The Kendrick gazette., 1920-12-17

tlnsel, and that is all. BY the time
you get as Old and feel as young as
| am. you find most of the plate worn
off.
Honestly, boys (and girls), don't
think Santa Claus himself ever feels
very much ut home except on rural
route! He has mighty poor job in
big town, with fiueS instead of chin
neys, and everything. And it is hard
to SEE where he gets room to turn Il
sleigh and eight reindeer around. tiny
reindeer though they may he. He'll be
pretty certain to bump into Il hydrant
or tip over on a curb.
And with twenty families all using
one tlue (and, what is worse, a soft
coal tlue at thaD how in the world
is the most experienced Santa going
to find which is Browns and which is
Smiths, and where the Greens live?
Even if he dared rap and ask (Which
no Santa Claus is ever supposed to
do) nobody could tell him. For per-
hapS the Browns and the Smiths have
never met" and the Greens might
live across the hall for month be-
fore anybody thought to inquire their
name.
Fer that is one thing you don't get
much of in the city-neighbOrs. Some
times when the woman across the
road keeps running in just when your
mother is canning, or baking, or treat
ing a Shirt-bOsOm kindly but firmly
with a f1at-iron, your mother may al
most wish that they weren't quite SO
plentiful in the cOuntry-but she
wouldn't. She would miss them, just
the same as you would miss having
the same boys t" play with year after
year.
For in the city you are always get
ting a fresh lot of playmates-and
sometimes they are a mighty fresh
lot, too. OF course there are some
good kids, also; but it always seems
that just when you get to liking some
fellow up the street or across the alley,
the landlord boosts the rent and his
folks have to move, and you never see
him again. He may move only from
one side of the city to the other, hut
t.
1t is five or ten or twenty miles
miles of houses. no, miles of flats, and
streetcar tracks, and railroads. and
factories-and you never see him again
or any of his folks.
The boys YOU know this Christmas
probably won't be around at all next
Christmas. if you live in the city. That
is a funny thing about city folks !:
they are always going somewhere and
never getting anywhere. Why, even
if the landlord didn't raise the rent
October ! or May ] or whenever the
lease expires. they might move any
way. People who live in flats instead
of homes are always looking for some
thing better and getting something
worse. They have the most wonderful
collection of rent receipts. hut not a
foot of ground. not roof or rafter,
they can call their own.
Now. don't know what you think,
but think that every family ought to
have a house of its own, house it
lives in year after year. That is. of
course, unless the father has some
sort of job that makes it necessary for
him TO move to some other town every
other year or SO. But it is Il great
thing to live in home. not just q
house. and that is about the best place.
and the only place, to have Il Christ
mas. IL real. Sure-enough, honest-tO-
goodness Christmas.
Most of you boys who live on the
farm and in the small town have that
kind of home, and | wonder if you
know how lucky you are? Wouldn't
you hate to wake up Christmas morn
ing and look at the ceiling and realize
that someone else owned it, and then
get up and go out i'm the front yard
/ and realize that someone else owned
that, too-why. you'd get so after
awhile that. everything you saw. you
would wonder who owned it.
tell you, boys, it's great Satisfac.
tiOn to have Il back yard and to know
it's yours. and that you can invite
people into it, or invite people to stay
out of it. just as you please. Why, that
is what brought the Pilgrim Fathers
| y
could call their own. don't say that
1t was exactly back yard they want.
ed. but what they wanted was some
place they could play ball and M
! landlord of a king could come along
and tell them to stop because they
| might break some of the royal win
dowS. You know Old King George did
come along and try to make them stoT
and you know what happened to the
! royal windows. Zam.
And then there is this matter OF
SNOW. You know some people dom
think II is much of a Christmas with
out snow. Now. know quite n lo
about SNOW because I've been nc
qlainted with Il lot of 1t. have
tramped through it up in the Hudson
Pay country. and I've wallowed arornt
in " in the summertime on top Of tais