Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-11-10
Old FASHIONED GUM

Il observe that the man who first put
| pepsin into chewing gum has Just died"
| said the man who notices things. I'm
| warned by this one that the gum-chewipg
habit hurts the eyes and eventually destroys
the vision. and by that one that It swells
the muscles of the jaws and makes the hu-
man face look as If 1t had been put on side
1 ways; but I chew a whole lot of gum. all
the same, and like 1t. and believe that 1t
agrees with me and does me good Trouble
I with the blamed stuff is that when 1 work
| on a wad of gum for long time it tires
| my countenance. like walking down town on
4 election night tires the feet: and still. for
all that, have hard time letting go of it.
!, I know that my jaws ache. and that the
! gum is making me nervous and mad. and
! vet 1 can't muster the determination to
chuck 1t away for long time. tin, finally.
/, In a fit of desperation / blurt out. Dog
| gone this gum! and then gather myself for
! the herculean effort of getting rid of it.
Member the things you used to chew
| when you were tike? ] do. Makes my
/ face ache even to think of EN-. You never
hear any more of the kinds of gum that
| used to be chewed when l was a shaver.
/, The gum-chewing kids of today have all the
best of it. as for the matter of that. they
| have In every other respect, over the young
! 'uns that did their growing up generation
! or SO ago.
Take that spruce gum. for example, that
| we used to gnaw on. Wasn't that CHASTITY
| horror? / don't know what It was made of.
| 1t was supposed. / believe, to be the nat
ural gum of the spruce tree put through a
| process. and 1t may have been, at that II
| tasted like the piney smell of woods. sort
1 of balsamic and foresight first. that Is.
| The sprucey taste of wad of 1t would
| wear off. though. after it had been used
| for four or five weeks, and after that 1t
| wouldn't taste of anything except pain and
| misery. 1t certainly was hard work to
| chew that spruce gum after 1t had been
! working for a month or two. You see, that
| spruce gum had the peculiar habit OF be-
coming harder and harder the more it was
! chewed until eventually 1t had the con-
F! sistency of sort of partly malleable gutta-
percha. I'd just about as lief. now. try to
! chew tire-ruboer to tackle a hunk Of that
| old-tine spruce gum.
USED to chew a lump of it all the time
| that l wasn't sleeping or eating, and sew
| eral times I went to bed and to sleep with
| a COB of it in my face. Once when 1 did
! that it got into my hair and spread itself
| all over my head. Nothing doing in the
| way of combing my hair next morning, and
| of course my mother had to go to work on
| the job of getting 1t out. There wasn't any
chance to get it out. though. She first soak
| ed my head in turpentine and tried to ioosen
| the gum up that way, but it wasn't any use
Then, after washing the turpentine off, she
| saturated my top-piece with sweet Oil. Gum
| still stuck just as hard as ever Then some
| neighbor came along and suggested to my
] mother that she try soaking my head In
| goose grease, and rebelled-crawled under
/ the shed and stayed there till my mother
had promised that she would nag the
| goose grease. Only thing she could do was
| to take me down to the b.acksmiths and
1 have him shear my hair close to my Skull
| with his horse clippers. That suited me all
| right. at that, even If did look IKE a
| youthful Bill Sykes when it was over, for
| with skull-tight hair didn't have to waste
any time in drying 1t after 1 sneaked off
| and went in swimming.
| "Once in while I'd forget to take the
gum out of my mouth when went into
| school, and I'd go right on gnawing IL a1ter
I'd taken my seat and opened up my books.
and then teacher'd notice the way my jaws
| were moving and she'd call me up and
| ask me what was chewing, and, with the
| gum underneath my tongue, I'd tell her,
| 'Nothin' and then she'd squeeze my jaws
| with her fingers to try to force the gum
out. and I'd deliberately swallow it. Uh-
| huh, just swallow lump o spruce gum as
| big as two butternuts. just for the sake
| of making lie stick-it sure Is queer how
proud small boys are of their lies and 10
| what uncomfortable and injurious extremes
| they'll go to make their lies good. I've had
those swallowed Jumps of spruce gum stay
| in mel knew 1t and felt it-throughou! an
entire summer vacation, but l never said
| word about 1t to anybody-not much.
| LAS general thing, though, upon en-
| tering the school room I'd stick my hunk
| of gum underneath my desk and let 1t stay
there till school was ready to let out, when
d grab it again. Now, left school very
| suddenly when / was a growing tike, on
account of the death of one of my parents
| Moved away from the little old town alto
gether. About twenty years later, winch
| was five years ago. went back to the lit
| tie old town to have peek at 1t. 1t was
| during the school vacation, and so l visited
| my old class room and sat down at the very
| desk where 1 had sat as boy-there were
my big sprawly initials on the side of the
desk. surreptit:ously carved with my first
| pocket knife one evening when I'd been
| kept in after school While sitting at the
old desk, suddenly remembered where
| kept my gum in school, and reached under
| the desk, and there. sure enough. was
| lump of gum stuck in the same old place.
! But it WASH my gum-the piece I had left
behind when 1 quit school. 1t was hunk
of modern, sanitary gum. left tlere at the
I beginning of the vacation by the kid &C.
| cupying my old seat. When felt 1t there
kind O. hoped it might be my old COB
/ of spruce gum, and 1t made me lonesome
| to see that it wasn't. Where are the gobs
| of yesteryears?
"'Member that measley, onnery, tallow-
| white sweet gum sold in little fattened-out
penny cakes that we used to buy when we
| were kids-the color of white wax candles,
| and sprinkled all over with glfstening su-
| gar? used to always feel that l got
| cheated when 1 came into possession of
! a COB of gum like that for 1t wasn't last
| ing After you'd chewed on a lump OF it
| for three four weeks it would begin to
| gradually grow soft, and not hard ike the
| spruce gum. 1t would get so soft that. at
| to sort of wither away, and you'd swallow
| lot of the particles of it. 1t was never
! moneys worth at all, l considered. When
| was a boy 1 wanted gum with staying
4 qualities and the ability to go the entire
| distance-gum that l could trade off with
| some other boy for marbles or chalk or
| sp:keIess tops or something after I'd used 1t
| three or four months. You could never
| trade off that whitey-tallowish gum.
| Then, too, we used to chew shoemaker's
wax when we could get hold of hunk. I
| had an old German shoemaker on my staff
| when I was a youngster 1 sent all of the
| shoe-repairing trade of my family In his
| direction in order to make this hit with him.
| In return, he would once in while give me
| little black lump of shoemaker's wax
| that he had been using for ten or fifteen
| years to add strength to his threads and
| strings. 1t would be black as SCOT, but
| it was shoemaker's wax all right, and the
fact that the shoemaker had been handling
| it all those years and that It had been kick
| ing around among the tools of the grimy
| old bench since before l was born never
/ made the slightest difference to me. I'd
! scrape off the outer cuticle of black grease
| and imagine that I was having the time of
my life chewing It. I'd show it to the
| other kids before beginning on it to make
| 4lnlr NIL tall