Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday. April 23, 195
Little Man on Campus
by Dick Bibler
"And—If you join our 'club' you have the opportunity to enjoy a real unique spirit of friendliness with the sorority next door."
Thurber Sketches People Of His Early Life in Ohio
THE THURBER ALBUM. By James Thurber. New York: Simon and Schuster. 316 Pages.
Subtitle of the new Thurber book is "A New Collection of Pieces About People." His people are his parents, his grandparents, an old lady about Columbus who was an expert on "cures," and his college professors, the men who helped distinguish Columbus journalism. Columbus, Ohio, that is, the Thurber bailiwick of dozens of short stories, sketches, and perhaps some of the great man's cartoons.
Most of the pieces in "The Thurber Album" appeared first in the New Yorker. They represent the style of writing and humor appreciated by New Yorker readers, so anyone who prefers the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, or Soul Owl is warned away from "The Thurber Album," about this stuff?" a Life magazine-loving friend once asked about Thurber's "My World and Welcome to It."
To this reader, at least, "The Thurber Album" doesn't warm up until it gets over to the sketches of the people Thurber knew at Ohio State and his Columbus Dispatch and Ohio State Journal cronies. The stories about the Taylors, Fishers, and Thurbers have their high spots, of course, such as the tough old man he kept his dearly on the wall near him at the stone. He wanted to have it handy in case any local bores dropped in to chat. He could always say he was just leaving.
Or there was Aunt Effie, who thought all modern inventions were electric and once returned from visiting a relative to announce, "She's turned finicky since she left Sugar Grove. Got an electric toilet." And there was Grandpa, who was a stout Republican but got mighty sore one Sunday during the preacher's sermon. About the time the preacher got around to calling on God to help elect the Republican candidate for county coroner, Grandpa jumped to his feet, broke in on the prayer, and denounced any preacher who tried to mix religion and politics.
Thurber's sketches of the men he knew at Ohio State (for further background on Thurber's "education" read his "University Days") seemed the most understanding and moving of the individual sketches in the book.
Thurber also pictures Norman "Gus" Kuehner, tough city editor of the Columbus Dispatch, who hated journalism schools with a passion and women reporters only slightly less. Once he saw a girl reporter casually dangling a shoe on her foot. That shoe went out the window, flung by Stormy Gus Kuehner.
"The Thurber Album" also dwells on one of the great cartoonists of his day, Billy Ireland and Bob Ryder one of the great editorial "paragraphers."
Ryder, like the famous Ed Howe of the Atchison (Kan.) Globe, could take a news event or a topical thought, state it, comment on it, and have a pungent criticism all wrapped up for posterity. One of Ryder's panagraphs —"In some cases he writes hard and fast line where convalescence stops and plain loafing begins."
These sketches are the substance of "The Thurber Album." A little time in reading it is recommended, but don't as this reader did, try to read parts of it while a Kansas basketball game is on the radio.
UNIVERSITY Dailu Hansan
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Spring Blossoms from Country Roads
You can't know that spring is here unless you have taken a meandering drive through the country—up and down and around the hills of Eastern Kansas. Only then do you meet all the true ingredients of spring.
A country dirt road—wet or dry—is absolutely essential in searching for spring. Because a country road has the personality of spring, its character is as changeable as the weather.
Moseying along the countryside, you'll notice the soft dirt that slows your car down enough so you can get a good look at the countryside. Sometimes there are fences and telephone lines to keep the road company. If not, there's always an occasional mailbox and lane, with accompanying house and barn.
Color is the big ingredient. Fields are mixtures of the greenest of green (solid carpets of wheat), "moth-eaten green" green (recently-planted oats which don't completely cover the ground), black or red or yellow (newly-plowed fields ready for spring planting), or a pale white or beige (unplowed stubble).
Everywhere you look there is more color. Patches
of yellow jonquils catch the eye from farmyards. red of empty corncobs can be seen filling bad chuckholes in the roads, and the yellow of full ears fill corneribs from the sides of fields.
Sound, or the lack of it, is likewise mixed into the recipe of spring. The country has a peaceful quiet all of its own, but spring adds the distant roar of the tractor, the trilling song of a bird, the shouts of children playing outdoors.
concerns from a pale green hint of leaves hovers over branches of trees in yards, clustered along creek banks and covering the hillsides. An occasional herd of cattle in the field, in combinations of red or white or black roam the grazing land. Farm machinery, in red, green, or gray, squints placially in the yards or chugs effortlessly over the fields.
There is also a feeling of expectant aloneness and the gathering of energy that gains momentum over the land. The smell of clean, plowed earth fills the air and the bluest of blue skies hovers over puffy white clouds.
A personality-conscious America is running headlong down the road toward a concept of political leadership that comes perilously close to saying, "You, the people, no longer know what it is all about. Follow the leaders and they will take care of you."
We are inviting this imperious stand by political leaders when we weakly admit that "It has been so long since issues in an election meant anything." Not many voters can refute the charge that they don't know what their favorite candidate will do if elected, "but he's our boy, and whatever he does will be for the best . . ."
This thinking puts politicians in an unreachable inner sanctum where policy-making is understood only by the initiated few. Democracy, if it means anything today, means that the voter has a meaningful knowledge of issues.
Unfortunately, voting on issues has a drawback that is painfully obvious. Voters have a tendency to become bewildered by smoke screens of charges and counter-charges by opposing factions during elections. The fact is the only immunization available to clean the air so issues alone are seen.
Comments
Start now to check what the various factions of Republican powers in Kansas, for example, are fighting about. Don't wait until the final ballyhoo days preceding the '54 election. It is difficult under this state's one-party system, but such knowledge is essential in the cause of good government. Curiosity can be a powerful light in the darkness of inner sanctums.
Issues, Not Personalities, Vital in Voting
Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon "meaningful." One must know what the Taft-Hartley law is and what its implications are. Only if we know how it operates can we know whether it is a good law for the greatest number of people.
We must know and understand the issues of an election. Not until a politician's smile means only that he can crease his face in a pleasing manner upon public demand will we get the kind of governmental supervision of our affairs we are so desperately seeking.
The Boeing company announces a B-47 flew 432,066 miles last year. The local cynic bets they roll the speedometer back before selling it to the Air Force.
Eisenhower misses throwing out the first ball and a cold wave sweeps into Kansas. Just two more actions in the Reds' scheme to undermine the country.
Don Sarten
Doctors are told they should be operated on every 4 years to better understand the patient's point of view. That's a real side-splitter.
- * *
These are the signs of spring.
A California woman wins a divorce because her husband twisted her arm. Just a new twist to an old problem.
- * *
A British minister complains that Johnny Ray makes more money in a fortnight than a British farmer in 40 years. Something the Internal Revenue department should check.
- * *
Kansas Farmer, Wheat Crop Could Be Political Dynamite
Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Benson probably will find Kansas wheat farmers ill-tempered with any legislation that threatens to cut-down their 1953 profits.
The farmers, faced with the smallest wheat crop in 14 years, because of drought, dust storms, and other bad weather conditions, could be political dynamite if someone got the idea to end subsidies on wheat.
The 121,678,000 bushel prediction set by the Kansas State Board of Agriculture and the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics is 40 per cent of last year's bumper harvest of 307,629,000 bushels.
Not since 1939, when only 114,858,000 bushels were harvested, has a forecast been so low. The official prediction looks even lower when compared with the 10-year (1942-51) average of 193,227,000 bushels.
Abandonment of the wheat acreage is expected to be large over wide areas in Central and Western Kansas, the driest areas, the agencies said.
Some of the ground was so dry in central Kansas, where wheat had been seeded late last fall, that when rains did come the soil crusted over.
The young plants couldn't gain access to the top of the soil in cause of crusted conditions. Some farmers used harrows or chan in an effort to loosen the crust.
The forecast of 121,678,000 bushels would give an average yield of 8.5 bushels on the 14,385,000 acres seeded last fall. The 1952 yield per seeded acre was 20.4 bushels and the 10-year average was 14.1 bushels.
The Republican Kansas wheat farmer, who spends most of his time biting the hand that feeds him, has been known to lick it when hungry enough. And with crops cut in half, he's looking out for his own interests first.
Who has the most food for him? Democrats or Republicans?
That's who'll get his vote. —Rozanne Atkins
POGO