The Kendrick gazette. [volume] (Kendrick, Idaho) 1892-1968, 1920-01-30
Modern improvements

nad neck OF time WlCnQul any
ofJour modern improvements. No
telephones, no elevators, no hot and
cold, no monographs, no self-sharp-
ening lead pencils. no hot-air fprp-
aces, no propaganda or impropagan-
da, no electric curling irons, no
tin-llzzles, no prohibition, no
strikes, no germs, no appendicitis.
Say, those old birds must have
had perfectly miserable time,
come to think about it. All they
had to do was to sit back and enjoy
themselves and not worry.
When.grandpa went home-at night
and took off his shoes and put his
feet in the oven of the cook stove
and settled down for the evening to
read Doctor Hostetter's almanac
before taking his hot rum and beat
ing it tor the hay, nobody could call
him UP on the phone and ask him to
shoe horse for a personal friend
or go and carry in few armfuls of
wood for sick lodge brother. He
didn't even have to spend his even
ing hours trying to4coax balky
furnace.
He never had a microbe, for those
things had not been added to the
list of improvements. The whole
village drank out Of a tin cup at the
town pump, and in those days the
old boys used to swap pipes down
at the grocery store. Occasionally
they lived to be a hundred. Intact
some of them are living yet.
Nowadays man is a poor fish if
he doesn't go through life weight
ed down with enough modern i'm
provements to swamp seagoing
elephant.
HIS principal old-man -of-the-sea
is the telephone. In the old days
they never called anybody up be-
cause they had no phones. Nova
days we call them up, but don't get
them. which shows that, although
we have progressed long way, we
haven't got very far.
Modern improvements are the
order of the day. The average man
carries several pounds Of excess
Junk on his person and has several
thousand dollars worth in his
house.
The average mans pockets will
assay patent cigar lighter that
won't work when he wants it to,
but goes off when he doesn't want
it to and sets fire to his trousers; a
fountain pen that doesn't leak when
there is no ink in it, bunch Of
keys that won't fit anything that he
remembers, an address book with a
lot of stuff in 1t that he can't read
a bank book that he has had no use
for since the war started, nail
clipper that will do anything but
clip, a gold watch chain with gold
knife on it that won't cut butter ir
the middle of July, and forty other
modern improvements that do any
thing but improve.
His Office is so cluttered with
modern improvements that hi
spends all his time running the i'm
provements and buying new ones.
Among these is a patent lead
pencil sharpener that peels tn
wood away from the lead and thel
breaks the lead off up to the peel
ing point. The average man cal
manage to chew up eight or min
pencils IN this way during the day
and when he wants to write he get
out the old jackknife and sharpen
one.
In his filing cabinet he files ava
the stuff that he expects never t
> find again. When he has an i'm
portant document that he may wan
to refer to in the future he shove
1t IN his hip pocket.
By the time he gets throug
monkeylng with the modern in
provements it is too late to do an
business and he hastens to catch tn
5:l5 for hoWe, where be can spen
the evening doctoring up tn
myriad of modern Improvement
there; fixing those that he can f
himself, and sending for tt
plumber, the electrician, the ca
penter, the furnace worker, tt
piano player man, the washir
machine expert and the efficient
Il 4