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The Seaforth News, 1958-08-28, Page 5Cat That Planted Burdock Burs Theophilus, the thistle sifter, who sifted a sieve full of unsift- ed thistles and thrust 3;000 this - ties through the thick of his thumb, according to an ancient legend often repeated in these parts, may not have known, as I do, that the common burdock, or cocklebur, belongs ' to the. thistle family and may be sifted with similar success. I have been sifting burdocks of late, and have many more to do, In the book, where it says the burdockis a thistle, it also says the root is known as Gobo in Japan, where it is a popular vegetable. The Gobo root is about three feet long and taper- ed like a sprinting parsnip, be- ing able to sink through blue clay, chalcedony, granite, jasper, and vitreous rocks, so a harvest of a cartload would require, some doing. If I were a hungry Japanese, waiting for lunch, I might show some impatience while the cook struggled to bring forth a Gobo. The burdock is not a beautiful thing, and finding it in "Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know" is stretching the defini- tions somewhat But it is there, under pink flowers. Children usually know all about the bur- dock, for no generation ever moved up through the categories without stopping to play with burdock burs. Really wicked little boys rub a handful into some girl's long hair, and the less wicked accidentally arrive at fundamentally the same thing. 1f you have a pure heart, and a ball of burdock burst, and go tossing them around, there is a margin of error seldom neg- lected, and the little girl goes home a -crying just the same. Then you get the seat of your pants warmed just the same, and the burdock business drops off for the season. To be more specific, we had a bay who was put in the front seat where the teacher could get to him fastest, and he used to wear a thick home -knit sweater made from black sheep's wool and undyed. Those of us up in the back of the room would take two or three nice burdock burs, and we would throw them so they would stick in the back of this sweater - a kind of dart game If, perchance, one of these missiles went astray we would lose it, more or less, and some lucky girl in the line of fire would have it. But those that scored "would pile up on Bur- leigh's back, and at recess time we would pick them all off and get ready to start over again. So, the burdock Is not only es- teemed as a food, but has a rec- 8eational value, and promotes MUGGING IT UP - Jack Parson, ane of five men arrested in Minneapolis, on a narcotics charge, "poses" for the news cameraman. He is shown in the city's police headquarters. marksmanship, and goes to show that nothing is ever entirely negative. The Gobo thrives in this cli- mate, and once it gets a start is likely to be on hand a long time. A weed -drench will ruin it, but if you have a good •catch it takes a little doing to drench all the burdocks, A few years back, after long years of careful eradication of the weed, we had none anywhere around, but then a cat came into my life, and the cat planted burdocks for me. This is true. 'A couple of rough, uncouth characters moved onto the Prince lot, and spent almost a year cutting pulpwood and lumber, and they had this cat in their little shan- ty hanty When they finished that job and moved away they left the cat behind. He was a large cat, well acquainted with country life, and he didn't seem to mind. He stayed on the tar -paper shanty and provisioned himself around the countryside as cats cah, and seemed both happy and spry The slash of the cut-off sudsided, and a fine clutch of burdock came in. When the burdocks went to seed the second year, the cat would range through them, and would come out all stuck over and looking like the back of Burleigh's sweater. This didn't add to the appearance of the cat. He used to sit up on a stump and lament And later he used to come down through the woods and soak his tail in a springhole near my plum or- chard, and then he'd climb up on a limb and claw at the burs in his tail, sobbing and wailing. The cat wasrsad, and you could tell. There wasn't much you could do, because nobody could get within a quarter mile of this cat, and he had no friends, But a couple of years later I found a ring of newly sprouted burdock bushes all amongst my plum trees, and they were doing fine. For a rat, it was a well -planted burdock crop. I put my hoe on the grindstone and got an edge on it like a razor, and I would go out and chop at the furdooks until I had dismembered Gobo piled up in windrows, but this didn't dispose all of it. No mat- ter how much I chopped, there would be a sneaker left, and each year I had more and more Gobo. This year I invested in a tall can of sure -do weed drench, and went after the stuff for real. Each morning I mix up a sprinkling can and walk out along the fences, pouring my concoction on the broad leaves of my burdock, The stuff works very well, and after a few days it wilts, and then dries away to a curl, and after a week there is just n brown spot I think if I keep at it, I may undo that cat's work before any more of the stuff goes to seed. "Children (the book says) de- light to gather the shaggy green burs of the Beggar's Button and form them into birds' nests, bas- kets, dolls, and a various assort - mean of other things." True - we used them like building blocks, sticking them together into choo-choo trains, wagons, and anything that came to mind. And if Edith, with golden hair, came to school one morning fairly closely cropped, it prob- ably meant her mother had tak- en the scissors to clear away a goodly batch of burs, and I like that phrase -"Children delight. .-By John Gould in The Christian Science Monitor. POINT OP VIEW A newspaper reporter in Syd- ney, Australia, made mention in his paper that an Australian film about New Guinea was be- ing shown to the Australian pub- lic under the title, "Walk Into Paradise." The same film, when distributed in the U.S., will car- ry a more pungent title: "Walk Into Hell." CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 1. Grow to he 7. items "f Property 13, Clay bricks 14 Kind ot two - seated vehicle in. itecapltulate '16. Stir up 17.'1 hose holding. office 18 Soak up 90. Carve 21 l'un for assaying metals 23, Story 20 Pleror 29. Needlefish 81, Daily 82. Baffled 04, Translate' rom code 90. Conflict 87. Bu imo w 39 !enticed 40. Clip 42. Aaeail 44. snort 40 Gr. letter 47, watch pocket 50 Ilaker 00 .men's clothes 58, Poke 1 e for granted 65. Zoroastrian scripture 57.. Bents 8. .Divi back 58. Lrherenl salts DOWN 1. Negro tribe or the Sudan 2. British statesman 8. Policemen 4 Gr. clan . enbdivielon Rhythmical 6 Bar legally 0. Wing 8, r11r1's name s. Nasal sound 83, Drop batt 10. Teacher. lightly 11. Tasmania 35, incision (ab.) 38.1 urn right l2. Go to law 40. Heart boat 19. Cribbage 43. Not fresh 'mark11. Mass. cans 4r 7. Meltrve 22, Stripling 48 Persian poet 24. Atetal deposit 49. "Good 25 Watched Queen - - -" narrowly 50. Coal product 28. Uses needle 81. Broad and thread street (au.) 27. Wolfhound 52. Male sheep 28. Cleansed 64 Posed for a. 30 Sets free nortralt 11©®®11111 1®®®®® ®11111111&°A!I[��tr_� ®11®1111 ®1111.x::: ®1111®® 447x::111 ea ritdrv.-. 20 60 30 11E11 101111111111 10111111111 1111®1111■ ®11111111 :.1®1111111111 1111111111i111111■1111 Answer elsewhere on this page. NEAR -RECORD U.S. WHEAT CROP - A mountain of new -crop wheat from Illinois and Missouri starts journey to Europe in this barge which is being loaded from a grain elevator near St. Louis, Mo. It will be taken clown the Mississippi to waiting ocean vessels at Baton Rouge, La. This year's wheat crop will be the biggest since 1947 and the second largest on record - more than 1,311,000,000 bushels. It's very often interesting to hear the other fellow's views even If - as happens in this ease - they sound a bit screwy. Herewith I pass along a picture of the future as seen by a Uni- versity of California professor. Just where the farmer fits into such a picture I haven't been able to figure out as yet, but if 1 were you, I wouldn't worry about it too much! * * * A famous California savant. has taken the play away from the politicians by his alluring forecast of tomorrow's worka- day world. Scorning the old slo- gan of "two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot," Dr. Clark Kerr has beaten politi- cians to the forecast that Amer- ican wage earners will be en- joying "two houses to every family" within the next 20 years. The University of California's new resident forecasts that a four-day week in industry isn't very far away, with "a month's vacation, or longer," for the average factory hand. In a Utopian -tinted talk on "The New Leisure, the New Wealth, the New Community," Dr. Kerr told a meeting of the West's Metropolitan Planners that these are only a few of the social probabilities unfolding in the nuclear age. * * * Dr. Kerr, a veteran industrial arbitrator by background, be- lieves that mounting productiv- ity and rising individual incomes will necessitate wider work - sharing among the expanding population. He believes labor leaders will find that the pro- posed six -hour working day isn't practical because of the time workers consume in com- muting and the efficiency losses resulting from breaking in on factory shifts. The four-day week is the answer. At least every other week, he insists. * * * The Berkeley educator thinks the American city stands on the effulgent threshold of an even greater glory than anything yet achieved by Paris or London or New York and San Francisco. But the suburb seemed to fade right out of his 1984 crystal ball. The American suburb isn't really citified and neither is it country. He foresees "a great renovation" of city centers to be enjoyed by people who are tired- of commuting. He thinks the average American wage earner will have "an apartment in the city and a cabin in the country." This trend means the decline of the suburbs, which future," perhaps. The suburb, will become "the slums of the after all, "is really very dull and altogether conformist!" * * *. The metropolitan experts were told to anticipate the urbaniza- tion of America and to plan highways to accommodate a commuting pattern that carries people away from their city apartments to long weekends and longer vacations in their re- moter rustic castles. Dr. Kerr said he foresees metropolitan regions almost cov- ering states as in some East Coast areas; and with all this the "flowering of institutions" that promote and extend "recreation, health and culture" for the masses. * * * This, he believes, is the es- sential concomitant of "the new wealth" that will stem out of bursting technology and ris- ing productivity. He expects a mose intensive mass preeettipa- tion with the desire to expand incomes. Perhaps inflation will accelerate this. But the leveling trend already is far advanced. Labor skills will play second fiddle to premium pay for smelly or distasteful jobs in the leisure- ly decades ahead. Coal miners who work in dirt, darkness and great danger - where going to. work every morning is like go- ing to war - or floor scrubbers or garbage collectors, these will be the elite of the technological renaissance. * * * Dr. Kerr thinks per "apita income will be up 50 per cent by 1984, putting street car conduc- tors in the $10,000 a year brack- et or close to it. Having just toured Africa on a foundation grant, Dr. Kerr was struck by the wage disparity between the skilled and the unskilled. Whereas in Africa, he noted wage differentials of as much as 1,000 per cent, in the United States the differential is about 50 per cent; Great Britain, 25 per cent and Denmark and Aus- trialia about 10 per cent. The University of California presi- dent thinks this narrowing trend is fast developing in the United States. * * * Look at it this way, he urged metropolitan planners from San Diego to Seattle, the United States is spending 15 per cent of its gross national product for future investment, the Soviets about 30 per cent, It behooves the planners, he implied, to ap- ply themselves to creating more parks and better highways to accommodate the new leisure that comes with new wealth. Coming down to earth for e moment, Dr. Kerr cited the Lin - coin Square development pro- ject in New York as a shining foretaste df tomorrow when the trashman will be making out a higher income tax return than the professor - and there will be two homes in every bread- winner's life. The Eyes Have H It was stated by a French criminologist some time ago that 75 per cent of the world's biga- mists have had brown eyes. The reason? Because brown - eyed men are generally more passion- ate and have stronger and deeper emotions. This doesn't mean, of course, that ALL brown -eyed men are potential bigamists, he hastened to point out. The fascination brown -eyed men often have for women was illustrated in the United States by the case of Dr. Webster who, after confessing that he had murdered two of his wives, ad- mitted that ha had previously eloped with no fewer than ten infatuated women. "There was nothing in Web- ster's personality to attract wo- men except his extraordinary brown eyes," wrote a man who knew hin'l. "They fascinated even those who were guarding him by the curious impression of hidden power they gave." Blue or grey -eyed persons liv- ed longer than brown -eyed ones, according to a survey carried out by a German insurance company. It was found that dark blue eyes in the young frequently change to a different shade after middle age. Some observers say that in Britain the blue-eyed strain in the population is slowly dying out for some unknown reason, and the brown -eyed strain is surviving, It has been pointed out that if one parent has brown eyes and the other blue, their children are much more likely to have brown eyes than blue. Upsidedq}yn to Prevent Peeking ©{�0©©©®' -©© ' ©0 NEEK7©®,:EI®©®®II� ©®®©©0 EI IIIlll�ii© r, , . ,.191©RJ©0'D 0fl©© ❑e ©DSD .. 1E11 110 t7A152 ©coo©o o©ao©© VI0© 013153 Ell:10I A ©RI010'' ID©MOQ . ,.' 'i X00 000,d©fl ©©IIIDItIFA ;©1/©'0©ti 111E2E1©®0 'y©©D10OkA ©©1E 14 : `©©ER©0 11NDAY SCII001 liSSON By 1tev. R. Barclay Warren B.A., B.1) Justice to Minorities Leviticus 19:33-34; Deutero- nomy 24:14-15; Matthew 9:9-13; Galatians 3:28. Memory Selection: Let bro- therly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers! for thereby some have enter- tained angels unawares. Be - brews 13:1.2. Canadians of English and French descent sometimes speak of New Canadians of other racial extractions as "foreign- ers." They conveniently forget that their own forefathers came here from other lands. Only the Indians and Eskimos are natives of this land We would do well to heed the instructions given Israel: "If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwel]eth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God" The hired were to be paid "on time." This principle of the old law is practised today. It is the responsibility of the employer to see that the pay is delivered on time, regardless of where the man may have been sent in his work. Jesus did not discriminate against minorities. The few Jews who collected taxes for the Roman Overlord were despised by their countrymen. But Jesus called one of them, Matthew, to become a disciple and apostle. He went to dine at Matthew's home to meet other members of the despised class of publicans. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. But Jesus asked one of their women for a drink and proceeded to tell her of the Water of Life She be- came a disciple and brought to Jesus many others who also be- lieved. The Gospel is for all. Paul wrote, "There is neither Jew or Greek, there is neither bond nor frees there is neither 01,819 Or female: for ye are all one in Christ Je3113" Goa 15 hti respecter of pelting, The ground is level around the cross. Dif- ferences of race, social standing or sex make no difference there. We have all sinned. We may all find salvation in the one Person, Jesus Christ. The conditions are the same to all: repentance for our sins and faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. Minority groups of any kind should receive just treatment at the hands of both the state and the church. ROCKET SLIP - No outer space craft in the wrong orbit, this "Jet Rocket" is actually the diesel locomotive of a Rock Island Railroad train. It wound up in this embarrassing position after accidentally sliding off a turntable while being turned around. •ea, 4 F+' 'gyp p '&;leis! SWOLLEN MISSISSIPPI -Passengers going aboard the excursion steamer Admiral had to walk a little more than usual to board the vessel in St. Louis, Mo., as the swollen Mississippi River forced the use of extension gangways. The river reached its crest of about 30 feet in St. Louis on July 25.