Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1962-11-04

and diagonal Of the barn. Find
the area over which the COW
can graze.") to cudgel the
readers brain.
There are recipes to turn his
stomach. Called forgotten
foods" they include such deli
cacies as bone marrow on toast
CSaw 8 marrow bones in sec
lions 2 to 8 inches long - !
lung and heart pudding ("Wash
beef heart and beef lung thor
oughly, remove gristle and
larger blood vessels y and
spleen stew C"Wash beef spleen.
Remove thin outer skin and fat
-. Forgotten foods? They
weren's forgotten; they were
deliberately expunged from hui
man memory.
Then there are anecdotes
and pleaSantries," and secrets
of magick," educational articles
on Lady Godiva, dreams and
the Great Blizzard Of 1888, and
secrets of the Zodiac and
planets"
But the most famous feature
of the Old Farmers Alman-
ac(k) is its weather predictions
for every day of 1868 by some
one called Abe Weatherwise.
In addition to the straight |
faced forecasts of cold or heat, |
rain or sunshine, Mr.. Weather
wise garnishes the Farmers
Calendar" with an endless
chatter of sometimes inscrut-
able Yankee doggerel: "a bold |
cold. Drippy noses, frozen
toeses High dawns spawn
Stawms (Note the White House
accent there) Stay asleep,
this storm is for sheep i
You'll Sizzle in this drizzle /. i
Perhaps, tornadoes, good-by
those podadoes Heavenly
soup, that's the poop Hur-
ricane from the Spanish Main
:. You'll end up alluvial with !
out pluvial . ETC., etc."
Harvard Weather
The almanac claims a $50
per cent accuracy for Mr..
Weatherwise's daily predictions
last winter. But there's a
slight-ever so slight-catch to
it. His record, like his pre-
dictions, applies only to the
weather at the Harvard Observ-
atory atop Great Blue Hill. near
Boston. This, Of course, is a
typically BonStonian conceit:
There may be weather else
where in the country, but the
weather at the Harvard OBJ
servatory is the only weather
that really counts.
Lest its non-Yankee readers
feel left out of things, though.
the almanac supplies a formula.
The WeatherwiSe forecast. it
says, will work for other places
by subtracting one day for each
Time Zone west, by reading 5
degrees lower temperature for
every 100 miles north of AZ
Lat. N. or 5 degrees higher
for every 100 mi. South of 20
Lat. N. and by considering
every 100 feet of altitude is 3.3
degrees cooler"
Anyone rash enough to try
to work out this conundrum |
should know that Great Blue
Hill, a pleasant, woodsy mound
overlooking Hoosicwhisick Pond
and inhabited largely by souir-
rels and Harvard meteorolo-
gists, has an altitude of 635
feet.
You might think it would be
hard to match the Old Farm
er's Almanac, but by cracky
there are a couple even closer
to home that do: the Hagers-
town Almanac has introduced
color printing and a smaller |
formal for its 166th edition.
and Baer's 138-year-old Agri-
cultural Almanac of Lancaster,
Pa, makes a noble attempt to
equal the Old Farmers cracker
barrel technique. 4
Baer's weather predictions
don't always jibe with Abe
Weatherwise's, but the Dutch
uncle aphorisms of its Abner
Americanus are every bit as
pungent as the, Old Farmers
witticisms.
There are little tidbits of
Pennsylvania folklore, such as
the description of Fastnacht
Day ("There's a humorous note
to the day, too. Traditionally,
the last one out of bed on
FaStnacht Day is a fast
nacht. ~, tips on whitening
breadboards with lemon),
curing insomnia (eat lettuce)
and preventing cracked eggs
in the henhouse.