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If you can locate one, try to get a copy of the Sept. 28th, Saturday Review. It will someday become a collector's item because it contains the greatest 'put on' since the old Fairy Soap ads. The two full pages on the new Chevie is the greatest 'in' thing in the history of advertising. Some heads must have rolled. How it got thru even the squar-est of sponsors I'll never know. If it goes over your head don't worry, it went over the heads of the Chevrolet people.
The all time award for Good Clean Upright Americanism has to go to Wilbur Almquist of Lawrence, Kansas. Wilbur is the understanding manager of an apartment house. Two young bearded university students were sent packing. "We don't want any beards around here. I don't like 'em and I can throw out anybody I don't like." Good for you, Wilbur. The solidarity of our great land depends on Wilbur and his kind. I wonder how Wilbur feels about the beard Abraham Lincoln wears on the five dollar bill?
The Award for Enterprising Achievement goes to Ralph A. Anthony of New Haven, Conn. He's been working in California for the last two years. Most of our fruits and nuts come from California. Ralph is a free lance photographer who's formed the Rent-A-Hippie Company. For a modest 15 bucks he'll rent you an esoteric conversationalist, a folk singer with a guitar, a fortune teller, or a poet. Ralph says his rentees are practically normal but that most of the folks who contact his company are kooks. I wonder why Ralph didn't include a magician in his stable of renter-outers.
Recently I read a report by the President's Commission on National Violence. I'm glad to learn that according to percentages I'm safer in New York's Central Park at four in the morning than in my own bed. I've been meaning to fix that bed. I'm safer in a crowd or alone with a stranger than with a friend or relative. I've known that for years. Two thirds of the nation's murders, aggravated assaults and attack victims were friends, former friends or relatives of their assailants. It makes sense, why assault a stranger if a friend or relative is available?
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The rate of anxiety, it seems, rises faster than the crime rate. People worry, I think, because nothing happens to them. Anticipation is always more enjoyable than realization. Many an old maid has peered under her bed at night for years before finding a man. Lord help the poor wretch when she calls the police the next morning. The report says well-to-do people living in the suburbs, who own things like wrought iron lawn furniture, outdoor pools and ride-around lawn mowers are more concerned about the rising crime rate than poor people. Persons who earn under six grand a year are more likely to get robbed than more affluant folks. It's simple, you can live forever if you move out of the city, make lots of money, walk in the park at night with strangers or else stay in bed. Man, That's living.
As you hum the new song dedicated to our money, "Look for the Copper Lining" reflect on the statement of Abdul Rahman Paznak, past president of the UN General Assembly, "If fools and folly rule the world, the end of man in our time may come as a rude shock but it will no longer come as a complete surprise." Think about it as you hear a presidential candidate promise two possums in every pot and clean sheets for all. Give a thought to his sabre rattling running mate who tells us, "The people needn't worry about the atom bomb ... in the atolls where most of the tests were made the fish have returned to the lagoons and the sea gulls circle happily overhead in good health. The palm trees are growing and the coconuts are filled with milk. You'd better believe it, daddy, the coconuts in the world are all filled with something and I'm a little fed up with them.
May I leave you with the paraphrased words of St. Matthew . . . Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God . . . and they shall be smote upon the conk by the fuzz with cudgels and cast into the pokey . . .
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