The Wagner leader. (Wagner, Charles Mix County, S.D.) 1912-1912, 1912-03-15
HOT TALK.

"One of the gags of the professional
~funnyists and the ground and lofty
jokesmiths for the past forty years or
SO has a~ppertained to the man who in
quires on a hot day, Is 1t hot enough
for your" observed the man with the
protruding chin and the deep, hoarse
voice.
We'll. l van that gag Cancelled.
scratched, written off. daubed out. cut
away, Topped and sent to the boneyard
along with the custard-pie-full-of-ants-
at-the-picnic joke, the young-fellow-
who-stays-late screech and sew-a-but-
ton-on-my-shirt thing and a whole lot
OF other passe m decrepit ones that
ought to ave been wiped away long
before Artemus Ward and Josh Billings
cashed in.
What's the matter with the man
b asks ii 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 a
target for all these gaggists who pick a
little thing like that up and masticate
on 1t for a hundred years or so. till
everybody who reads just the first line
knows the old thing by heart. no mat
ter in hat 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 1t and
compare thermometers n brag about
how cold it is on our second-story porch
and make a whole peck of conversation
in general about 1T, don't We?
IF we're staked to a big heap of
snow we gnaw the blanket about that,
too, don't we, and tell each other how
high it Is in drifts and on the level.
and how our suburban car butted
through the tallest drift of all. n how
we had to shovel a path out the kitchen
way, and how we Ii 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 dow pretty steady
n powerful. we're there with right
hefty stories, aren't we, about how we
couldn't see III hands before us for 1t
out way. and after while we drift
IA to the times when the heavy rains
n melting now in the mountains
made the floods during which skihs
were seen on Pennsylvania avenue. and
were OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
with all kinds and manner 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
Oh the nAllSlOfl6S III lIOIl VI out AOdSCB
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 rifies-we're there, are we not, with
an endless chain of conversational junk
about that hail storm. are we
And when we're ~blanketed by an I'M
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 yicinage,
and how one of our young ones came
near getting lost trying to get home
from the grocery, to which led been
sent to get a bar of soap through that
fog, and how when we struck a match
il 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. AN right.
Then what's the matter with a man
asking il it's hot enough for you? Heat
is weather, isn't it? It's part of the
climatic game, / suppose? Then why
should it be barred in h betting? Why
should IN gaggists have been all these
years with the pleasant-spoken and
| good-natured chap who. just as a sort
of greeting that comes ndIurdi 10 nlIi,
asks you IL it's hot enough for YOU?
You don't want him to say, hen 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 las 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, IL it's
hot enough for you, and If you're not a
| crouch and IL you ave any thinking
power of your own n il you don't per-
| init 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 you, like
| you would reply to any other question.
! and let it go at that
"All OF the fellows that / know who
ask me IL 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.
I hope that they'll be asking that Ques-
ton as long as they live, and that af-
| ter they die they'n-er-well, no, I don't
wish that, OF course-but, say, on the
level now, and all of this extraneous
matter aside, Is 1t hot enough for your