Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1918 — UNLIKE OLD TIMES [ARTICLE]

UNLIKE OLD TIMES

Town Meetings Not Just as They Used to Be. V -r Possibly It Is an Improvement, but Reminiscent Citizen Seemed to Speak With a Certain Tinge of Regret. "How did town meeting go this year?” inquired Capt. Dudley Pattershall, just home from a voyage snd coming to headquarters for information of what had happened of interest while he had been away. “W-a-a-a-a-1, Cap’n,” began Grindle the storekeeper, “th’ annual meeting of the legal voters o’ this town, to meet an’ act upon certain articles to-wit, namely, ain’t nothin’ what it used to be. Times Is changed wpnderfully, 'specially since the war broke out. “Town meet’n’ nowadays is gettin’ to be as decorious as th’ Bible class which meets in th’ small vestry directly after pre,achin’ services, to which all adults are invited. “They ain’t no winders broke, nor no stove tipped over, nor the mod’rator don’t have to suspend consideration of article 21 while he goes down on th’ floor an’ impresses some cit-zen as to proper parl’mentary procedure by bangin’ him over th’ head with a caulkin’ mallet, used in more peaceful moments as a gavel.” “Yes, I see it done,” put in Captain Pattershall with a chuckle. “It used to take an able man to do the modratin’.”

.“They was times,” continued Grindle, “when a woman couldn’t go by on ’tother side of the street from the town hall without stickin’ both fingers in her ears, but this year there was a row of ’em linin’ th’ gallery an’ all listenin’, an’ lookin’ on an’ knlttin’. We’ve got a woman on the school board —think o’ that! “Th’ battle of Umpteddiddy wan’t nothin’ to some of th’ vi’lent collisions between the Boshkelovis from the upper end o’ th’ valley an’ the clammers from down on th’ cape—but they ain’t nothin’ like that now. Th’ hatchit is buried in a carefully marked spot. “An* what do you think, cap’n, they opened up th’ meetin’ with prayer, an’ a slick prayer it was, at that. Elder Bates o’ the Baptis’ church, he prayed fer ‘Pirut’ Pollard, th’ mod’rator —that he might preside over th’ dellb-rations with-wisdom an’ jedgment. It ain’t on record that ol’ Pollard was ever prayed for that way. Th’ elder prayed for ’most everybody an’ everything an’ then for who or what he might have left out.” “Well, wasn’t it a better town meeting than the old-fashioned kind?” inquired Cap’n Pattershall. “W-a-a-a-a-1, I s’pose it was, in speakin’ o’ results an’ good bizness proceedin’s; but there seemed t’ be somethin’ lackin’ —this war has upset many old an’ time-honored institootions, somehow.” —Boston Globe.