The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-18

N. Y. Newspaper Strike Had Sports Fans Very Fidgeiy
By JOE WILLIAMS

except there was more conversation than usual at the breakfast table. And this could scarcely be adjudged a distinct contribution to the social graces.
 The lady laughed lightly and said 1t seemed odd not having Q news paper propped up between Us.
 T don't notice any great diher- ence though" she said, charitably.
 About what?"
 "Oh, you know the old story about the wife who had forgotten what her husband looked like; he always had his head buried in Q newspaper at the table,
 "Humph."
 The second day 1t was somewhat different. We looked at the cereal and shuddered. It looked like the thick paste copy readers use in the office. Had we been eating this junk all these years? The answer undoubtedly was yes; since our cate ing habits are progressively stenciled we had been so busy reading while eating we just hadn't noticed.
 And there was that fried egg. Perhaps there are times when the fried egg has not only gtistatory allure but pictorial charm but carly morning in a heat rationed house which is also stripped of newspapers is not one of the times. Under such circumstances the fried egg become e watery eyed, malevoient cyclops with a fixed yellowish stare: a defiant, accusatory stare, as if the thing were posed to avenge the destruction of countless barnyard innocents.
 "Why did you sprinkle your cigaret ashes over your egg?" the lady asked
 "Just wasn't thinking :"
 Breakfast Special
 By now, of course, you can see what happened. A newspaper is just as much a part of the Aineri- can breakfast as cup of coffee; or as a cup of coffee was when you could get one. Without a newspaper tilted back against the sugar bowl and the cream pitcher, forming a neatly typed hedge between two bobbing, indifferent heads, even the most exquisitely prepared breakfast would be monstrous thing. blue plate special featuring wornwood and ashes. Sunny side Up.
 Also 1t is our belief the statement that wives have shot husbands be- cause they devoted all their time to the newspaper at the breakfast table is sheer fiction They may have objected to tn echaracter oi the newspaper the gentleman read but not to the practice. Wives are too smart for that. Even a simple breakfast does not always come oil just right. That's where the news paper becomes a staunch ally Of the little lady. With his eyes glued to the headlines the old man. in his preoccupation, is merely going through the motions of eating; he wouldn't know what 1t was or how 1t tasted. :.
 Social workers have compiled statistics which argue convincingly that If 1t weren't for the common American practice of reading news papers at breakfast the divorce rate would be up 30 per cent. More than one wife owes her standing as queen of the breakfast table to the fact that the American newspaper is the best edited and most in. teresting in the world. (Advt)
 Tn this connection there is no telling how mary marriages came loose at the seams during the strike just ended. Certainly, those rug ged couples who managed to sur vive may look to the future with unshakable calm and confidence. Our congratulations to both Of them.
 This is the time of the year we stay home to break in our annual chest cold, a spirited and fractious critter, but it's been with us 50 long it's just like one of the family. Along with others we grew thin and jumpy under the neWsfess blight. We were moved most by the awful pain of emptiness. It was like sitting in a theater watch ing a fierce melodrama when all of a sudden the place is plunged into total darkness.
 The radio is too fragmentary. Likewise it is too severe in its se- lectivity. It is not enough to get short. slipped reports on Rommets retreat, Nad repulses at StaliIgrad and Allied advances in New Guinea. Only the frivolous would deny the relative vitality of such items but the modern mind is restless and many-sided.
 Murder
 For example. We left the zoot suit Slayers in the middle of an absorbing situation; psychologists were trying to show that an url- sympathetic educational system or a metallic environment or some- thing equally ephemeral had driven them to murder. We subscribe readily to all this deep pondering out what we wanted to know most was what drove them to those gro- tesque zoot suits? That's the un- noly mental quirk we were in- rerested in and we missed 1t.
 We missed our favorite war com- mentator, too, Major George Field ing Eliot. To us the major is to the military what Walter Camp used to be in football. We don't even read the war news any more. We just read what the major thinks about 1t, and we've reached a pretty solid conviction about him and this worldwide mess. too, namely: No matter which side wins the war, they're going to have to meet the major in the playoffs. Come on. major.
 And naturally we missed the sports pages That is until we p.cked them up yesterday and saw an eight column line hailing the
 .X