The Bon Homme County independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1904-1913, 1912-03-14
HOT A L

''One of the gags of the professional
~funnyists and the ground and lofty
jokesmiths for the past forty years or
10 has appertained to the man who in
guires on a not day, is it hot enough
Cor you?'" observed the man with the
~!orotruding chin and the deep, hoarse
voice.
We'll, / want that gag Cancelled,
scratched, written off. daubed out, cut
away, Topped and sent to the boneyard
along with the Observation-Disclosures
at-the-picnic joke, the young-fellow-
Who-stays-late screech and ew-a-bu
ton-on-r1y-snirt thing and a whole lot
of other pdsse and decrepit ones that
ought to ave been wiped away long
before Artemus Ward and Josh Billings
cashed in.
Whats the matter with the man
h asks If it is hot enough for you,
anyhow? What's wrong about his ques-
ton? Why shouldn't he ask if it's hot
enough for you? Why should he be q
target for all these gaggists who pick a
little thing like that up and masticate
on it for a hundred years or so, till
everybody who reads just the first line
knows the old thing by heart, no mat
ter in what different kind of way it's
twisted?
IF the day is hot, why shouldn't a
man say So?
when the days cold we bleat about
it and discuss it and comment on it and
compare thermometers and brag about
how cold it is on our ~second-story porch
and make a whole peck of conversation
i'm general about 1t, don We?
IF we're staked to a big heap of
snow we gnaw the blanket about that,
too. don't we, n tell each other how
high it is in drifts and on the level.
and how our suburban car butted
lxa,,.l, the ta11aef lrift nf oil and hnyu
we had to shovel a path out the kitchen
way, and how we like to've lost our
lives trying to get home, and all that
sort Of gay snow polixity, don't we,
hey?
If the rain comes down pretty steady
and powerful, we're there with right
hefty stories, aren't we, about how we
couldn't see our hands before us for 1t
out our way, and after while we drift
back to the times when the heavy rains
and melting snow in the mountains
made the foods during which skiffs
were seen on Pennsylvania avenue and
we're Observation-Disclosures
with all kinds and name of spiels on
the rain question. aren't we, l ask
again?
IF there's a nifty hail storm, we
prattle no end, don't we. about the size
of the hailstones in front Of our house,
and about what narrow escape our fox
terrier mutt had from being killed by
being hit by one of them when he fool
ishly scampered out into the yard to get
a bone, and how the rattle of the stones
on the roof sounded like the volleying
Of rifes-we're there, are we not, with
an endless chain of conv ersational junk
about that hail storm, are we not?
"And when we're blanketed by an un-
usual fog, don't we get out on to the
gabfest firing line, and stake each other
TO more or less fanciful stories about
the thickness of it out in our vicinage,
and how one of u young ones came
neal getting lost trying to get home
from the grocery, to which he'd been
sent to get a bar of soar through that
fog, and how when we Struck a match
it didn't light up a quarter of an inch
of radius and refused to more than
sputter, anyway-we converse largely
and expansively through out chapeaus
about the big fog, don't we?
"Uh-huh. All right.
asking If it's hot enough for you? Heat
is weather, isn't 1t? It's part of the
climatic game, / suppose? Then why
should IL be barred In the betting Why
should the gaggists have been all these
years with the pieasant-spoken and
good-natured chap who. just as a sort
of greeting that comes natural to him,
aShS you IL IL > hui Cllou6h " yoas
"You don't wan him to say, when he
meets you on a sizzling day, that you're
wearing a bum hat, or that your feet
are not mates, or that your trousers
need pressing, or that he hears that you
were soused the limit last night, or that
he wishes your wife 'ud stop practicing
on the piano for the rest of the sum-
mer-do you?
We'll, he doesn't do any of these
things. He just up and asks you, to be
civil and to pass the time of day, If It's
hot enough for you, and If you're not a
crouch and If you have any thinking
power Of your own and If you don't per-
NIT yourself to be swayed and bullied
by these gaggists that I'm talking
about, you'll just make a reply as to
whether it's hot enough for o like
you would reply to any other question,
and let it go at that.
"All of the fellows that I know who
ask me If it's hot enough for me are
bully decent chaps, people that I like.
and nothing at all like the asinine pulp
nuts portrayed by the is-it-hot-enough-
for-you jokesmiths. They're all right.
1 hope that they'll be asking that ques-
ton as long as they live, and that af-
ter they die they'll-er-well. no, I don't
wish that, of ~course-but, say, on the
level now, and all Of this extraneous
matter aside, is it hot enough for your"