Letter From A Farm Kid

Dear Ma and Pa,
I am well. Hope you are.
Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly6 A. M. but I am getting so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things.
No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay.
Practically nothing.
Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water.
Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs ,bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food,
But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee.
Their food plus yours holds you till noon when you get fed again.

It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route marches," which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it's not my place to tell him different.

A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home.
Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

This will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why.
The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move, andit ain't shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home

I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake.
I only beat him once.

He joined up the same time as me, but I'm only 5'6" and 130 poundsand he's 6'8" and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,
Carol

Lemon Study

No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ' Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.

"You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it, and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again, and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that, and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, and you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity."

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops(CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, free medical, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.


I don't know about you, but just reading these words gives me an unconfortable feeling, because as bad as it is now, it is getting worse, and who knows what the coming election will bring? No matter how hard I try, or how positive I try to be, I just cannot believe in the great change that the current presidential candidates, and those endorsing them, are trying to convince us is possible if only he or she is elected. All I can feel--with all that they are promising-- is that any change is going to be for the worse rather than for the better. Maybe, it's because I'm just a pessimist, always expecting the worst--but maybe it is a 'gut-feeling' which is very seldom ever wrong. None of the presidential candidates are miracle workers--this much I know for sure.

Maybe we would all do well to remember that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.

~Thomas Jefferson