f you know how and where. I thus 'came into possession of a fine drake never before feted at a barnyard hopper. He was smaller than my late drakes, for wild birds forage in the fens. and swamps and don't have the tame duck's chance toget big- ger and fatter at a full hop- per. Grain from a bag was news. to him. He quacked a good deal as I trimmed one 'of his winga with shears, and then I car- ried him out by the pond,'strok- ing his neck gently and whis- pering sweet nothings in his ear My four hens, thinking I was bringing the customary corn, as- sembled to meet me, and I placed him on the ground among them. Up went the heads of my ducks, and they wharked and wharked, and bespoke them- selves favorable of this arrange- ment. They called me a gentle- man and a scholar, remarked on the intelligence showing 'in my handsome face, and said they would support me gladly in any endeavor. ' The new drake, however, eyed them warily and seemed reticent. He did not know that ducks fraternized with human- ity, and he surveyed the work laid out and decided he wanted no part of it. He flopped his wings, as if to take off for Bat= fin Bay, and with his one abbre- viated wing he flopped over and landed in a heap at his ladies' flat feet. He was not at his best. He scrambled up, made profuse apologies, and trottled around in circles as if looking for a way out, Having found one, he swam across the pond and .went into the bushes onthe farside where he stayed out of sight for three days. I could hear his small comments now and then, as he, talked to himself in his perplex- ity, and described the tough go- ing through the Dire' Straigts, He was unhappy. He was the victim, he said, of a dirty trick, and he told of the joys of an Arctic summer. But now and then.., a "hen would swim over and' look up under the bushes, and would go whark-whark. Also,�s of hunger built up lit':i gullet, and one morning-liefiCiR out to see what he might de. your. That eveninghe came out again, and afterwards he went to the hopper and ate with the hens, and soon he was call- ing everybody sweety-pie and deary and lovey-dovey, and fawning and carrying on. They made a monkey out of him. He could have held off and named his own figure, but no - he was enticed into matri- mony. Just another husband subservient and enslaved - a man in a woman's world. 'He sits on the bank in the sun, minding the store, biding his time until feet patter in the mud and the peep of small mallards is heard in the weeds. And he seems perfectly hap- py now. He doesn't trust me al- together, yet, but he seems to have forgotten the wild Baffin Land shores where he would now be doing exactly what he is doing anyway - if it hadn't been for Pansy. - By John Gould in The Christian Science Monitor. In Southfield, Mich., High School Teacher Richard Welken- bach keeps discipline by writ- ing on- the black board. I'm in a bad mood today," and adding - a drawing of a bullwhip. ' CROSSWORD PUZZLE A f'nOS 9 1, Bag 6. Ooze 8, Chart 12. Judge of Israel I8. Force along 14. Land measure 15. Ripped 16. 161aherate public spectacles 18. Form words 20. Barter for sono. 21. Decrease 28. Sacrist linage 27. l9rlght:='.' 30. wooden' Propeller 81. Overhead ' 32..Gets rid of dirt 34 Of ,l wedding 35. Bobbins 86. Rabble 87. Building angle 88, where the 8 n rhos 80. Vagrants 41. Exposed to view 48. Largo masecs of atone 47, Searches thoroughly 51, Gasified tissue 58..1 ahn leaf 63. Stair 664, Uniform Soaked 66, Soaked 66 Oriental sauce 67, Coarse grass stout I10WN' 1. Collections 2 Drooping On one side 6 Pilch of matter 4 Mournful sound 6. Take the evening meal 6.ttuhher 7 Moth 6. Baker's 81, Bower shovel -like 33. Singing volcee implement 9. Fluman race 84. Style of hair cut 10 Painting. 38, Primate 11, Footlllce part 17. Excuse 39. Hundred 15 Laughing (comb. form) birds 40. Serious 22. Existed ' 42. Go by 24 Sys eds of 44. SSmalleba;y t 20 Ogg -shaped 40. Body joint 26 (31rl's 40. Dispatch nickname 47, Use 30 Across 27 Land measure 48. Beverage 28 Appeal 49, Clear profit 29 English rive, '6e Spring 2 3 4 '.-" 5 6 7 9 10 it 12 15 k"13 ka 1*..• 16 14 17 18 WOW 27 29 28 • " 19 -' 20 21 . . 22 . 23 24 25 26 P6100 31 32 31 34 35 36 37 38 sial 39 40 41 42 W•51••••••%W. 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 • 51 52 55 °fS 53, 64' 56•• sM4, 67 Answer elsewhere on this page AN EYE. FOR AN EYE Machu Saint Georges Is an honest -to -goodness Easter Islander. The 16 -year-old left her native' South Pacific .island to become an artist's model in Rome. Cat - eyed portrait of her was ddne by Roman painter Novella ParIginl. £FAJ!N FRONT JokA Canada is not the only country where over=production - or under -consumption - of • eggs has become a serious problem to thosein the business. This will be seen in the . following dispatch . front Illinois written by a Staff Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor. v * How serious is the egg surplus whichis causing prices to hit' new lows and is sending con- gressmen scurrying about for a program to help poultry farm- ers? Here in the Chicago area distributors,' farm organizations,' and the farmers themselves are considering the matter calmly. Most of them expect adjust- ments to occur, but meantime,`• many' farmers are taking figs* losses. Mrs. A. G. Holste, who gath- ers eggs from 'a flock of nearly 1,000 white Leghorns four times a day, seven days a week, in- vited me into her century- and - a -half -old. farmhouse. Wou ask my questions while she got lunch ready for her husband? Yes, she regarded the price situation as very difficult for many. She and Mr. Holste sell direct to suburban consumers on a "route," obtaining premium prele.s Even so, said Mrs. Hoiste, they were just about breaking even. But farmers who sell by. the case wholesale were having a difficult time of it, she said. "It's really frightful for them. I've been talking to some farm people from Iowa. They're actu- ally losing money for all their work," The figures bear' her out. Ac- cording to Dr. A. W. Jasper of the Poultry and Egg National Board, an industry organization, the best grade of eggs is selling in some areas three dozen for 89 cents. This means an aver- age loss of 10 cents a dozen to the farmer. The current surplus Is blamed. * * * "What can be done to remove the surplus from the market?" Mrs. Holste thought a bit. "It isn't easy to say. People don't seem to buy any more eggs when prices are low than they did when prices were up. It would help if they did. If every housewife would use just a few more eggs in her cooking and baking or if families would have them more often for breakfast, it would certainly help." "Should, the government sup- port price`s`?" Mrs. Holste was definite in her negative reply. Her husband, she said, had nev- er accepted subsidy payments* and felt the need was for less government rather than more of it. "He thinks our freedom is worth more than anything else," she explained. "I guess he's right. We don't want the gov- ernment to get into this." Of one thing she was certain, however. Individual farmers can- not afford to reduce the scale of their operation in egg produt'. tion. "You've got to do it in volume or you don't make any- thing." Mrs. Louis Werhane, wife of another poultry farmer in this area, and also a partner in the enterprise, gave me a similar opinion. "Either you raise eggs on a bigger scale than you used te, or you don't make money " * * * The querulous clack -clucks from the hen houses on these farms sounded just the same as those of one's childhood, when farm wives carried on a little egg business for pin money. But everything`else, it .seems, has changed. Grandmother took her eggs to the store and traded them for groceries. Now most farmers pack their eggs in cases and sell them to the wholesaler who in turn sells them to the city distributor. .At present, with eggs selling around 37 cents a dozen in the chain stores for their best grade, the price at the farm averages about 25 cents a dozen. This is 12 cents a' dozen lower than a year ago. ' Whether a farmer can stay In the egg business now depends upon the efficiency and scale of his poultry operation. Some big operators, highly mechanized and possessed of the advantages of large scale purchases of feed and supplies, can produce' far more cheaply than others. They expect to weather the low price period. But many small produc- ers who lack _these advantages are expected to get out of the egg business. For the general farmer who raises hens on the side this may not make much difference, but for the small producer who does nothing else it can be exteremly serious. 4, * * W. Glenn Stiska, a Chicago distributor who handles the out- put of about 150 farms, buying directly from the farmers, said he has observed changes due to price shifts. Higher prices of previous years, he noted, brought more farmers into the egg busi- ness and increased the number marketing through his organiza- tion. At present the number is up about 18 per cent over a year ago. But some farmers have in- dicated to him that they intend to give up hens and go back to raising hogs. In the trade, these people are known as "in-and- outers." Mr. Stiska says most of his customers who expect to remain in the business hope the gov- ernment will keep hands off at the present time. * * Dr. Kenneth Hood, head of the Commodity Division of the American Farm Bureau Federa- tion, says that his organization expects adjustments to occur that will bring prices up again. There were 13 per cent fewer eggs in incubators May 1 of this year than a year before, and he ex- pects this downward trend to continue. But the current sur- plus will hang on for some time and the Farm Bureau is carry- ing on a campaign in coopera- tion with chain stores to encour- age the use of more eggs. The Poultry and Egg National Board is doing promotional work alae. Statistically the surplus is not of serious proportions The in- crease in egg production over the last decade has been less in percentage than the gain in pop- ulation. But unfortunately con- sumption has fallen off. This is blamed in part on the rise of the "coffee break," a deterrent to bacon - and - egg breakfasts. More good breakfasts, more souf- fles, more angel food cakes made from scratch, and the surplus might very well vanish, A nation of cooks with egg beaters in hand could be at least a partial answer to the egg price problem. Anatomyof a Hit Disk jockeys all over the U.S. 'and Canada have been touting "La Plume de Ma Tante" as ons of the songs from the current Broadway show of the same name. You can hardly blame them. The prize-winning French comedy revue has been a hit since it opened last November, and it seemed only natural that a hit musical should have a hit tune. Oddly enough, the same thought occurred to songwriters Al Hoffman and Dick Manning when they saw "La Plume de Ma Tante," and so the composers of "Takes Two to Tango" and "Papa Loves Mambo" wrote their own "Plume." Released only a few weeks ago, the bouncy tune was already zooming on popularity charts, and RCA Victor was hap- pily filling 61 deluge of orders. ]1 'La Plume de Ma Tante' hits No. 1," Hoffman mused, "I won- der if anyone will realize that it's the only hit song from a Broadway show to make it big this year and it's not even in the show." Robert Dh'1ry the effervescent writer, director, and star of the real "La Plume de Ma Tante," doesn't mind the song at all. "Even if you have a hit," he philosophized, "every little bit of publicity heaps, It Iney even Iteep me in the U.S. a while longer." Dhery was just being nice. "La Plume" is booked for an Indef- inite run on Broadway. "My wife has threatened to leave me unless I give up play- ing golf," remarked Fothers to his friend at the club. "That's serious." "Yes, I shall miss her." MERRY MENAGERIE "Sometimes T feel like I've got the world by the tall -and sometimes vice versa!" ISSUE 27 - 1959 ND SCUFF 'LESSON.. i» lieu R. Barclay Warless B.A., 13.D, Decisions Determine Destiny Deuteronomy 30: 15-10; 31: T-15. Memory Selection; The Lord, he It is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not, neither be displayed. Deuteronomy 31:8. Our lessons includes the last address of Moses to the Israel-, lies east of Jordan, He sets be- fore them a blessing and a curse. But how great is God's mercy! Even though they should diso- bey and he scattered among the nations there is this promise to them that if thou "shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with alt thy soul; that then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scat- tered thee." The same principle applies to us today. "All have sinned and sona'e Short of the glory of God," But if we will re- pent of our sins. and believe on Jesus Christ, we shall be for- given and restored to the favor of God. e e s The handing over of the lead- ership by Moses to Joshua is a memorable scene. Moses, after leading Israel out of the Egyp- tian bondage and for 40 years of wanderings in the wilderness will not have the privilege of leading them into the promised land. He forfeited this honour through his impatience and pro- vocation at the waters of strife. Ps. 106:33, Numbers. 20. There is no word of complaint now. In the sight of ail Israel he en- courages oshua for the tank that will be his. He showed a great spirit. Decisions determine destiny. This si illustrated in the history of Israel. It is shown in the life of Moses. "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 'daughter; choosing rather to suf- fer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleas- ures of sin for a season- " lis. brews 11.24,25. This decision net only shaped his own destiny but also the destiny of Israel. Our decisions affect the destiny of others. Someone has said, "Sow a thought, rear) a Word; sow st word, reap an act; sow an acts, reap a habit; sow tt habit, reap a. character sow a characted, rea a destiny." How true! Let us ponder our decision. "Did you do all you could to avoid the accident, miss?" a constable asked the young wo- man car driver. "Oh, yes," she replied. "I shut my eyes and screamed as loud as I could!" Upsidedown to Prevent Peeking SHEER JOY - At six months of age, sniffing a clover blossom is cause for joy,