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Time for new calendars
There's a lesson in psychology in this calendar business, and you can pretty near tell the age of the man who selected the picture on the calendar. If he's a young, unmarried executive, the picture will be of a very charming young lady in an abbreviated bathing suit. If he's a married man along in his thirties, you'll see the picture of a little girl playing in a sand pile or a young boy trying to swing a man-sized baseball bat. If he's my age, the picture will be of a old fellow building a boat in a bottle, ducks in flight or an antlered buck galloping through the woods. If you think I'm wrong just study the next calendar you get. Pretty picture I came to know and appreciate calendars at an early age. On account of my father being in the newspaper business we seemed to get more calendars than anybody else, but we always found a place for the ones we got. Papa had one on every wall here at the shop and Mama kind of got the overflow. She had the bedrooms, the kitchen and the living room decorated with beautiful scenes ranging from snow-covered mountains to brooks that looked like they were babbling, whatever babbling is. We even had one out in the little house at the end of the winding path which showed a scene of people standing around a hot stove in a country store. It was very comforting on cold mornings. Mama did all her household bookkeeping on the kitchen calendar. A glance would tell you when the cow was supposed to freshen and when the setting of eggs would hatch off. It told how much money the neighbors owed her for butter, milk and eggs and how much sugar she had borrowed from the nearest neighbor. She could look back and tell how long a barrel of flour had lasted and about when she would have to go stay with Mrs. Harrison at her annual babyborning. Weather Predictions Mama put a lot of stock in her almanacs, too, and when the weather wasn't "blustery" like the almanac said it would be, she always maintained that it wouldn't miss it but a few days. If it predicted a hard freeze, we would be put to work getting in the fire wood and kindling, taking the geraniums and other potted plants to the flower pit and putting more straw around the sweet potato beds. Those almanacs contained a world of information, including such pertinent facts as the time to plant turnips, string beans, watermelons, etc. It also gave the signs of the Zodiac, which always puzzled me when I was little. If you remember, there was a picture of an undressed man surrounded by fish, animals, crabs and the like, and each object had a line pointed to some part of the man's body. They got pretty personal, too, with some of those lines. Like I said, the signs puzzled me when I was young. They still puzzle me, fifty years later. Early commercials Those almanacs were pretty sneaky, too. They would have one page of pertinent facts, like historical dates and birthdays of prominent men, and then they would have a page extolling the virtues of various tonics. In fact, that's where the television folks got the idea for commercials. There were antidotes for any kind of poisoning and Mama had it handy in case we ever swallowed some bichloride tablets or ate rat poison. She had so much faith in the almanac I think she was just a little disappointed because she never got to test the antidotes. Although Mama was very devout and prayed for rain and sunshine, depending on the need, she always consulted the almanac to see how long it would take the Lord to answer her prayers.
By the way, I just got my new 1958 almanac. The first part of January we're going to have snow over the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and sleet and real cold weather over the Southern region. Better do something about your geraniums.
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