Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1917 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

Last spring wise people came around and said it was my duty to plant to spuds my garden ground, foregoing things of beauty. I’m fond of flowers and lovely buds, with care I grow and treat them, and I have not much use for spuds, excepting when I eat them. But then the sages came along, r with taunting sneers and joshes, and said my beds of flowers were wrong, I should be raising squashes. The country needed sifted peas and

other wholesome rations, not columbines and things ilka these, to feed the fighting nations. And so I planted peas and beans, uprooted all my lilies, and raised a thousand tons of greens, and now I have the willies. For no one seems to want the truck 1 raised with so much ardor; no man will blow a single buck to fill with it his larder. My neighbors all have done the same, great piles of fodder growing;- the wise guys steered them to the game, just as they set me going. No nation comes to buy my sass, no king or queen has rubbered and priced my peas or sparrow grass, my squashes, plain or Hubbard. So I lament my roses dead,- my cup of sorrow drinking; next year the nations will be fed by someone else, I’m thinking.